Theorists treat liberty as a great equalizer. We can’t easily distribute equal welfare, but we can purport to distribute equal liberty. In fact, however, nothing about “equal liberty” is meaningfully equal. To demonstrate, I turn not to familiar cases of distributing positive goods but to the distribution of a negative good, namely carceral punishment. Many theorists believe we should impose proportional punishment by depriving offenders of liberty in proportion to their blameworthiness. In this manner, equally blameworthy offenders are said to receive equal punishment when incarcerated for the same period of time. Equal periods of incarceration do not yield equal punishments, however, because liberty cannot serve as the great equalizer theorists hope for. Pretending it can prevents us from justifying the full harms of punishment or leads to such counterintuitive results that it makes proportional punishment an unattractive goal.

理论家将自由视为伟大的均衡器。我们不能轻易地分配平等的福利，但我们可以声称分配平等的自由。然而，事实上，“平等自由”没有任何意义是平等的。为了证明这一点，我不转向常见的分配正面物品的案例，而是转向负面物品的分配，即监禁刑罚。许多理论家认为，我们应该通过剥夺罪犯的自由与他们的罪责成正比来施加相应的惩罚。以这种方式，据说同样应受谴责的罪犯在被监禁相同的时间段时会受到同等的惩罚。然而，平等的监禁期不会产生平等的惩罚，因为自由不能像伟大的平等理论家所希望的那样。