On the assumption that we are able to justify the institution of punishment, when people may be punished? Christopher New has recently argued that, despite our intuitions to the contrary, there is in principle nothing which forbids punishment' before the offense has been committed, i.e., prepunishment'. The issue, he argues, is only epistemological. I explore the challenge presented by New, and argue that prepunishment is deeply ethically unacceptable. The problem with prepunishment derives, in the end, from the widely recognized need to respect persons and from the unacceptability of the punishment' of the innocent.

Widespread and deep intuitions about the basic content of any satisfactory theory for justifying punishment, together with some plausible empirical assumptions, are seen to yield two closely related paradoxes about justice and the severity of punishment. Considerations of desert point in the opposite direction than do considerations of deterrence with regard to the severity of punishment of the underprivileged. And this leads to a situation in which, if considerations of the desert of the underprivileged are taken seriously, the convicted from privileged backgrounds are to be more severely punished, unnecessarily'.

Anti-utilitarians have argued about the issue of utilitarianism and the 'punishment' of the innocent by presenting extreme and peripheral examples, allowing utilitarians to disclaim the reality of the problem. Both sides have shared the opinion that in daily life utilitarianism will not entail much (if any) 'punishment' of the innocent. I argue that this is a mistake. If we consider not specific detailed examples (or the total transformation of society) but the utilitarian attractions of a limited relaxation of the rigorous criteria within the current judicial framework, the opposition between utility and justice is clear.

"Teflon immorality'' (or TI) is immorality that goes on unchecked -- the wrongdoing is not stopped and its perpetrators, beyond the reach of punishment or other sanction, often persist in their immoral ways. The idea that the immoral prosper has been recognized as morally (and legally) disturbing presumably for as long as humanity has been reflective, and can be found already in the Bible. The reasons behind a great deal of successful immorality are important practically, but uninteresting philosophically. Sometimes, however, we face events that are more interesting philosophically, and Teflon immorality results from oddities such as moral paradoxes and perversions. These, however, have remained largely unnoticed. I will outline a tentative survey of this topic. After showing its pervasiveness and importance, I will briefly reflect on its relevance to the way we should think about morality and about the means to further it, and confront possible objections.