Question

A criminal has taken five of your neighbors as hostages and has threatened to kill them unless five of his compatriots serving time for murder are released from prison. He has already shot one of the hostages in the leg. If the five compatriots are let free, authorities estimate that they will return to their home country of Mongolia, spend time with their families, and then begin murdering others next year. Statistically speaking, they are likely to kill a total of between 10 and 30 people in Mongolia. a. Should the authorities release these prisoners? b. Applying the Issue-Contingent Model, what elements of moral intensity are especially important to you in formulating your opinion? c. What factors should a utilitarian take into account in evaluating this trade? What conclusion would a utilitarian likely reach?

Answer 1

a.         This situation poses a conflict between our emotionally-driven instincts and our more analytical thought processes. See the answer to c.

b.         The magnitude of potential harm is extreme, obviously.

There is no strong social consensus on how the various considerations presented in this matter should be balanced. Allowing neighbors to get killed is reprehensible, but allowing hardened murderers to go free to kill others is also reprehensible.

The probability of the remaining hostages being killed is extremely high. The probability of the imprisoned murderers killing others in the future after their release also is high. The expected number of deaths is higher than five, with a midpoint number of likely deaths being twenty.

Death of the hostages is potentially imminent. In contrast, the impending death of Mongolians lacks temporal immediacy.

The hostages are your neighbors, so the risk to their lives has geographic and cultural proximity. In contrast, the risk to the lives of Mongolians likely lacks proximity.

The impact on your neighbors is concentrated on identifiable victims, while the impact on the broader Mongolian population is diffused.

c.         On one hand, saving the American hostages’ lives has substantial utility. On the other hand, the released criminals will, on average, kill far more than one person once they have been freed. Thus, unless one assumes that an American life has more utility than a Mongolian life, a consequentialist would refuse to release the prisoners.

Furthermore, in economic terms, this swap gives the criminals’ friends and family members an incentive to kidnap other Americans now that they know that American hostages have a high “swap value.” This endangers other Americans in the future, perhaps creating more captive Americans and costing multiple American lives in the future. A utilitarian would consider all stakeholders, including the lives of unnamed, prospective hostages. On balance, the utility gain from gaining the freedom for the five present American hostages likely will be outweighed by the additional deaths that acquiescing to these demands likely will cause in the future.