Editing Occam's razor (section)

=== Penal ethics ===
In penal theory and the philosophy of punishment, parsimony refers specifically to taking care in the distribution of [[punishment]] in order to avoid excessive punishment. In the [[utilitarianism|utilitarian]] approach to the philosophy of punishment, [[Jeremy Bentham]]'s "parsimony principle" states that any punishment greater than is required to achieve its end is unjust. The concept is related but not identical to the legal concept of [[proportionality (law)|proportionality]]. Parsimony is a key consideration of the modern [[restorative justice]], and is a component of utilitarian approaches to punishment, as well as the [[prison abolition movement]]. Bentham believed that true parsimony would require punishment to be individualised to take account of the [[sensibility]] of the individual—an individual more sensitive to punishment should be given a proportionately lesser one, since otherwise needless pain would be inflicted. Later utilitarian writers have tended to abandon this idea, in large part due to the impracticality of determining each alleged criminal's relative sensitivity to specific punishments.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tonry |first=Michael |year=2005 |title=Obsolescence and Immanence in Penal Theory and Policy |url=http://www.columbialawreview.org/pdf/Tonry-Web.pdf |journal=[[Columbia Law Review]] |volume=105 |pages=1233–1275|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060623074821/http://www.columbialawreview.org/pdf/Tonry-Web.pdf |archive-date=23 June 2006 }}</ref>