If I have a disagreement with what Angelica has to say here, it is tiny; I would say that encouraging the notion that wrongdoing will be punished can be justified on utilitarian grounds. Admittedly, if we were all good utilitarians, it wouldn't be necessary to encourage faith in our institutions by such devious means, but then if we we all good utilitarians, then we wouldn't need many of our institutions to begin with. Utilitarianism does not call upon us to ignore what people are really like. Rather, we must try to find ways to come up with good outcomes despite the unfortunate failure of most people to be good utilitarians most of the time.
Given her further commentary, perhaps this was Angelica's point anyway, in which case I don't disagree with her at all.
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