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ACAs, not CAs. And depending on the likelihood and severity of harm that justify preemptive (preventive or defensive) risk impositions, many more people than sex offenders might be ACAs.

It would take us too far afield to address fully the justification of preventive detention or restraint of the dangerous but not yet culpable. ACAs such as Sam in our third version of the Sam, Al, and Dana scenario are dangerous but not culpable. For they have not yet chosen to act culpably. Preventive restraint of ACAs may be justifiable in some circumstances, but it does not fall within the present topic of justified risk impositions on the culpable.

C. SOCIALLY JUSTIFYING REASONS: SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS

We have argued that in general, what justifies risk impositions is the balance of consequences. We have offered no general theory of how such a consequentialist balance should be constructed, whether it should be welfarist or based on a list of objective goods; if welfarist, whether it should be based on preference satisfaction or on some other measure of welfare; and if preference based, whether preferences should be taken raw or laundered to eliminate those which are misanthropic, misinformed, other-directed, and so on.

We have also argued that the most plausible such balance of consequences would be subject to deontological side constraints, and we have argued as well that a means-focused deontological side constraint looks more plausible than intent-focused ones. For purposes of our general schema for determining culpability, however, nothing turns on whether our deontological theory is correct, or even on whether deontological constraints are ultimately tenable as a matter of the best moral theory. For even if they are not, although the outcome of some cases might be affected, the general schema will not be. In the absence of deontological constraints, Surgeon might be no different from Trolley in terms of justification and culpability.

Moreover, we have raised but surely not resolved the issue of how the culpability of one on whom the actor imposes a risk affects the consequentialist balance or otherwise justifies a defender’s action. Indeed, as we have attempted to demonstrate, that issue is really a complex web of a multitude of issues involving the various ways and degrees by which