Attempting to break out of prison is spectacularly imprudent: it is likely to fail, risks incurring a longer prison sentence, and endangers one’s life. But is it morally wrong? In many cases, it is: culpable wrongdoers legitimately sentenced to proportionate punishments have a duty to serve those punishments. Yet what about the incarcerated who are morally innocent—condemned for crimes they didn’t commit, or for conduct that was illegitimately criminalized, or with grossly disproportionate prison sentences? This chapter explores the scope of the moral permission for the morally innocent to evade seriously unjust punishment. Even if innocents are entitled to evade their punishment, as they sometimes are, it doesn’t follow that they are allowed to use force in doing so against agents of the state. The chapter shows that the permissibility of such force depends on upstream questions in political philosophy—about whether officials in legitimate states enjoy an immunity to defensive harm that ordinary citizens lack, as well as questions about the existence of agent-centered prerogatives to impose pro tanto wrongful harm on non-liable persons to save oneself.
