Telishment is an act by the authorities of punishing a suspect in order to deter future wrongdoers, even though they know that the suspect is innocent. If supporters of these theories believe in the effectiveness of telishment as a deterrent, opponents claim that they must bite the bullet and also hold that telishment is ethically justified.
See also "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
Sources
John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules", The Philosophical Review, vol. 64, no. 1, 1955, pp. 3–32.