Purposes of punishment: Effects of utilities of criminal sanctions on perceived appropriateness.

Abstract

Five commonly discussed purposes of punishment (incapacitation, retribution or just deserts, rehabilitation, general deterrence, and special deterrence) were examined in two experiments (using college students and six district judges). The experiments were designed to study how the perceived usefulness or utility of penalties in serving these purposes changes with seriousness and type of crime, and how these perceived utilities affect judgments about the appropriateness of penalties for various crimes. Subjects rated the usefulness of 30 possible penalties (including fines, probation terms, and imprisonment terms) in serving these purposes for four crimes. The implications of the obtained utility functions in understanding conflicting sanctioning norms are discussed. Importance weights derived from the data indicated just deserts to be the most influential for all crimes among the judges and for all crimes except murder among the students. The results suggest that it is important to distinguish between what decision makers say the most important considerations ought to be and how their decisions actually appear to depend on these factors.