Values affecting the criminal justice functionaries decision‐making

Abstract

In sanctioning the criminal, there is little factual information about what factors affect the criminal justice functionaries’ different penal decisions. A theory with which the study started was that the criminal justice functionaries’ penal‐decisions were a function of their value‐orientations. Value‐orientations in this study were conceptualized to mean criminal justice functionaries’ moral judgment according to Kohlberg's moral stage theory and professionalism and bureaucratism defined by H. Wilensky. Therefore, the major thrust of this study was to ascertain whether significant relationships exist between criminal justice functionaries’ different penal‐decisions and their value‐orientations. The results of the data analyses indicated that a statistically significant association existed between the level of moral judgment and the criminal justice functionaries’ penal‐decisions at the .001 level. It was also found that in sanctioning the criminal, the functionaries’ penal‐orientations were not influenced by their identifications with professionalism and bureaucratism. Occupation variables were also shown to have a high statistical association in explaining the variance of functionaries’ penal‐orientation at the .05 level. The study findings indicated that the criminal justice functionaries’ value‐orientation (the level of moral judgment, professionalism, and bureaucratism) did not seem to be significant individually. However, when combined in a regression model that included demographic characteristics, the model accounted for 45 percent of variance in explaining the criminal justice functionaries’ penal‐orientation.