Retributive Attitudes Research Articles

Retributive Attitudes and Perceptions of Police Use of Excessive Force

Public opinions of police use of force vary widely. Previous studies, however, have framed their examinations around the factors that influence support of police use of force in general, as compared to a focus on excessive force. This study utilized linear regression to examine the relationship between perceptions of police use of excessive force and retributive attitudes. The study employed a sample of 5,527 respondents from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2020 Time Series Survey. Findings indicated that respondents’ perceptions of the frequency of police use of excessive force depend on their retributive attitudes. The more retributive one’s attitude, the less often they perceived the police to use too much force. Similarly, the more conservative one’s political ideology, the less frequently they perceived police used excessive force. Perceptions of police excessive force also vary across demographics. KEYWORDS: Retributiveness; Death Penalty; Police Use of Force; Police Excessive Force

Procena rizika recidivizma kod osuđenih na zatvorsku kaznu

The rise in crime and recidivism rates is indicative of insufficiency of prison sentence effectiveness. The punishment has not achieved its desired effect in either the primary or secondary prevention. Furthermore, there is a tendency among citizens to feel that the state is not able to provide them with an adequate protection from crime, especially in its more severe forms, thus more prominent negative and punitive stereotypes towards the offenders arise. In Serbia, sentences of up to three years of prison are predominantly issued, while the alternative sanctions are passed in a more sporadic and reluctant manner. Such a state is not in tune with present safety risks and needs hence it maintains the excess retributive attitude. Therefore, a need for better-quality criminal recidivism risk assessment poses itself, with the aim of achieving more effective implementation and evaluation of the penal treatment and recidivism risk assessment as potential feasibility of threatening citizens' safety after the release. The three Effective Intervention Principles are concerned with the key questions in the convicts' treatment: Risk, Need and Responsivity (RNR) Principles. Since the focus of the paper has been set on the recidivism risk analysis, a realistic possibility of application of the principles in our prison practice has been considered. Recidivism risk assessment is conducted by the prison experts at the very admission of a convict to their sentence serving, as well as at a later stage of the treatment evaluation. Statistic and dynamic risk factors are also analyzed and recidivism probability is calculated. In our prison practice, recidivism risk assessment is based on an adjusted broader or specific version of Offender Assessment System (OASys) instrument. In this paper, a global recidivism risk assessment practice has been demonstrated and the recidivism risk levels distribution among those sentenced to prison terms has been analyzed in three representative prison institutions of Serbia. The sample included the convicts (271) serving their sentences in Užice Municipal Prison (25.1%), Sremska Mitrovica Detention and Rehabilitation Facility (55.3%) and Padinska Skela Detention and Rehabilitation Facility (19.6%), the duration of the sentence being within the range of two months to 35 years. The sentences of up to three years in prison dominated (81.9%); up to six months of prison being the most frequent (36.5%). The sentences of over three years in prison made up 18.1% of the cases. In this group, the most frequent sentences were those between three and five years of incarceration (10%). The penal recidivism was present in somewhat more than the half of the tested sample (52%). The criminal recidivism risk was most commonly assessed as being low (42.1%), then median (40.6%) and lastly high (17.3%). A paradox of the convicts most frequently being assigned to closed treatments was noted, even though the fewest number of them had been assessed as highly risky, meaning, they were seldom assigned to an open treatment despite mostly being assessed as displaying low risks, which is all in stark contrast to the Risk Principles of the convicts' treatment. There was an additional paradox of risk level and recidivism risk factors determination being conducted with high quality, however, the issue commences when the penal treatment aiming at dynamic risk factors is to be applied. No systematically determined plans or penal treatment specialized programs exist, leading to a situation in which prison sentence implementation boils down to a minimum of prison routines and simplified disabling of the convict from committing new crimes whilst in prison. A statistical analysis has proved that the convicts significantly differ in their recidivism risk levels and the matched treatment and prison type, recidivism and violent behavior tendencies. Such data may be helpful in the course of penal practice planning, which should be directed towards better convicts distribution and specified treatment application adjusted according to the predetermined dynamic criminal recidivism risk factors. The results of the research once more emphasize the imperative of scientifically proved empirical findings regarding recidivism risks and the need for them to be applied in the creation, realization and evaluation of the prison treatment. This would increase the feeling of safety of both individuals and the community where the convicts are released after serving their prison sentence.

Moral Foundations, Intuitions of Justice, and the Intricacies of Punitive Sentiment

Research on punitive attitudes has, so far, focused largely on people's retributive attitudes toward offenders. However, a large theoretical body of research indicates that concerns about different types of offenses and victims may be just as important in structuring punitive attitudes. Particularly, Moral Foundations Theory suggests that distinct punitive attitudes may be based in intuitive moral concerns (“moral foundations”) about offenses that victimize individuals, groups, and the “divine,” referring to bodily purity or sanctity. In this study, I develop measures of what I term “victim-centered punitiveness,” and use data from a nationwide survey of adult Americans (N = 915) to compare the sources of offender- and victim-centered punitiveness. As expected, different moral foundations shape offender- and victim-centered punitiveness in different ways, suggesting that they have distinct intuitive, moral bases. Other factors, including racial resentment, also have distinct effects on each type of punitiveness.

When School-Shooting Media Fuels a Retributive Public

Despite evidence suggesting proactive responses to youth crime are advantageous, juvenile justice relies heavily on punitive practices. This discrepancy is in part affected by public preferences for retribution, which are skewed by sensationalized media portrayals of youth crime. This experiment ( N = 174) explores how youth crime media exposure translates into retributive attitudes by testing the hypothesis that media portrayals of school shootings increase retributive attitudes indirectly through either dehumanization or mortality salience. Statistical analyses suggest that dehumanization mediates the relationship between school-shooting media portrayals and retributive attitudes toward crime-involved youths. To promote support of less retributive juvenile justice policies, advocates may benefit by focusing emphasis on humanizing elements of young offenders.

The Effects of Psychological Contract Violation on OS User’s Betrayal Behaviors: Window XP Technical Support Ending Case

The Effects of Psychological Contract Violation on OS User’s Betrayal Behaviors: Window XP Technical Support Ending Case

Hate and punishment.

According to legal expressivism, neither crime nor punishment consists merely in intentionally imposing some kind of harm on another. Crime and punishment also have an expressive aspect. They are what they are in part because they enact attitudes toward others--in the case of crime, some kind of disrespect, at least, and in the case of punishment, society's condemnation or reprobation. Punishment is justified, at least in part, because (and when) it uniquely expresses fitting condemnation or other retributive attitude. What makes retributive attitudes fitting is that they protect the victim's status as inviolable. Hate or bias crimes dramatize the expressive aspect of crime, as they are often designed to send a message to the victim's group and society at large. Treating the enactment of contempt and denigration toward a historically underprivileged group as an aggravating factor in sentencing may be an appropriate way to counter this message, as it reaffirms and indeed realizes the fundamental equality and inviolability of all members of a democratic community.

Revisionism and Desert

Revisionists claim that the retributive intuitions informing our responsibility-attributing practices are unwarranted under determinism, not only because they are false, but because if we are all “victims of causal luck”, it is unfair to treat one another as if we are deserving of moral and legal sanctions. One (moderate) revisionist strategy recommends a deflationary concept of moral responsibility, and that we justify punishment in consequentialist rather than retributive terms. Another (strong) revisionist strategy recommends that we eliminate all concepts of guilt, blame and punishment, and treat dangerous criminals as we treat people with contagious diseases. I argue against both strong and moderate revisionism that (1) it is not unfair to hold persons desert-entailingly responsible (in a weaker sense of ‘desert’) insofar as they take an interest in being treated as appraisable, and (2) that it is unfair to persons not to treat them as desert-entailingly responsible (in this weaker sense) contrary to their interests in being treated as such. The interest-based argument, I conclude, give us a justification for communicating retributive attitudes, but may still require a weak revision of our retributive practices, in the direction of a communicative theory of punishment.

How acts of forgiveness restore a sense of justice: Addressing status/power and value concerns raised by transgressions

AbstractCommonly it is understood that forgiveness means sacrificing justice. However, the present study shows that the act of forgiving can increase a sense of justice, which in turn facilitates benevolent sentiments towards the offender. University students (N = 88) imagined themselves as victims and, after the offender either did or did not offer an apology, they either were or were not instructed to express their forgiveness to the offender (via an email). Results showed that, irrespective of apology, the expression of forgiveness led to a greater sense of justice in victims, mediated via feelings of status/power and the perception of a value consensus with the offender. The feeling of justice further mediated the effects of the forgiveness expression in terms of reducing hostile emotions, revenge motivation and retributive attitudes, as well as increasing the willingness to reconcile with the offender. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.