Comments on: Why We Punish

By: Sample of Situationist Posts «

Sample of Situationist Posts « — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:25:33 +0000

[...] Why We Punish (by John Darley & Pam Mueller) [...]

By: Death penalty for child rape: whose benefit is it for? « Whose Law Is it Anyway?

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:29:18 +0000

[...] has been linked to our resistance to situational explanations for bad behavior and our preference for punishments that reflect what people deserve, rather than what will actually prevent future crime. But it can also lead us to base our policy [...]

By: Kevin Jon Heller on The Cognitive Psychology of Mens Rea « The Situationist

Kevin Jon Heller on The Cognitive Psychology of Mens Rea « The Situationist — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:00:54 +0000

[...] For more on the subject of mens rea, check out John Darley and Pam Mueller’s Situationist post from January titled “Why We Punish.” [...]

By: Jay Livingston

Jay Livingston — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:49:57 +0000

“Thus, the justice system should continue to use wrongfulness as an important part of its punishment calculus. . . further amendments to the sentencing guidelines should reflect a concern with wrongfulness in order to gain the most public respect.”

Deterrence is concerned with the effect of punishment on criminals and potential criminals. Retribution is concerned with the effect of punishment on non-criminals. The retribution justification for a punishment is basically that it makes us feel better. It expresses our outrage at crimes and criminals. So if you can whip up anger and fear about a category of crime and make people think it’s very, very wrong, legislators will fall all over themselves trying to outdo one another in coming up with more and more draconian punishments.

The drug hysteria of the 1980s, now somewhat abated, gave us all those wonderful retribution-based sentences that have filled our prisons (at great cost) but had little impact on drug use. Coddling drug offenders with treatment programs might have been more effective (as a Rand study of many years ago found), but it wouldn’t have done a damn thing for our self-righteousness.

The same goes for the death penalty. It’s very expensive and has little or no effect on murder rates (despite the claims of recent articles in economic journals); but boy does it make us feel good about bringing “justice” down upon the evildoers.