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Restoring the Victim: Emotional Reactions, Justice Beliefs, and Support for Reparation and Punishment

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Abstract

Psychological responses to criminal wrongdoing have primarily focused on the offender, particularly on how (and why) offender punishment satisfies people’s need for justice. However, the restoration of the victim presents another way in which the “psychological itch” that injustice creates can be addressed. In the present article, I discuss two lay theories of how crime victims can be restored: a belief that the harm caused to crime victims should be directly repaired (a restorative justice approach) versus a belief that victim harm should be addressed via the punishment of the offender (a retributive justice approach). These two lay theories are discussed with regard to their emotional and ideological determinants, as well as situational and chronic factors that can affect whether people adopt a reparative or punitive “justice mindset” in dealing with victim concerns (and crime in general).

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Notes

  1. It is important to note here that although sympathy for the victim has been shown to increase punitiveness toward the offender (e.g., Nadler and Rose 2002; Paternoster and Deise 2011), these results were found in contexts in which only a punitive option was available (i.e., a prison sentence, the death penalty). It is likely that when people do not have a reparative option, their increased sympathy would translate into increasing the option that is available to them (see McGarrell and Sandys 1996).

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  1. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 3730 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6340, USA

    Dena M. Gromet

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Gromet, D.M. Restoring the Victim: Emotional Reactions, Justice Beliefs, and Support for Reparation and Punishment. Crit Crim 20, 9–23 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-011-9146-8

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