Abstract
When students suggest sentences for criminal offenders, do they rely more heavily on the harmfulness or on the wrongfulness of the offender's conduct? In Study 1, 116 Princeton University undergraduates rated the harmfulness and wrongfulness of, and suggested appropriate sentences for, a series of crimes. As expected, participants emphasized wrongfulness when choosing an appropriate criminal punishment. In Study 2, 33 Princeton undergraduates made similar ratings for violations of the University Honor Code, and rated their contempt for fabricated amendments to the Code that required sentencers to focus either only on harmfulness or only on wrongfulness. Again, sentences more closely reflected wrongfulness ratings, and participants were more contemptuous of the harmfulness-based proposal. We also consider the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for sentencing laws and policy.
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Notes
See, e.g., Model Penal Code § 2.06(2)(a) (“A person is legally accountable for the conduct of another person when[,] acting with the kind of culpability that is sufficient for the commission of the offense, he causes an innocent … to engage in such conduct [that constitutes an offense]”).
This research was conducted prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's categorical exclusions of the mentally retarded and minors from the class of offenders eligible for the death penalty.
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Alter, A.L., Kernochan, J. & Darley, J.M. Transgression Wrongfulness Outweighs its Harmfulness as a Determinant of Sentence Severity. Law Hum Behav 31, 319–335 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-006-9060-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-006-9060-x