To Punish or to Restore: How Children Evaluate Victims' Responses to Immorality

Punishment is important for deterring transgressions and maintaining cooperation, while restoration is also an effective way to resolve conflicts and undo harm. Which way do children prefer when evaluating others' reactions to immorality? Across four experiments, Chinese preschoolers (aged 4–6, n = 184) evaluated victims' different reactions to possession violations (i.e., punishing the perpetrator or restoring the belongings). Children evaluated restorative reactions more positively than punitive ones. This tendency to favor restoration over punishment was influenced by the degree of punishment, with more pronounced patterns observed when punishment was harsher (Experiments 1–3). Indeed, when different degrees of punishment were directly contrasted (Experiment 4), children viewed victims who imposed milder punishment (“steal one object, remove one or two objects”) more positively than those who imposed harsh punishment (“steal one object, remove three objects”). These patterns were especially manifested in preschoolers who chose restoration when being put in the victim's situation, suggesting a consistency between evaluations and behaviors. Taken together, the current study showed that children prioritize protecting the victim over harshly punishing the perpetrator, which suggests an early take on the preferred way to uphold justice.

Punishing for Humanity

In determining sentences, the ICTY chose to develop global norms rather than adhere to, or even be strongly guided by, the sentencing norms of the former Yugoslavia. Although the ICTY Statute required the judges to consult national practices in determining sentences, they interpreted this requirement loosely, reserving to themselves a wide discretion that enabled them to identify a range of global sentencing objectives and factors to apply in pursuit of those objectives. The global norms the ICTY developed included norms rejecting harsh punishment, applying consequentialist punishment rationales, privileging gravity as the central sentencing factor, and endorsing broad judicial sentencing discretion. In developing these norms, the ICTY helped to build a foundation that other international courts, and perhaps some national courts, are likely to rely on for the foreseeable future.

Reciprocal effects between daily situational perceptions and borderline personality symptoms in young adulthood: the role of childhood parenting experiences

Background Recent research has emphasized the importance of within-person transactions between situational perceptions and borderline symptomatology. The current study extends current evidence by evaluating a broad range of situational perceptions and their transactions with borderline symptomatology across both private and professional contexts. Additionally, it explores whether early experiences of parental harsh punishment and emotional support during childhood, two well-established etiological factors in developmental theories of borderline symptomatology, influence the effect of daily situation perception in adulthood on borderline symptom presentation. Methods N = 131 young adults (Mage = 20.97, s.d. age = 1.64) completed end-of-day diaries of their borderline symptoms and perceptions of the home and school or work environment for 14 days. During their mid-childhood, reports of maternal strategies of harsh punishment and emotional support were collected. Results Findings revealed that on the same day, borderline symptoms were associated with more negative and stressful, and less positive perceptions of both the private and professional context. Additionally, borderline symptoms predicted more negative and stressful perceptions of school/work on subsequent days. Finally, while early harsh punishment predicted overall increases in daily borderline symptoms 10 years later, emotionally supportive parenting in childhood predicted decreases in borderline symptom expression in less positive and more stressful contexts. Conclusions The current study points to the importance of managing BPD symptoms to reduce subsequent negative perceptions of the environment, and also indicates the relevance of exploring adult person-situation processes based on early parenting experiences.

Sentencing

Gravity is a central concept—often the central concept—that international criminal courts invoke in justifying sentencing decisions. This chapter shows that international sentencing decisions frequently invoke gravity in inconsistent and unexplained ways, thereby detracting from the legitimacy of such decisions. It argues that gravity as a sentencing criterion at international courts ought to be conceptualized in relation to the goals of punishment that are most appropriate for those institutions. It proposes a utilitarian theory of global sentencing that centers crime prevention, especially through deterrence and norm expression, and rejects retribution and harsh punishment. The goal should be to achieve the most deterrence and expressive prevention possible at the lowest cost.

Societal coercion and path-dependence: Punishment and Puritanism in contemporary societies

The article analyzes the connections between societal coercion and punishment in contemporary Western and related societies and a particular form of religion, namely Puritanism and its theocracy. It argues that Puritanism and its theocracy tend to determine the level of coercion and punishment in the US and hence make the latter path-dependent on the former. It traces the historical path from Puritanism in the past to coercion and punishment in the US in later eras and today. It adopts the concept and outlines the model of coercive theocracy represented in a functionalist scheme. It first re-examines the Puritan theocracy in early America, in particular its pervasive use and prescription of capital and harsh punishment and the reign of state terror overall. It then focuses on coercion and punishment in Western and other contemporary societies positing that Puritan theocracy or Puritanism has left an enduring legacy in these practices.

Sex Differences in the Intergenerational Transmission of Harsh Punishment of Children in Ghana

The aim of the study was to assess the relationship between mothers’ and fathers’ use of harsh punishment on their children and their retrospective accounts of their own experiences of harsh parenting in childhood, in Ghana. Participants consisted of 1,202 parents (601 mothers and 601 fathers) who completed a questionnaire on harsh disciplinary practices. The findings showed associations between mothers’ and fathers’ childhood experiences of harsh punishment and their current use of such disciplinary techniques on their own children. Exposure and transmission varied by sex in that males were more exposed to harsh punishment when they were young than females, and they also punished their own children more often than females. Both males and females assessed that they used much less harsh parenting than they themselves had been exposed to as young. The use of physical punishment is a shared cultural value that is rooted as part of the Ghanaian national values. However, transmission in the use of harsh disciplinary measures across generations may be broken if younger generations of parents learn to use alternative ways of disciplining a child.

On Punishment and Why We Enjoy It in Fiction

The article proposes an explanation for why spectators may enjoy excessive punishment when watching fiction, even in Scandinavia where harsh punishment is roundly condemned. Excessive punishment is typically carried out by a vigilante avenger, and in fiction this character is often a fantastic character (e.g., not realistic, taking on superhuman and/or supernatural characteristics). We allow ourselves to enjoy punishment more readily when the character who punishes is clearly fictional. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Let the Right One In, fantastic elements seep into an otherwise realistic setting and allow the spectator to fully enjoy the main characters’ vigilante revenge. The theory of fictional reliefs posited here holds that this mixture of modes facilitates one of two paths to moral judgment.

Correctional Autonomy and Authority in the Rise of Mass Incarceration

Much of the literature explaining both mass incarceration and increasingly harsh punishment policies has been dominated by a focus on factors external to prisons, such as macrolevel explanations that point to political factors (like a popular rhetoric of governing through crime) or social structures (like the presence or absence of a strong welfare state). Where scholarship has focused on factors internal to prisons, explanations have often focused less on individual actors or correctional influence and more on processes, such as routinization, legalization, and risk management. This article argues for the importance of an additional explanatory factor in understanding the phenomenon of mass incarceration: the internal and relatively individualized influence of correctional officials, especially mid-level bureaucrats, who exercise autonomy and authority not only over prisoners and prison policy implementation but over policy initiation.

A World of Blame to Go Around: Cross-Cultural Determinants of Responsibility and Punishment Judgments

Research finds collectivists make external attributions for others’ behavior, whereas individualists make internal attributions. By focusing on external causes, collectivists should be less punitive toward those who harm others. Yet, many collectivistic cultures are known for strict retributive justice systems. How can collectivists simultaneously make external attributions and punish so harshly? We hypothesized that unlike individualists whose analytic tendencies engender a focus on mental states where judgments of accountability stem from perceptions of a harm-doer’s agency, collectivists’ holistic cognitive tendencies engender a focus on social harmony where judgments of accountability stem from perceived social consequences of the harmful act. Thus, what leads collectivists to make external attributions for behavior also leads to harsh punishment of those harming the collective welfare. Four cross-cultural studies found evidence that perceptions of a target’s agency more strongly predicted responsibility and punishment judgments for individualists, whereas perceived severity of the harm was stronger for collectivists.

Governing through Killing: The War on Drugs in the Philippines

This article focuses on the war on drugs in the Philippines in order to explore issues related to extra-judicial killing, which remains common in many countries that have abolished the death penalty and in many more that retain it but seldom carry out judicial executions. In the first year of Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency (2016–17), thousands of people were killed by police or by vigilantes who were encouraged to prosecute his war on drugs. At a time when democracy is in retreat in many parts of the world, this case illustrates how popular harsh punishment can be in states that have failed to meet their citizens’ hopes for freedom, economic growth, and security.