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Social Psychological Perspectives on Crime and Punishment
Author(s) -
Pepitone Albert
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1975.tb01021.x
Subject(s) - blame , punishment (psychology) , seriousness , psychology , normative , social psychology , value (mathematics) , criminology , moral responsibility , law , political science , machine learning , computer science
This article addresses itself to the psychological basis of the legal system. The author examines attitudes toward crime and punishment and analyzes the psychological and cultural processes underlying them, with particular attention to the nonlegal or lay person (the observer). Questions of blame and causal responsibility, victim involvement, perceived seriousness of a violation, victim/offender relations, and motivations for punishment are considered. It is proposed that proto‐legal moral and ethical values function in normative fashion to determine the person's judgments of violations and reactions to offenders, and that the existence of these value sets has important implications for the legal system.