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Full-Text Articles in Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance
Examining Remorse In Attributions Of Focal Concerns During Sentencing: A Study Of Probation Officers, Colleen M. Berryessa
Examining Remorse In Attributions Of Focal Concerns During Sentencing: A Study Of Probation Officers, Colleen M. Berryessa
International Journal on Responsibility
This research, using interviews with probation officers in the United States (n = 151) and a constant comparative method for analysis, draws from the focal concerns framework to qualitatively model a process by which probation officers use a defendant’s remorse to attribute focal concerns in order to guide their sentencing recommendations in pre-sentencing reports. The model suggests that officers use expressions of remorse to make attributions about mitigated criminal intention (blameworthiness and notions of responsibility), reduced dangerousness and a high potential for reform (community protection), and organization-level effects for increasing caseload efficiency and using correctional resources (practical effects of …
Does Mental Illness Affect Societal Perception Of Sex Offenders?, Keely A. Bartram
Does Mental Illness Affect Societal Perception Of Sex Offenders?, Keely A. Bartram
Student Theses
Although mental illness is common in the sex offender population, it has never been examined how evidence of such may influence societal perception. In comparison to the non-sex offender population, it was hypothesized that participants would consider mental illness less mitigating for sex offenders, would be less likely to support the mental health treatment of sex offenders while incarcerated, and would consider certain mental illnesses (schizophrenia and substance abuse disorders) as particularly aggravating for this group of offenders. Respondents were asked to read a short vignette and then respond to a series of questions about culpability, sentencing decisions, and mental …
Commentary: Reflections On Remorse, Stephen J. Morse
Commentary: Reflections On Remorse, Stephen J. Morse
All Faculty Scholarship
This commentary on Zhong et al. begins by addressing the definition of remorse. It then primarily focuses on the relation between remorse and various justifications for punishment commonly accepted in Anglo-American jurisprudence and suggests that remorse cannot be used in a principled way in sentencing. It examines whether forensic psychiatrists have special expertise in evaluating remorse and concludes that they do not. The final section is a pessimistic meditation on sentencing disparities, which is a striking finding of Zhong et al.
Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse
Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse
All Faculty Scholarship
This chapter in, Gene-Environment Interactions in Developmental Psychopathology (K. Dodge & M. Rutter, eds. 2011), considers the relevance of GxE to criminal responsibility and sentencing. It begins with a number of preliminary assumptions that will inform the analysis. It then turns to the law’s view of the person, including the law’s implicit psychology, and the criteria for criminal responsibility. A few false starts or distractions about responsibility are disposed of briefly. With this necessary background in place, the chapter then turns specifically to the relation between GxE and criminal responsibility. It suggests that GxE causes of criminal behavior have no …
Invasions Of Conscience And Faked Apologies, Stephanos Bibas
Invasions Of Conscience And Faked Apologies, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
This comment responds to an essay by Jeffrie Murphy, which powerfully notes the limitations and dangers of using remorse and apology as metrics for punishment. But the state is more justified in teaching lessons than Murphy suggests, and retributivism ought to make more room for victim vindication and satisfaction. Gauging sincerity, while difficult, is not impossible. In the end, Murphy offers strong reasons to be cautious. But a humane society ought to be more willing to take chances and, having punished, to forgive. The essay by Jeffrie Murphy to which this comment responds, as well as other authors' comments on …