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Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates
Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N = 214), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal p...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10196492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37213354 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1157460 |
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author | Aharoni, Eyal Nahmias, Eddy Hoffman, Morris B. Fernandes, Sharlene |
author_facet | Aharoni, Eyal Nahmias, Eddy Hoffman, Morris B. Fernandes, Sharlene |
author_sort | Aharoni, Eyal |
collection | PubMed |
description | Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N = 214), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal punishment judgments (prison vs. probation) among university undergraduates would be influenced by a prompt to provide a justification for one's judgment, and by a brief message describing prison capacity costs. We found that (1) the justification prompt alone was sufficient to reduce incarceration rates, (2) the prison capacity message also independently reduced incarceration rates, and (3) incarceration rates were most strongly reduced (by about 25%) when decision makers were asked to justify their sentences with respect to the expected capacity costs. These effects survived a test of robustness and occurred regardless of whether participants reported that prison costs should influence judgments of incarceration. At the individual crime level, the least serious crimes were most amenable to reconsideration for probation. These findings are important for policymakers attempting to manage high incarceration rates. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10196492 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101964922023-05-20 Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates Aharoni, Eyal Nahmias, Eddy Hoffman, Morris B. Fernandes, Sharlene Front Psychol Psychology Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N = 214), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal punishment judgments (prison vs. probation) among university undergraduates would be influenced by a prompt to provide a justification for one's judgment, and by a brief message describing prison capacity costs. We found that (1) the justification prompt alone was sufficient to reduce incarceration rates, (2) the prison capacity message also independently reduced incarceration rates, and (3) incarceration rates were most strongly reduced (by about 25%) when decision makers were asked to justify their sentences with respect to the expected capacity costs. These effects survived a test of robustness and occurred regardless of whether participants reported that prison costs should influence judgments of incarceration. At the individual crime level, the least serious crimes were most amenable to reconsideration for probation. These findings are important for policymakers attempting to manage high incarceration rates. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC10196492/ /pubmed/37213354 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1157460 Text en Copyright © 2023 Aharoni, Nahmias, Hoffman and Fernandes. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Aharoni, Eyal Nahmias, Eddy Hoffman, Morris B. Fernandes, Sharlene Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates |
title | Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates |
title_full | Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates |
title_fullStr | Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates |
title_full_unstemmed | Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates |
title_short | Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates |
title_sort | punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10196492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37213354 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1157460 |
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