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The article highlights the influence of Christian ideas on the formulation of the purpose of criminal punishments in the Galician-Volhynian state. The influence of Christian principles of justice, repentance and mercy on the development of the legal system of the state, as well as on the evolution of criminal punishments, is considered. It is noted that Christianity brought new moral and legal values, which significantly influenced social relations and the legal system of the Galician-Volhynian state. It is emphasized that Christian ideas influenced the expansion of the understanding of crime not only as a private encroachment, but also as a violation of law and order and a threat to the safety of society. A comprehensive analysis of the system of criminal punishments in the Galician-Volhynian state was carried out, which included fines, confiscation of property, public apologies, physical punishments, expulsion from the community and, in exceptional cases, the death penalty. It was established that criminal punishments played the role of the most common criminal law measure used by the Galician-Volhynian state to combat crime. It is considered to what extent these criminal punishments corresponded to Christian principles and what purpose they pursued. The article emphasizes that the purpose of punishment from a Christian point of view emphasized not only the retribution for the crime, but also the correction of the criminal. It was emphasized that the punishment system included both punitive and educational elements, which corresponded to Christian ideas about mercy and the possibility of repentance. The article shows the influence of a number of European states on the legal system of the Galician-Volhynian state, and the role of the church in the formation and implementation of criminal punishments. It was concluded that the influence of Christian values on the criminal law of the Galician-Volhynian state was significant and comprehensive. This was reflected in the expansion of the concept of crime, the variety of criminal punishments and their compliance with the principles of Christian morality. It is noted that although there was gender inequality in criminal law, Christian ideas, thanks to the active activity of the church, contributed to the humanization of criminal punishments and the gradual development of ideas about equality before the law. In general, the article demonstrates how the ideas of Christianity influenced the formation of the purpose of criminal punishments in the Galician-Volhynian state, emphasizing the importance of moral correction of criminals, restoration of justice and maintenance of social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the issue of the legal individualisation of criminal punishments for drug trafficking offences provided for in the criminal legislation of the Republic of Moldova. The rationale of the scientific approach lies in the need for a perpetual harmonisation of criminal legislation to the new trends of manifestation of drug trafficking, in order to make the applicable deterrent arsenal more efficient in relation to the various practical situations of committing these crimes. The aim is to re-evaluate the legal criteria for the individualisation of criminal punishments for drug trafficking offences and to assess the degree to which these criteria correspond to the deterrent purpose of the criminal punishments applicable to drug traffickers. Some solutions for a reference law on the harmonization of the punitive regime established for drug trafficking offences in strict accordance with their seriousness were substantiated. Based on the national specificity existing in the Criminal Code of the Republic of Moldova (Republic of Moldova Criminal Code, 2002), it was proposed to create a separate incriminatory framework for trafficking in narcotic substances with narcotic effect, which are new generation drugs not provided for by the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (United Nations, 1961) and the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The ineffectiveness of the quantitative criterion for individualising penalties for trafficking in ethnobotanicals, represented by their quantitative proportions, has also been demonstrated. In this context, the idea of individualisation of criminal punishments for trafficking in ethnobotanicals based on qualitative criteria, which are represented by the risks that these substances pose to the health of consumers, was promoted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the nature and scope of changes introduced to the Code of Petty Offences and the Code of Procedure in Petty Offences Cases by the Act of 2 December 2021. The amendment represents a drastic intervention by the legislator in the current legal framework regarding offences against safety and order in transportation. It foresees significant modifications in the legal and criminal response to these offences, transformations in the characteristics of selected types of prohibited acts, and proposes entirely new types of prohibited acts. The analysis suggests that the guiding principle behind these changes is to increase the degree of punitiveness of petty offences law towards perpetrators of traffic violations. This legislative approach raises concerns about the instrumental use of petty offences law with respect to the perpetrators of these offences. The adopted direction of changes raises suspicions that the legislator has not thoroughly familiarised themselves with the matter covered by their intervention. In any case, it is not grounded in the current state of traffic criminality, or in the analysis of judicial practice. An increase in repressiveness has never directly translated into a reduction in traffic criminality. The latter is a much more complex problem, involving the necessity of multi-faceted references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have witnessed numerous headline stories about white-collar crimes. These crimes, causing considerable harm to organizations, individuals, and society, warrant closer study. This article describes financial white-collar offenders mostly from a medium or high socioeconomic background who abuse their positions. It presents theoretical explanations for white-collar offending, together with associated psychological, personality, and cognitive traits that impair rational decision-making. Regarding their punishment, doubts have been cast regarding the possibility that even harsh criminal punishment achieves the aim of deterrence for white-collar offenders. This does not mean that offenders should go unpunished, and in certain cases it would even be justified to deal with them severely. It does, however, require more meaningful goals to be set for their punishment, such as maintaining social order, retribution, and, in some cases, possibly rehabilitation through psychological treatment. Therapeutic intervention could be effective in helping white-collar offenders tackle the root causes of their behaviors and in reducing the likelihood of reoffending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reveals some of the legal principles of regulating the legal activity of a journalist in modern conditions of martial law. The activities and state of media freedom in Ukraine over the past 11 years have been analyzed. Emphasis is placed on the fact that in modern conditions of martial law, the index of freedom of the press in the state is growing. The authors focused attention on some features of the legal regulation of the legal grounds of journalists’ activities according to the norms of international law and the national legislation of Ukraine; determined the rights and obligations of journalists, guarantees of media activity, specifics of activities of foreign journalists, employees of foreign entities in the field of media working in Ukraine. Attention is focused on certain types of prohibitions regarding interference in the professional activities of journalists under conditions of peace and during a state of war or in places of armed conflicts. The statistics of criminal offenses against the legal activities of journalists and the media during the ten years of the war in Ukraine were analyzed. It is substantiated that legal liability, including criminal liability, has been established for encroachment on the journalist’s life and health, and other actions against him. The current criminal legislation and specific articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which provide for criminal liability for such criminal offenses as obstructing the legitimate professional activity of journalists, threatening, or using violence against a journalist, intentional destruction or damage to a journalist’s property, encroachment on a journalist’s life, taking a journalist as a hostage, were analyzed. Statistical information on the number of registered criminal offenses of this category for the last three years is provided. A criminological description of criminal offenses against the legal activity of a journalist is given. It was concluded that criminal offenses committed against journalists represent a significant public danger, as they encroach on freedom of speech, national security of the state, and violate the foundations of activity in the information sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade comes with challenges for pro-life evangelicals. Pro-life evangelicals desire strict abortion laws to protect the unborn. But historically, pro-life evangelicals have rejected the idea of criminal prosecution for women who violate such laws. Pro-abortion advocates contend that evangelicals are logically inconsistent in labeling abortion murder if they do not pursue criminal prosecution for post-abortive women. Also, abortion "abolitionists" within evangelicalism argue that some form of punishment is appropriate if abortion is murder. Abortion abolitionists contend that Scripture's lex talionis principle necessarily requires criminal retribution when life is unjustly taken. There is uncertainty regarding the criminal prosecution of post-abortive women both within and outside evangelical circles. This essay argues that the evangelical conception of retribution establishes normative values that dignify all life, but certain other considerations mean these principles do not necessarily require criminal punishment when laws are broken. Therefore, pro-life evangelicals are logically consistent when they contend for highly restrictive abortion laws while rejecting the notion of criminal punishment for post-abortive women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuestiones Políticas is the property of Revista Cuestiones Politicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Scientific Annals of the "Stefan cel Mare" Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Revista Stiintifica a Academiei Stefan cel Mare is the property of Stefan cel Mare University, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Ministerul Afe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Attitudes toward sexual consent are related to sentencing recommendations for sexual perpetrators in Japan and Canada. However, this tendency may also depend on culture. This study investigated the cultural differences in perceived appropriateness of punishment against sexual crimes as a function of attitudes toward sexual consent in Japan and Korea. Consistent with previous research, the results of the hierarchical regression analysis showed that Japanese participants who perceived sexual consent as important were more likely to perceive punishment as appropriate. However, the opposite pattern was observed among Korean participants. A possible reason for these findings was further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Internal Security is the property of Police Academy in Szczytno and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Scientific Annals of the "Stefan cel Mare" Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Revista Stiintifica a Academiei Stefan cel Mare is the property of Stefan cel Mare University, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Ministerul Afe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Scientific Annals of the "Stefan cel Mare" Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Revista Stiintifica a Academiei Stefan cel Mare is the property of Stefan cel Mare University, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Ministerul Afe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Alongside capital punishment, sentences to life without the possibility of parole are one of the most distinctive aspects of the American system of criminal punishment. Unlike the death penalty, though, almost no empirical work has examined the decision to impose life imprisonment. The current study analyzes several years of recent federal sentencing data (FY2010–FY2017) to investigate underlying sources of racial disparity in life without parole sentences. The analysis reveals disparities in who receives life imprisonment, but it finds these differences are attributable mostly to indirect mechanisms built into the federal sentencing system, such as the mode of conviction, mandatory minimums, and guidelines departures. Both Black and Hispanic offenders are more likely to be eligible for life sentences under the federal guidelines, but conditional on being eligible, they are not more likely to receive life sentences. Findings are discussed in relation to ongoing debates over racial inequality and the growing role that life imprisonment plays in American exceptionalism in punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Scientific Annals of the "Stefan cel Mare" Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Revista Stiintifica a Academiei Stefan cel Mare is the property of Stefan cel Mare University, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Ministerul Afe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Summary: People who report greater belief in pure evil (BPE; the tendency to attribute harmdoing to dispositionally sadistic perpetrators) generally punish criminal perpetrators more regardless of mitigating circumstances (e.g., having a brain tumor). What attributional/cognitive processes underlie such punishment? A national sample (final N = 302) read an alleged USA Today article about a mall shooting. We manipulated whether the shooter exhibited a brain tumor and whether the shooter exhibited stereotypically evil traits. Regardless of experimental conditions, individuals who reported greater BPE perceived the shooter's behavior as more internal, intentional, controllable, and blameworthy. These attributional judgments also helped mediate the relationship between BPE and punishment. Ancillary measures demonstrated other potential cognitive biases (overprecision and confirmation bias) in processing information about the shooter/shooting. In sum, people who report greater BPE held the shooter more liable for his actions despite mitigating evidence, and such attributions helped explain the link between BPE and punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Violence is one of the leading causes of injury and death in the United States. One-way society attempts to eliminate violence is through criminal punishment. Yet, in many contexts, punishment fails to reduce violence and may cause other harms. Current research on violence often suffers from same-source bias which can produce spurious associations. This study assesses the associations of different forms of criminal punishment (monetary sanctions, incarceration, and probation) with violent injuries in two unique datasets. Methods: This study examines a unique combination of hospital discharge data and court administrative data, two Minnesota county-level data sources. First, we assess the spatial distribution of the three criminal punishment variables and two violent injury variables, violent injury overall and violent injury in children by county from 2010 to 2014, using Moran's I statistic and Local Indicators of Spatial Autocorrelation. Then we assess the association of criminal punishment on violent injury and child abuse injury using a two-way fixed effects panel models. Results: Child abuse injuries are relatively rare in our data but are significantly concentrated geographically, unlike violent injuries which are more dispersed throughout Minnesota. Incarceration and probation are significantly geographically concentrated in similar regions while monetary sanctions are not geographically concentrated. We find a link between probation loads and violent injury, specifically, with a 1 day increase in per capita probation supervision associated with a 0.044 increase in violent injury incidence per 1000 people. In contrast, monetary sanctions and incarceration loads have little association with either violent injury or child abuse injury incidence. Conclusions: Criminal punishment is intended to reduce harm in society, but many argue that it may bring unintended consequences such as violence. This study finds that county-level probation has a modest positive association with county-level violent injury rates, but monetary sanctions and incarceration are less associated with violence injury rates. No measure of criminal punishment was associated with a reduction in violence. This study addresses a gap in previous literature by examining the association of punishment and violence in two unrelated datasets. High rates of criminal punishment and violent injury are both urgent public health emergencies. Further individual-level investigation is needed to assess potential links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the problem of criminal liability for violation of labor rights. Based on the analysis of statistical data and examples of case law, it is concluded that it is necessary to leave the norms on criminal liability for violations of labor rights in the national legislation. The aim of the research is to establish the need for the criminalization of violation of labor rights. The task of the research is to analyze the statistical data on violations in the field of labor relations and develop proposals for criminal liability of employers for violations of the labor rights of employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Adab Al-Kufa is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article argues that to explain American penal exceptionalism, we have to consider America's exceptional levels of punishment together with America's exceptional levels of violence and disorder, while understanding both of these as outcomes of America's distinctive political economy. After specifying the multiple respects in which American penality is a comparative outlier, the article develops a new theorization of modes of penal action that reveals the extent to which the US has come to rely on penal controls rather than other kinds of punishment. This over-reliance on penal controls is viewed as an adaptation to the weakness of non-penal social controls in American communities. These social control deficits are, in turn, attributed to America's ultra-liberal political economy, which is seen as having detrimental effects for the functioning of families and communities, tending to reduce the effectiveness of informal social controls and to generate high levels of neighborhood disorganization and violence. The same political economy limits the capacity of government to respond to these structurally generated problems using the social policy interventions characteristic of more fully developed welfare states. The result is a marked bias toward the use of penal controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Scientific Annals of the "Stefan cel Mare" Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Revista Stiintifica a Academiei Stefan cel Mare is the property of Stefan cel Mare University, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Moldova / Ministerul Afe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Espacios is the property of Talleres de Impresos Oma and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The process of determination of criminal punishment includes the application of legal norm to the circumstances of a given criminal offence. In the Republic of Serbia there are four prescribed criteria that the judge has to take into consideration in the process of determination of criminal punishment: prescribed punishment, purpose of punishment, aggravating and mitigating circumstances and the achievement of justness and proportionality between the committed criminal offence and the gravity of the criminal sanction. However, this does not mean that the judges simply mechanically apply the legal norm, but rather that the judges, within their discretionary power, assess given circumstances of specific criminal offence. This involves their intellectual activities, where many human factors are engaged, like their wisdom, intuition, attitudes and beliefs, moral and ethic values etc. Through observing the process of decision-making not as a simple mechanical process, but as a human process, the aim of this paper is to point to some relevant human factors that could affect the court decision. In that sense, we have to be aware that the role of judges is to use their knowledge, experience, intuition and wisdom in order to determine punishment which is just and proportionate to the committed criminal offence and the degree of guilt of the offender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores is the property of Dilemas Contemporaneos: Educacion, Politica y Valores and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Legal theorists have characterized physical evidence of brain dysfunction as a double-edged sword, wherein the very quality that reduces the defendant’s responsibility for his transgression could simultaneously increase motivations to punish him by virtue of his apparently increased dangerousness. However, empirical evidence of this pattern has been elusive, perhaps owing to a heavy reliance on singular measures that fail to distinguish between plural, often competing internal motivations for punishment. The present study employed a test of the theorized double-edge pattern using a novel approach designed to separate such motivations. We asked a large sample of participants (N = 330) to render criminal sentencing judgments under varying conditions of the defendant’s mental health status (Healthy, Neurobiological Disorder, Psychological Disorder) and the disorder’s treatability (Treatable, Untreatable). As predicted, neurobiological evidence simultaneously elicited shorter prison sentences (i.e., mitigating) and longer terms of involuntary hospitalization (i.e., aggravating) than equivalent psychological evidence. However, these effects were not well explained by motivations to restore treatable defendants to health or to protect society from dangerous persons but instead by deontological motivations pertaining to the defendant’s level of deservingness and possible obligation to provide medical care. This is the first study of its kind to quantitatively demonstrate the paradoxical effect of neuroscientific trial evidence and raises implications for how such evidence is presented and evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most people have a desire to live in a just world, a place where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. And yet, injustices do occur: good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. Across four experiments, we show that people respond quite differently to correct these two types of injustices. When bad things happen to good people, individuals are eager to compensate a good person’s losses, but only do so to a small degree. In contrast, when a good thing happens to a bad person, because the only perceived appropriate act of punishment is to fully strip the bad actor of all his or her illegitimate gains, few people choose to punish in this costly way. However, when they do, they do so to very large degrees. Moreover, we demonstrate that differential psychological mechanisms drive this asymmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sexual and physical abuse in childhood creates a great health burden including on mental and reproductive health. A possible link between child abuse and HIV infection has increasingly attracted attention. This paper investigated whether a history of child physical and sexual abuse is associated with HIV infection among adult women. Methods: A cross sectional survey was conducted among 2042 postnatal women (mean age = 26y) attending six public primary health care clinics in Harare, Zimbabwe within 6 weeks post-delivery. Clinic records were reviewed for mother’s antenatal HIV status. Participants were interviewed about childhood abuse including physical or sexual abuse before 15 years of age, forced first sex before 16, HIV risk factors such as age difference at first sex before age 16. Multivariate analyses assessed the associations between mother’s HIV status and child physical and sexual abuse while controlling for confounding variables. Results: More than one in four (26.6%) reported abuse before the age of 15: 14.6% physical abuse and 9.1% sexual abuse,14.3% reported forced first sex and 9.0% first sex before 16 with someone 5+ years older. Fifteen percent of women tested HIV positive during the recent antenatal care visit. In multivariate analysis, childhood physical abuse (aOR 3.30 95%CI 1.58–6.90), sexual abuse (3.18 95%CI: 1.64–6.19), forced first sex (aOR 1.42, 95%CI: 1.00–2.02), and 5+ years age difference with first sex partner (aOR 1.66 95%CI 1.09–2.53) were independently associated with HIV infection. Conclusion: This study highlights that child physical and/or sexual abuse may increase risk for HIV acquisition. Further research is needed to assess the pathways to HIV acquisition from childhood to adulthood. Prevention of child abuse must form part of the HIV prevention agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proficiency elements of criminal activity of mercenaries are inextricably linked to the comparative study regarding various criminal legislation, especially those which have common elements with national criminal law. Given the historical context of criminal law common development of countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), in this article we deal with a comparative analysis aimed at legislation which concerns the offense of mercenary activity. Such an objective is natural, since comparative criminal law is an area of science of criminal law, which is intended to study rules and legal institutions belonging to different national systems in order to know the meaning and content, and the differences between these rules and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an interpretation of the evolution of criminal punishment and prisons in China from an historical perspective. The historical investigation reveals that the current ganhua and paternalistic or fatherly approaches to prison corrections are expressions of an underlying cultural tradition that is deep and abiding. However, the existence of the paradoxical goals of punishment and reformation at the level of the implementation of prison sentences, which can erode the protection of the rights of prisoners, is contingent upon political and legal decisions that can be changed by acts of law and legal reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recently published collection, Criminal Law and the Authority of the State, two contributions allude to an analogy with parental authority as a means to a better understanding of the institution of criminal punishment, but reach different conclusions. Malcolm Thorburn uses the parental authority analogy to justify the institution of state punishment as an assertion of robust authority over offenders. Antje du Bois-Pedain uses the same analogy to advocate the idea of punishment as an inclusionary practice, designed to reintegrate offenders into society. I argue that Thorburn's theory of robust authority is inconsistent if not self-contradictory when it tries to assume a liberal posture, and that du Bois-Pedain's reintegrative model provides a better account of the justification and objectives of state punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence against youth is a global issue; one form of youth victimization is school corporal punishment. We use baseline assessments from a cluster randomized controlled trial to examine the prevalence of school corporal punishment, by gender, and the relationship to levels of peer violence at school, parent corporal punishment, youth food security and youth academic performance and school attendance in Pakistan. Forty homogenous public schools in the urban city of Hyderabad, Pakistan were chosen for randomization into the trial evaluating a youth violence prevention intervention. 1752 6th graders, age 11–14 years, were selected as the target population. Since schools are segregated by gender in Pakistan, data are from interviews in 20 boys’ schools and 20 girls’ schools. Overall, 91.4% of boys and 60.9% of girls reported corporal punishment at school in the previous 4 weeks and 60.3% of boys had been physically punished at home in the past 4 weeks compared to 37.1% of girls. Structural equation modeling revealed one direct pathway for both boys and girls from food insecurity to corporal punishment at school while indirect pathways were mediated by depression, the number of days missed from school and school performance and for boys also by engagement in peer violence. Exposure to corporal punishment in school and from parents differs by gender, but in both boys and girls poverty in the form of food insecurity was an important risk factor, with the result that poorer children are victimized more by adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous experiments have shown that the possibility to punish liars does not per se increase honesty in principal-agent relationships. In this study, we first establish a punishment mechanism that substantially enhances honest behavior and trust in a sender-receiver game: the possibility to impose severe sanctions that are cost-free for enforcers. Adopting this effective mechanism, we investigate how variations in the probability of detecting lies affect sender and receiver. We find that high honesty levels persist under such punishment mechanism even when the detection probability is significantly reduced. Furthermore, the relationship between monitoring and honesty does not follow a linear trend, as a moderate monitoring level proves to be less effective in enhancing honesty than high or very low levels. The punishment mechanism has an even more robust effect on receivers, showing similarly high levels of trust independently of the detection probability. Our analysis of subjects’ beliefs provides further insights into the mechanics behind these behavioral patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high global prevalence of school violence underlines the need for prevention. However, there are few scientifically evaluated intervention approaches that aim at preventing violence by teachers. We evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of the preventative intervention Interaction Competencies with Children for Teachers (ICC-T). In a cluster randomized controlled trial we assessed attitudes towards and use of violence by teachers (self-reported and reported by students) at eight schools in four regions in Tanzania. Two regions were randomly assigned as intervention regions. Data were assessed in the months before and three months after intervention. In total, 158 teachers (58% females; age: 32.08 years, SD = 5.65) and 486 students (54% females; age: 15.61 years, SD = 0.89) participated in this study. The feasibility was very good: Participants’ acceptance was high and they reported a good integration of the core elements in their working routine. The significantly stronger decrease in the use of emotional and physical violence reported both by teachers and students as well as the stronger decrease in positive attitudes of teachers towards physical and emotional violence in the intervention schools at follow-up provide initial evidence of the efficacy. However, further evidence for the sustainability of its effect is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing common resources is always a dilemma for community members. While cooperator players restrain themselves and consider the proper state of resources, defectors demand more than their supposed share for a higher payoff. To avoid the tragedy of the common state, punishing the latter group seems to be an adequate reaction. This conclusion, however, is less straightforward when we acknowledge the fact that resources are finite and even a renewable resource has limited growing capacity. To clarify the possible consequences, we consider a coevolutionary model where beside the payoff-driven competition of cooperator and defector players the level of a renewable resource depends sensitively on the fraction of cooperators and the total consumption of all players. The applied feedback-evolving game reveals that beside a delicately adjusted punishment it is also fundamental that cooperators should pay special attention to the growing capacity of renewable resources. Otherwise, even the usage of tough punishment cannot save the community from an undesired end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we test whether an isolated information campaign can deter criminals by appealing to their apprehension risk perception. A randomized trial was conducted around 154 high crime housing blocks in Bogotá. With support of the Colombian Police, half of the blocks were exposed to a three month poster campaign reporting the number of “arrests around this street block” and half to a no-treatment control condition. The main outcome measure (total registered crime) and secondary outcome measures (calls to the emergency line for thefts and attacks, and minor wrongdoings) were provided by the Police. Additionally, trust in police, security perception, and police performance perception were measured among residents and workers in the treatment and control areas (N = 616) using a post-treatment survey. Measures were analyzed with linear regression analysis and two-sample t-tests. Over the course of the treatment period, premeditated crime was reduced, while spontaneous crime remained unchanged. Overall levels of crime were not significantly altered. Also, a moderate crime reduction is detectable during the first month of the treatment period. The posters were highly visible (93% of respondents in the treated areas recalled them) and positively received (67% “liked” them). Perceptions of security and police among locals improved, though not significantly. Inherent among residents of Bogotá is a pervasive feeling of impunity and low trust in authorities, making the city a hard test case for an offender-targeted advertising campaign. Initial reductions of crime and overall reductions of premeditated crime are thus noteworthy. These results align with key principles of apprehension risk updating theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because punishments are expected to give offenders what they deserve proportionally to the severity of their offenses, the punishment of an entire group because of the misdeed of a few of its members is generally considered as unfair. Group entitativity might increase support for such collective punishment, because members of highly entitative groups are perceived as more similar and interchangeable. We designed three experiments comparing support for third-party collective punishment of low versus high entitative groups. As comparison base-rate, we included conditions in which participants punish an individual wrongdoer (Experiments 1 & 2). Results show that although support for individual punishment is higher than support for collective punishment, this difference was reduced (Experiment 1) or absent (Experiment 2) when the group was highly entitative. Experiment 3 replicated the increasing effect of group entitativity on support for collective punishment. We conclude that group entitativity increases the likelihood of an entire group being treated as a single unit, facilitating collective punishment when a few group members commit an offense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: While a large family of unfolding models for Likert-scale response data have been developed for decades, very few applications of these models have been witnessed in practice. There may be several reasons why these have not appeared more widely in published research, however one obvious limitation appears to be the absence of suitable software for model estimation. In this article, the authors demonstrate how the mirt package can be adopted to estimate parameters from various unidimensional and multidimensional unfolding models. To concretely demonstrate the concepts and recommendations, a tutorial and examples of R syntax are provided for practical guidelines. Finally, the performance of mirt is evaluated via parameter-recovery simulation studies to demonstrate its potential effectiveness. The authors argue that, armed with the mirt package, applying unfolding models to Likert-scale data is now not only possible but can be estimated to real-datasets with little difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many criminal offenders come from disadvantaged backgrounds, which punishment entrenches. Criminal culpability explains some disadvantageous treatment in state-offender interactions; yet offenders remain people, and 'some mother's child', in Eva Kittay's terms. Offending behaviour neither erases needs, nor fully excuses our responsibility for offenders' needs. Caring is demanded in principle, recognising the offender's personhood. Supporting offenders may amplify welfare resources: equipping offenders to provide self-care; to meet caring responsibilities; and enabling offenders' contribution to shared social life, by providing support and furthering the choices of others seeking to engage with them. The desistance paradigm (viewing desistance from offending as a process, following from an offender's active choice in the context of stabilising social structures and personal circumstances), implies that a supportive environment may facilitate reduced recidivism. While decisions about criminal culpability need justice, we may use state resources most effectively by also including care ethics in our thinking about punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The abolition of the death penalty and delivering justice to the victims of atrocity crimes are two dominant international human rights issues. Despite the prominence of both issues, the international human rights community views the abolition of the death penalty as being the more important objective. This is evidenced by the preclusion of the use of the death penalty as a punishment at international and internationalized criminal courts and tribunals despite the fact that some victims have indicated that they can only experience justice following the execution of the perpetrators of the crimes committed against them. This article addresses whether these two goals are in conflict, whether that conflict is intractable and whether it is appropriate to prioritize one objective over the other. Finally, it concludes that these two goals are incompatible, and that the victim’s right to justice must give way in favour of the right to life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1976, the United States has seen over 1,400 judicial executions, and these have been highly concentrated in only a few states and counties. The number of executions across counties appears to fit a stretched distribution. These distributions are typically reflective of self-reinforcing processes where the probability of observing an event increases for each previous event. To examine these processes, we employ two-pronged empirical strategy. First, we utilize bootstrapped Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests to determine whether the pattern of executions reflect a stretched distribution, and confirm that they do. Second, we test for event-dependence using the Conditional Frailty Model. Our tests estimate the monthly hazard of an execution in a given county, accounting for the number of previous executions, homicides, poverty, and population demographics. Controlling for other factors, we find that the number of prior executions in a county increases the probability of the next execution and accelerates its timing. Once a jurisdiction goes down a given path, the path becomes self-reinforcing, causing the counties to separate out into those never executing (the vast majority of counties) and those which use the punishment frequently. This finding is of great legal and normative concern, and ultimately, may not be consistent with the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay compares punishment and society scholarship, especially on the punitive turn of recent decades, with work on the punishment of grave offenses against human rights norms, especially the justice cascade. It compares trends and literatures along six analytic dimensions: offending, group conflict and power asymmetries, penal entrepreneurs, cultural receptivity, institutional constraints, and feedback loops from punishment to structure and culture. While indicating how both sides can benefit from overcoming the current disconnect, this article focuses on potential inspiration for punishment and society scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race, ethnicity, gender, and age are core foci within sociology and law/criminology. Also prominent is how these statuses intersect to affect behavioral outcomes, but statistical studies of intersectionality are rare. In the area of criminal sentencing, an abundance of studies examine main and joint effects of race and gender but few investigate in detail how these effects are conditioned by defendant’s age. Using recent Pennsylvania sentencing data and a novel method for analyzing statistical interactions, we examine the main and combined effects of these statuses on sentencing. We find strong evidence for intersectionality: Harsher sentences concentrate among young black males and Hispanic males of all ages, while the youngest females (regardless of race/ethnicity) and some older defendants receive leniency. The focal concerns model of sentencing that frames our study has strong affinity with intersectionality perspectives and can serve as a template for research examining the ways social statuses shape inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do free will beliefs influence moral judgments? Answers to this question from theoretical and empirical perspectives are controversial. This study attempted to replicate past research and offer theoretical insights by analyzing World Values Survey data from residents of 46 countries (n = 65,111 persons). Corroborating experimental findings, free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors and support for severe criminal punishment. Further, the link between free will beliefs and intolerance of unethical behavior was moderated by variations in countries' institutional integrity, defined as the degree to which countries had accountable, corruptionfree public sectors. Free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors for residents of countries with high and moderate institutional integrity, but this correlation was not seen for countries with low institutional integrity. Free will beliefs predicted support for criminal punishment regardless of countries' institutional integrity. Results were robust across different operationalizations of institutional integrity and with or without statistical control variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the content of the state policy on the responsibility of the bureaucratic apparatus of the Russian Ukraine for breach of official duties. The basic measures concerning types of responsibility of officials before the state are investigated. The sources and historiography of the research problem are analyzed. Circulars and decrees issued by the Senate in relation to the bureaucratic apparatus also deal with civil servants of various ranks who were to be held responsible for violating their direct duties. The purpose of the study highlights the peculiarities of the responsibility of the bureaucratic apparatus of the n Ukraine of the nineteenth century. The study used the historical-system method, logical-analytical, analysis and synthesis and other generalization methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When making judgments in a group, individuals often revise their initial beliefs about the best judgment to make given what others believe. Despite the ubiquity of this phenomenon, we know little about how the brain updates beliefs when integrating personal judgments (individual information) with those of others (social information). Here, we investigated the neurocomputational mechanisms of how we adapt our judgments to those made by groups of different sizes, in the context of jury decisions for a criminal. By testing different theoretical models, we showed that a social Bayesian inference model captured changes in judgments better than 2 other models. Our results showed that participants updated their beliefs by appropriately weighting individual and social sources of information according to their respective credibility. When investigating 2 fundamental computations of Bayesian inference, belief updates and credibility estimates of social information, we found that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) computed the level of belief updates, while the bilateral frontopolar cortex (FPC) was more engaged in individuals who assigned a greater credibility to the judgments of a larger group. Moreover, increased functional connectivity between these 2 brain regions reflected a greater influence of group size on the relative credibility of social information. These results provide a mechanistic understanding of the computational roles of the FPC-dACC network in steering judgment adaptation to a group’s opinion. Taken together, these findings provide a computational account of how the human brain integrates individual and social information for decision-making in groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our moral motivations might include a drive towards maximizing overall welfare, consistent with an ethical theory called “utilitarianism.” However, people show non-utilitarian judgments in domains as diverse as healthcare decisions, income distributions, and penal laws. Rather than these being deviations from a fundamentally utilitarian psychology, we suggest that our moral judgments are generally non-utilitarian, even for cases that are typically seen as prototypically utilitarian. We show two separate deviations from utilitarianism in such cases: people do not think maximizing welfare is required (they think it is merely acceptable, in some circumstances), and people do not think that equal welfare tradeoffs are even acceptable. We end by discussing how utilitarian reasoning might play a restricted role within a non-utilitarian moral psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All of the current prevailing theories of criminal punishment ultimately depend on some sort of normative argument to justify why the state may penalize people found guilty of crimes. Yet each of these theories lacks a strong epistemological foundation to explain how we can know what form punishments should take. This article analyzes the epistemological gaps in the predominant theories of punishment and finds that the putative epistemological sources they do use fall short of actual knowledge. The lack of an epistemological underpinning for punishment puts the very validity of punishment in doubt. Systems for quantifying punishment, such as proportionality and sentencing guidelines, only lend an appearance of knowledge to penalization. They are not true epistemological arguments. Although social norms may at first seem to provide the bases of the requisite knowledge, norms are themselves epistemically difficult to identify, let alone prove. The article concludes that a sound epistemological basis is intrinsically unattainable in the practice of criminal punishment. The best that we can achieve as an epistemologically justifiable punishment is to follow the regulative principle of ‘‘suitability’’ by relying on a mixture of social norms and specific empirical observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actors of public interest today have to fear the adverse impact that stems from social media platforms. Any controversial behavior may promptly trigger temporal, but potentially devastating storms of emotional and aggressive outrage, so called online firestorms. Popular targets of online firestorms are companies, politicians, celebrities, media, academics and many more. This article introduces social norm theory to understand online aggression in a social-political online setting, challenging the popular assumption that online anonymity is one of the principle factors that promotes aggression. We underpin this social norm view by analyzing a major social media platform concerned with public affairs over a period of three years entailing 532,197 comments on 1,612 online petitions. Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This survey of 206 forensic psychologists tested the “filtering” effects of preexisting expert attitudes in adversarial proceedings. Results confirmed the hypothesis that evaluator attitudes toward capital punishment influence willingness to accept capital case referrals from particular adversarial parties. Stronger death penalty opposition was associated with higher willingness to conduct evaluations for the defense and higher likelihood of rejecting referrals from all sources. Conversely, stronger support was associated with higher willingness to be involved in capital cases generally, regardless of referral source. The findings raise the specter of skewed evaluator involvement in capital evaluations, where evaluators willing to do capital casework may have stronger capital punishment support than evaluators who opt out, and evaluators with strong opposition may work selectively for the defense. The results may provide a partial explanation for the “allegiance effect” in adversarial legal settings such that preexisting attitudes may contribute to partisan participation through a self-selection process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human social interactions are regulated by moral norms that define individual obligations and rights. These norms are enforced by punishment of transgressors and reward of followers. Yet, the generality and strength of this drive to punish or reward is unclear, especially when people are not personally involved in the situation and when the actual impact of their sanction is only indirect, i.e., when it diminishes or promotes the social status of the punished or rewarded individual. In a real-life study, we investigated if people are inclined to anonymously punish or reward a person for her past deeds in a different social context. Participants from three socio-professional categories voted anonymously for early career violinists in an important violin competition. We found that participants did not punish an immoral violin candidate, nor did they reward another hyper-moral candidate. On the contrary, one socio-professional category sanctioned hyper-morality. Hence, salient moral information about past behavior did not elicit punishment or reward in an impersonal situation where the impact of the sanction was indirect. We conclude that contextual features play an important role in human motivation to enforce moral norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]