At the heart of sentencing : Exploring whether more compassionate delivery of sentencing remarks increases public concern for people who offend

Journal article

Hopkins, Anthony, Dodd, Shannon, Nolan, Mark and Bartels, Lorana. (2022). At the heart of sentencing : Exploring whether more compassionate delivery of sentencing remarks increases public concern for people who offend. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. 30(4), pp. 459-485. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2022.2040398
AuthorsHopkins, Anthony, Dodd, Shannon, Nolan, Mark and Bartels, Lorana
Abstract

Compassion has the capacity to change how we think and feel about people who offend, enabling us to understand individual and systemic causes of criminality and whether, and in what circumstances, desistance is possible. Across two experiments, our research examined whether a more compassionate sentencing delivery, firstly, in written sentencing remarks and, secondly, in videoed sentencing remarks, stimulated more concern for sentenced offenders amongst members of the Australian public. Our results suggest that it is possible to alter the features of a written or orally-delivered sentence, so that it is recognisably more compassionate. Further, engagement with compassion-enhanced sentencing remarks altered criminal justice spending preferences, reducing the proportion of the criminal justice budget that the public believed should be spent on imprisonment and increasing that to be spent on rehabilitation.

Keywordscompassion; crime; punitiveness; public policy; sentencing; therapeutic jurisprudence
Year2022
JournalPsychiatry, Psychology and Law
Journal citation30 (4), pp. 459-485
PublisherRoutledge
ISSN1321-8719
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2022.2040398
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85132661149
Web address (URL)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13218719.2022.2040398
Page range459-485
FunderAustralian National University (ANU)
Publisher's version
License
All rights reserved
File Access Level
Controlled
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online28 Apr 2022
Publication process dates
Deposited17 May 2023
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