Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan.
PLoS One. 2022 Nov 21;17(11):e0277939. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277939. eCollection 2022.
There is a lack of understanding concerning the differences between laypeople's and professional judges' conceptions of justifications for sentencing. We conducted an online quasi-experimental study with 50 active judges and 200 laypeople. Participants were presented with a vignette describing severe child abuse leading to fatality and were asked to indicate a term of imprisonment for the father and the justification they would consider relevant when deciding on the sentence. A two-factor analysis of variance showed that laypeople disproportionately favored retribution compared to judges. This was reflected in the judges' higher scores for the other three justifications (incapacitation, general deterrence, rehabilitation). The Likert scales failed to detect any such differences. Furthermore, imprisonment terms given by judges were shorter than those given by laypeople. These results support the hypotheses that judges balance multiple justifications and find a shorter sentence that is appropriate; their lesser bias toward retribution supports the notion that judges should be balanced and fair-minded.
对于普通民众和专业法官在量刑理由概念上的差异，人们缺乏了解。我们进行了一项有 50 名在职法官和 200 名普通民众参与的在线准实验研究。参与者阅读了一个描述严重虐待儿童导致死亡的案例，并被要求为父亲判刑，并指出他们在决定判决时认为相关的理由。一项双因素方差分析表明，与法官相比，民众不成比例地更倾向于报应。这反映在法官对其他三个理由（剥夺犯罪能力、一般威慑、改造）的得分更高上。李克特量表未能检测到任何此类差异。此外，法官给出的监禁刑期比民众给出的短。这些结果支持了以下假设：法官会平衡多种量刑理由，并找到一个更合适的短刑期；他们对报应的偏见较小，这支持了法官应该保持平衡和公正的观点。
