Social Psychological Perspectives on Crime and Punishment

This article addresses itself to the psychological basis of the legal system. The author examines attitudes toward crime and punishment and analyzes the psychological and cultural processes underlying them, with particular attention to the nonlegal or lay person (the observer). Questions of blame and causal responsibility, victim involvement, perceived seriousness of a violation, victim/offender relations, and motivations for punishment are considered. It is proposed that proto‐legal moral and ethical values function in normative fashion to determine the person's judgments of violations and reactions to offenders, and that the existence of these value sets has important implications for the legal system.