Punishment and beyond: Achieving justice through the satisfaction of multiple goals.

Source: (2009) Law and Society Review. 43(1):1-37.

We investigated the hypothesis that people’s need for punishment does not
preclude a desire for restorative sanctions that address the repairing of the
harm to victims and communities caused by wrongdoing. Study 1 showed that
although people felt it was important to punish the offender to achieve justice,
they viewed additional justice goals as equally necessary. Study 2 revealed that
people viewed sanctions as differentially able to fulfill various justice goals.
Study 3 showed that the target on which respondents focusedFthe offender,
victim, or communityFdetermined which sanctions they selected to achieve
justice; and that people did tend, by default, to focus on punishing the
offender when responding to crime. These findings, taken together, suggest
that people view the satisfaction of multiple justice goals as an appropriate and
just response to wrongdoing, which allows for a possible reconciliation between
the ‘‘conflicting’’ goals of restorative and retributive justice. (author’s abstract)