Conceptualizing and measuring “punitiveness” in contemporary advanced democracies

IF 3.2 2区 社会学 Q1 LAW
Elizabeth Gordon Pfeffer
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Abstract

This article addresses a key political question regarding the relationship between states and their citizens: how harsh are judicial systems in their punishment of those who deviate from the law? Punitiveness is a fraught concept in the existing literature and robust measurement methods maximizing conceptual complexity are lacking. Here I develop a functional approach to punitiveness through a revised conceptualization and operationalization of this key variable while cautioning against the solitary use of incarceration rates to measure state intention. Punitiveness is conceptually disaggregated into three main components: (1) a commitment to punishment over rehabilitation, (2) the degree of harshness of response to crime (i.e., a longer sentence in prison), and (3) the lack of a logical progression of punishment based on the severity of crime committed or intent of the offender. These axes are further disaggregated into measurable indicators to build a novel index of punitiveness (P-Index) from the legal codes of 26 countries. Ultimately, this rules-as-data measure offers researchers purchase on the puzzling variation in punitiveness across contexts, which persists regardless of current and historical crime levels, offering particular utility for supply-side political-economic explanations.
当代发达民主国家“惩罚性”的概念和衡量
这篇文章讨论了一个关于国家和公民之间关系的关键政治问题:司法系统对那些违反法律的人的惩罚有多严厉?在现有文献中,惩罚性是一个令人担忧的概念,缺乏最大化概念复杂性的稳健测量方法。在这里,我通过修订这一关键变量的概念化和操作化,开发了一种功能性的惩罚方法,同时警告不要单独使用监禁率来衡量国家意图。惩罚性在概念上分为三个主要组成部分:(1)对惩罚的承诺,而不是改造;(2)对犯罪反应的严厉程度(即,在监狱里服刑更长时间);(3)缺乏基于犯罪严重程度或罪犯意图的惩罚逻辑进展。这些轴被进一步分解为可测量的指标,以建立一个新的惩罚性指数(p指数),从26个国家的法典。最终,这种“规则即数据”的方法为研究人员提供了在不同背景下惩罚的令人困惑的变化,这种变化无论当前和历史的犯罪水平如何都存在,为供应方的政治经济解释提供了特别的效用。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
7.80
自引率
10.00%
发文量
57
期刊介绍: Regulation & Governance serves as the leading platform for the study of regulation and governance by political scientists, lawyers, sociologists, historians, criminologists, psychologists, anthropologists, economists and others. Research on regulation and governance, once fragmented across various disciplines and subject areas, has emerged at the cutting edge of paradigmatic change in the social sciences. Through the peer-reviewed journal Regulation & Governance, we seek to advance discussions between various disciplines about regulation and governance, promote the development of new theoretical and empirical understanding, and serve the growing needs of practitioners for a useful academic reference.
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