Elsevier

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume 43, Issue 6, November–December 2015, Pages 470-479
Journal of Criminal Justice

Exploring the sanction–crime relationship through a lens of procedural justice

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2015.10.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Procedural justice moderates the effect of legal sanctions on recidivism.

  • Deviance amplification occurs for those who view their sanctioning experiences as procedurally unjust.

  • As evaluations of procedural justice increase, legal sanctions have no effect on subsequent criminal behavior.

  • Increasing procedural justice can reduce unintended consequences of legal sanctions.

Abstract

Purpose

Research overwhelmingly explores “kinds of people” as moderators of the sanction–crime relationship (Piquero et al., 2011). This work, on the other hand, focuses on the sanction experience and draws upon the procedural justice doctrine and key ideas in Sherman's (1993, 2014) defiance theory to test whether individual evaluations of procedural justice condition the effect of legal sanctions on subsequent criminal behavior.

Methods

Using a sample of serious adolescent offenders, generalized linear regression models with interaction terms are employed to test whether the effect of legal sanctions on involvement, variety, and frequency of offending is conditioned by procedural justice. Significant interaction effects of legal sanction and procedural justice are illustrated with graphical methods.

Results

Results suggest that evaluations of procedural justice condition the sanction–crime relationship. Sanctions lead to a higher likelihood of offending among individuals with low evaluations of procedural justice. However, among those with higher evaluations of procedural justice, there is no significant relationship between sanctions and subsequent offending.

Conclusion

Increasing perceptions of procedural justice reduces unintended consequences of sanctioning experiences. In an era of heightened focus on interactions between citizens and criminal justice professionals, enhancing procedural justice is not only ethical but also protects against deviance amplification processes.

Introduction

Current criminological theories propose competing processes regarding the relationship between legal sanctions with the criminal justice system and subsequent criminal behavior. Specific deterrence theory claims that sanctions should lead to a reduction in criminal offending, whereas labeling theory suggests that these same sanctions should amplify subsequent criminal behavior. It is also possible that these experiences have no effect on later offending and neither of these two theories on their own adequately explains the relationship between sanctions and ensuing criminal behavior (Huizinga & Henry, 2008, p. 221; see also Sherman, 1993). This conundrum led leading scholars of both deterrence and labeling theory to suggest that the sanction–crime relationship is not invariant across subgroups or contexts (Nagin, 1998, Paternoster, 1987, Paternoster and Iovanni, 1989). By in large, the majority of research on the sanction–crime relationship draws attention to the potential import of who the offender is and what resources he or she has in the study of the sanction–crime relationship (e.g., Bernburg and Krohn, 2003, Chiricos et al., 2007, DeJong, 1997), and there is a dearth of research that focuses explicitly on how the context of the sanction may condition the sanction–crime relationship (Barrick, 2014, Nagin, 2013, Piquero et al., 2011). This is an important omission in the study of the effects of sanctions on subsequent criminal behavior because extant theory (i.e., defiance theory) anticipates that the quality of treatment by police and courts during interactions with the criminal justice system is critical to understanding whether sanctions will deter, promote (i.e., deviance amplification), or have no effect on subsequent criminal behavior (Sherman, 1993, Sherman, 2014). Further, several recent high profile events (e.g., the death of Freddie Gray) catapulted the nature and consequences of interactions between criminal justice system professionals and citizens to a pressing issue of our time-procedural fairness.

In order to better understand why sanctions may curb or promote subsequent criminal behavior, if they have any effect at all, we argue that more attention must be given to the perceived quality of interactions with legal authorities who administer sanctions. The focus on the importance of the nature of contacts with the criminal justice system is not new (see Braithwaite, 1989, Sherman, 1993). The procedural justice doctrine, largely based on the work of Tyler's (1990) study of compliant behavior, specifically draws attention to the importance of individual evaluations of fairness or procedural justice during interactions with legal authorities; specifically, interactions that are perceived as procedurally just promote cooperative behaviors, including compliance with the law. Although literature examining the significance of procedural justice focuses primarily on the direct effect of procedural justice on noncompliance with the law (e.g., criminal behavior) and its indirect effect through perceptions of legitimacy (e.g., Fagan and Piquero, 2007, Fagan and Tyler, 2005, Mazerolle et al., 2012, Paternoster et al., 1997, Reisig et al., 2014, Tyler, 1990, Tyler and Huo, 2002), its arguments regarding why the nature of contacts with agents of the criminal justice system promote or inhibit offending complement theoretical efforts to understand the consequences of sanctions on subsequent criminal behavior (Sherman, 1993, Sherman, 2014).

The focus of this work is to further understand the conditions under which legal sanctions affect subsequent criminal behavior. Building upon the procedural justice doctrine (Tyler, 1990, Tyler and Huo, 2002) and essential elements of defiance theory (Sherman, 1993, Sherman, 2014) in order to highlight how procedural justice can add to our understanding of how and why sanctions may have variable effects across individuals, we empirically examine whether procedural justice moderates the effect of legal sanctions in the form of involuntary contacts with the criminal justice system on various indicators of subsequent offending behavior. In doing so, this work continues to unpack the heterogeneity in the effects of sanctions on subsequent criminal behavior and further highlights the importance of the sanctioning experience and evaluations of procedural justice in the study of offending.

Section snippets

The effects of sanctions on criminal behavior

Legal sanctions do not have the same effect on subsequent offending behavior across individuals (Huizinga and Henry, 2008, Nagin, 2013, Nagin et al., 2009, Paternoster and Iovanni, 1989, Sampson and Laub, 1997). Two theoretical perspectives are used to explain these varying effects. Labeling theory suggests that legal sanctions promote subsequent criminal behavior (Lemert, 1951, Paternoster and Iovanni, 1989) through the alteration of one's identity, enhancement of deviant peer networks, and

Procedural justice and the sanction–crime relationship

The procedural justice doctrine is based largely upon the work of Tyler (1990) and colleagues who argue that evaluations of how decisions are made in terms of procedural justice are more important than evaluations of distributive justice (fairness of outcomes) in decision acceptance and subsequent cooperative behaviors (Fagan and Tyler, 2005, Sunshine and Tyler, 2003, Tyler, 1990, Tyler and Huo, 2002). Importantly, procedural justice refers to the fair and ethical treatment of individuals by

Current research

The current study addresses the call for research to disentangle the differential effects of legal sanctions on subsequent offending behavior and focuses on how the perceived nature of sanctioning experiences may condition the sanction–crime relationship. Using the procedural justice doctrine and key aspects of Sherman's (1993) theory of defiance as guiding frameworks, we test whether evaluations of procedural justice condition the effect of a legal sanction on subsequent offending behavior

Data

Our data come from a sample of adolescent offenders who participated in the Pathways to Desistance Study, a prospective longitudinal investigation of adolescent attitudes and behaviors. All data were obtained through ICPSR (ICPSR 29961 and ICPSR 34605). Study participants were juveniles charged with or adjudicated/convicted of a serious offense (mostly felonies) in the juvenile or criminal court systems in Philadelphia, PA, and Maricopa County, AZ. The Pathways to Desistance Study consists of

Results

Prior to testing our hypotheses, we estimated three generalized linear regression models to summarize the partial main effects of legal sanctions and judgments of procedural justice on the offending outcomes. Although not presented,11 the results of these models indicate that, net of control variables, experiencing a legal sanction has a significant main effect on

Discussion and conclusion

There is a growing recognition of the importance of procedural justice in both scholarship and policy. With respect to scholarship, the focus on procedural justice and its relationship to cooperative behavior (i.e., compliance with authority directives, empowerment and support of authorities, and compliance with the law) is pervasive throughout the criminological discourse. Furthermore, international leaders are investing attention and resources into the promise of procedural justice,

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