Social Consensus on Norms of Justice: Should the Punishment Fit the Crime?

Social consensus on norms of justice has long been of concern to sociologist. The present paper presents a model of justice norms as congnitions and tests the degree of cognitive consensus on the norm of just deserts (i.e., "letting the punishment fit the crime"). It is argued that consensus on justice norms should be tested using a combination of within-respondent and between-respondent techniques. Such tests can (1) simultaneously reveal the presence of consensus on the justice principle involved and on the evaluation of the specific social stimuli presented, (2) facilitate demographic comparisons on adhering to principle or agreeing on facts, and (3) reveal conflicts between these two versions of consensus. For testing the norm of just deserts, ratio scale measures of crime seriousness and punishment severity were employed, and a formula derived from both equity theory and psychophysics was utilized in model fitting. Results from a sample survey indicated dramatically strong use of the principle of just deserts by members of the public but less adherence to just deserts by demographically disadvantaged (low-income or black) respondents. A path model of the relation between aggregate and individual scores further demonstrated a fundamental tension between the two versions of normative consensus, in that the more respondents used the principle the more systematically they deviated from the group average response. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of both the substantive findings and the new methodologies employed for understanding normative consensus and the assessment of justice norms.