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18 Legal & Criminological Psych. 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/legadclpy18 and id is 1 raw text is: The British
Legal and Criminological Psychology (2013), 18, 1-15  Psychological Society
© 2011 The British Psychological Society
www.wileyonlinelibrary.com
Investigating the relationship between
justice-vengeance motivations and punitive
sentencing recommendations
Jennifer Murray'*, Mary E. Thomson2, David J. Cooke2
and Kathy E. Charles3
'Nursing Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit, University of
Stirling, UK
2Department of Psychology, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK
3School of Health and Social Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK
Purpose. The present research investigated the relationship between underlying
justice and vengeance motivations and sentencing recommendations made by expert
clinicians, semi-experts, and lay-people. It was hypothesized that the semi-experts
would recommend significantly different sentence lengths from those recommended
by the expert and lay-person groups, in line with previous research findings. It was
also hypothesized that justice and vengeance motivations would be related to punitive
sentencing recommendations, and that these would not be the same across the three
levels of expertise.
Method. An independent groups design was utilized in the main analysis, with
participants belonging to three distinct levels of clinical experience (experts, semi-
experts, and lay-people). A questionnaire was administered, with participants being
measured on levels of justice and vengeance motivations, and asked to recommend
appropriate sentence lengths based on nine separate crime-scenarios. These covariables
were correlated and the correlation coefficients were compared across the three levels
of expertise.
Results. The former hypothesis was not upheld. Findings do, however, support the
latter hypothesis, with the key finding indicating that for both justice and vengeance
motivations in punitive judgement, it is the lay-participants who appear distinct from the
experts and semi-experts.
Conclusions. The current findings emphasize that while expert and lay-person
judgements may often appear to be the same, different processes and motivations
underlying clinical judgements are occurring at the different stages of expertise. With
the differences in the relationships between justice and vengeance motivations and
judgements found in the current research, it is argued that expert and lay judgements
*Correspondence should be addressed to Jennifer Murray, Nursing Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit,
University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK (e-mail: jennifer.murray@stir.ac.uk).

DOI:10.I II l/j.2044-8333.201 1.02021.x

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