Differences in Punitiveness Across Three Cultures: A Test of American Exceptionalism in Justice Attitudes

Abstract

sentencing policies than the United States in practice, Americans and Canadians generally did not differ from each other in sentencing attitudes.Both assigned slightly longer sentences than did Germans, however.Americans, therefore, do not appear to be uniquely punitive at the individual level.Also, people from all three cultures were in agreement about the moral wrongfulness of most baseline crimes, indicating that enhanced American and Canadian punitiveness is not due to an increased sense of moral outrage.Institutional explanations for American Exceptionalism in policies are discussed.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 33 citations exist upstream.