Effects of Defendant Age on Severity of Punishment for Different Crimes

Abstract

After reading a murder or theft vignette in which the perpetrator was a 20-, 40-, or 60-year-old man, 95 undergraduates gave sentence and parole recommendations. Punishment was harsher for the murder than for the theft. For murder, participants treated the 20- and 60-year-old men less harshly than the 40-year-old man, which confirms previous archival findings. However, this inverted U-shaped function occurred for murder only. The authors discussed the results in the context of the just-desert and utilitarian rationales that guide sentencing and gave suggestions for future research.

The function of punishment in the “civil” commitment of sexually violent predators

“…It is possible (although we have no directional predictions) that this difference could have led people to perceive the risk of recidivism differently. These concerns are mitigated somewhat by the literature, suggesting that people do not strongly differentiate between perpetrators in this ''middle'' range of life (Bergeron & McKelvie, 2004).…”

When emotionality trumps reason: A study of individual processing style and juror bias

“…Studies have documented the influence of a host of extralegal factors on juror decisions, mainly focusing on characteristics of the defendant. Relevant external extralegal factors have included the defendant's race (Sargent & Bradfield, 2004;Sommers & Ellsworth, 2001), age (Bergeron & McKelvie, 2004;Mueller-Johnson, Toglia, Sweeney, & Ceci, 2007;Warling & Badali-Peterson, 2001), religious conviction (Johnson, 1985), gender (DeSantis & Kayson, 1997;Fisher, 1997;McCoy & Gray, 2007), physical attractiveness (Stewart, 1985), occupation (Loeffler & Lawson, 2002), and ethnicity (Perez, Hosch, Ponder, & Trejo, 1993).…”

Effects of Offenders' Age and Health on Sentencing Decisions

“…This order varied across participants to minimise order effects, which have been shown for previous within-subjects research on the age leniency effect (Bergeron & McKelvie, 2004). The cases and questions were pilot tested and the wording of instructions and questions clarified as a result.…”

“…Furthermore, consistent with the earlier study, the 20 and 60 year-old offenders were treated more leniently than the 40 year-old offender. The leniency effect was most pronounced for the 60 year-old offender (see McKelvie & Bergeron [2003] for additional analyses of the Bergeron & McKelvie [2004] data). However, in two other experimental studies of sentencing for violent assault (Higgins, Heath, & Grannemann, 2007;Loeffler & Lawson, 2002), no leniency effect was found for the older offender (i.e.…”

“…Recently, Bergeron and McKelvie (2004) varied both offender age (i.e., 20, 40, or 60 years) as well as offence type (i.e., murder or theft). Although in contrast to Silverman et al's (1984) study, an age effect was not found for theft, it was observed for murder.…”