Definition
A punishment implies some discomfort for its recipient – else it would not punish. Indeed, criminal justice can be viewed as an intricate system that calibrates the severity of punishment – and therefore the amount of the associated discomfort – to individual offenses and offenders. This is done primarily by adjusting the nominal size of punishment, given by the length of a prison sentence, the number of hours of community service, or the amount of a fine. However, the discomfort from a punishment is codetermined by a host of other factors, such as differences across prison facilities, judicial delays, the punishee’s psychological setup, her wealth, luck, family relations, and so on. It is the interactionof the nominal punishment with these subjective factors that determine the total amount of discomfort that a punishment creates in a punishee. “Subjective punishment” (or individualized sentencing) is an umbrella term for a variety of theories that suggest these factors...
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Montag, J., Sobek, T. (2021). Subjective Disutility of Punishment. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G.B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_720-2
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Subjective Disutility of Punishment- Published:
- 10 September 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_720-2
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Subjective Punishment- Published:
- 09 November 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_720-1