Third-party Views of Incarceration: Justice, Desistance, and Offender Reintegration

One potential reason for punishing criminal offenders is so that third parties will become willing to socially reintegrate the offenders after their punishments have been completed. Another reason is simply to satisfy third-party desires that appropriate punishments be issued. In an experimental study, conducted with undergraduate students in South Africa, it was found that increasing the length of incarceration had a causal effect on increasing both reintegration willingness and punishment appropriateness, but the effect on reintegration willingness was substantially smaller. Also, two intermediary punishment goals were tested as mediators: the perceived likelihood of criminal desistance, and the perceived attainment of punitive justice. For the relationship between length of incarceration and reintegration willingness, desistance acted as a mediator but punitive justice did not. The findings indicate that, in order to increase reintegration willingness, policies need to increase the perceived likelihood of desistance rather than the perceived attainment of punitive justice.