The justice motive: Retributive and restorative factors affect public evaluations of child protection

The perceptions of justice literature suggests the public expect child protection (CP) to punish those who maltreat children. However, CP implements restorative, rather than retributive interventions. We investigated the tension between a public expectation of retribution and the nonretributive principles of CP.

We expected both restorative and retributive factors would affect perceptions of justice; however, hindsight bias would attenuate these effects. We expected anger would mediate the relationship between the retributive factor and perceptions of justice, and that the retributive factor would have a stronger impact when mothers, rather than fathers, harmed children.

Across two studies, we experimentally tested community members' perceptions of procedural and distributive justice about a CP case scenario. Participants read a news story about a case of child abuse leading to child removal, followed by reunification of the family. We manipulated a retributive factor, a restorative factor, and hindsight bias in a 2 (Punishment Sufficiency: High, Low) × 2 (Restorative Potential: High, Low) × 2 (Outcome Knowledge: Known, Unknown) between-groups experimental design. We varied gender of the harming parent across studies.

People viewed CP's processes and outcomes as fairer when the restorative factor was present but also when the retributive factor was present. However, hindsight bias attenuated these effects. Effects of the retributive factor were stronger when a mother harmed her child, and anger did not mediate the relationship between the retributive factor and perceptions of justice.

Perceptions of justice were driven by both restorative and retributive factors, and moderated by hindsight and gender biases. This indicates people's perceptions of CP are not entirely aligned with CP's restorative principles; retribution and biases are also impacting their evaluations. As a service that is for the public, but also relies on public engagement, misalignment creates problematic tensions impacting service delivery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).