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Severity of Societal Response to Crime: A Synthesis of Models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Penny A. Green  and
H. David Allen
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Abstract

This paper reviews three bodies of research which relate to the severity of societal response to crime: studies of social complexity, of punitive reaction to high rates of deviance, and of the ability of the justice system to control criminal activity. We present a model aimed at integrating these findings and accounting for some of the inconsistent results among them. We contend that while normative diversity, on the whole, tends to lessen the severity of response, this tendency may be counteracted by an increased rate of deviance and a decreased certainty of punishment—also products of social complexity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , 1982 , pp. 181 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

*

The authors wish to thank several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1980 meeting of the Southern Sociological Society.

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