Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Third-party support for retribution, rehabilitation, and giving an offender a clean slate.

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When crimes occur, there is third-party support for retributive justice, but is there also support for the idea that punishments should give offenders clean slates? In addition, how might support for rehabilitation compare with support for retribution, and with support for giving a clean slate? Two studies tested how crime severity affected support for the 3 sentencing objectives: retribution, rehabilitation, and giving an offender a clean slate. Further, the studies tested whether anger and compassion toward the offender mediated the relationships between crime severity and the sentencing objectives. Results show that as crime severity increased, support for retribution increased, support for rehabilitation was unaffected (in Study 2), and support for giving a clean slate decreased. In addition, the relationship between severity and retribution, and the relationship between severity and clean slate, were both mediated by anger and compassion. For rehabilitation, there was an indirect effect involving compassion but not anger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)