Attribution refers to the process through which individuals seeks the causes and meanings of their behavior and the behavior of others, how observers make inferences about people and the surrounding environment, and how they conclude with a causal judgment about behavior. The parallels between the attribution process and the principles of justice suggest an analysis of the belief system surrounding penal law and the system of criminal justice according to the principles of internal versus external attribution of offenses and the related information profiles. After reviewing the field of attribution theory, this study presents several hypotheses regarding the attribution process and the relationship between moral and legal inhibitory factors and crime rates. The discussion focuses on the relation between the social (extralegal) evaluation of particular crimes and the perceived risk of arrests. The empirical study involved the mailing of a questionnaire to a sample of 1,500 West Germans who approximated the composition of the Nation's population in sex, age, education, marital status, and rural and urban locations. The variables reflected in the questions were estimates of the risk of arrest for a generalized other, the impact of certainty of arrest and severity of sanctions on the crime rates, tendency to report offenders to the police, the moral condemnation of crimes, the estimate of the growth of crime rates, and the perceived consent to the penal law. A self-report of criminal involvement and victimization for the past 3 years was included. Findings provide support, though mixed, for conceptualizing deterrent factors as part of a belief system, organized according to external versus internal attribution of offenses. Implications for theory and research are drawn. 2 tables and 53 references