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Affective Versus Effective Justice: Instrumentalism and Emotionalism in Criminal Justice

NCJ Number
188442
Journal
Punishment and Society Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2001 Pages: 265-278
Author(s)
Arie Freiberg
Date Published
April 2001
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This article argues that crime prevention policies must address some of the deeper emotional or affective dimensions of crime and its place in society and not just rational dimensions if they were to succeed in the political or public spheres.
Abstract
The discussion notes that imprisonment rates in Australia, England, and the United States are now at their highest levels in decades. The analysis also emphasized that criminal justice policy has symbolic and expressive elements as well as an instrumental dimension. Emotions, beliefs, and assumptions influence people’s actions in ways of which they are unaware. However, little understanding exists regarding the emotional component of attachments to certain beliefs, traditions, and other factors. The public’s increasingly punitive attitudes appear to represent an emotionally based response to crime as a symbolic harm and a reassertion of social values. Crime prevention that continues to use a predominantly rationalist approach to crime control policies will fail to compete successfully with the more emotional law-and-order policies that tend to resonate with the public and that appear to meet deep-seated psychological and affective needs. Therefore, crime prevention needs to identify the nature of the affective, symbolic, and noninstrumental concerns that influence policy. It is possible to develop a symbolic rhetoric for crime prevention by trying to address the three essential elements a response to crime must include: the instrumental, the emotional/affective, and the production of social cohesiveness. The analysis concludes that crime prevention must take account of the emotions that people feel regarding wrongdoing, consider changes in public mood over time, and be sensitive to different political and social cultures. Notes and 33 references (Author abstract modified)