This study draws on a psychophysical scaling technique to assess prisoners' perceptions of the severity of various penal measures. The data used in this study was gathered from face-to-face interviews with 159 male prisoners randomly selected from three separate Canadian federal correctional facilities between August 1993 and May 1994. A punishment severity scale was developed based on respondents' perceptions of various legal sanctions. Subgroups of the overall sample were examined and differences in severity ratings were observed based on a number of socio-demographic variables and variations in one's relationship and experience with the criminal justice system. This research also provides a comparison to studies which examined sentence severity among various court officials, the public and students. Possible explanations for variations among respondents are considered as well as the implications of the findings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.23235 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Nixon, Sharon |
| Contributors | Bonaquisto, Lucia (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Sociology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001482385, proquestno: MM07949, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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