NCJ Number
133922
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1991) Pages: 480-490
Date Published
1991
Length
11 pages
Annotation
To test the assertion that it is better for ten guilty persons to escape justice than one innocent person to suffer, researchers picked six crimes, representing a hierarchy of decreasing seriousness from murder to embezzlement. The research involved three modifications of the instrument with different groups of respondents: 86 California liberal arts students, 68 third-year California law students, and 102 students enrolled in a pedagogical institute in Estonia, Soviet Union.
Abstract
As predicted, the results indicated an inverse relationship between the seriousness of the crime and the willingness to release guilty individuals in order to protect innocent persons. The findings also showed that the number of guilty to be released increased with the severity of the punishment facing the innocent person. However, the Estonian students did not show the monotonic inverse relationship between crime seriousness and protection of the innocent; this difference was probably due to the different criteria of crime seriousness in the Soviet Union compared to the United States. 3 figures and 10 references