Social psychology, social attitudes, and attitudes toward sentencing.

Abstract
A series of studies investigated the ubiquitous public view that the courts are too lenient in sentencing criminal offenders. One explanation for this phenomenon is that the public have at their disposal different information from that which is available to the sentencing judge. In 1 study, people either read a short or a long description of a case. Those reading the long version containing information more similar to that available to the sentencing judge were significantly more satisfied with the sentence. Another series of studies compared the evaluations of a sentence by people who read newspaper acccounts of a case to evaluations by those who read a summary of court documents. People who read the media accounts were generally less satisfied with the sentence. The public apparently receives from the mass media inadequate information about sentencing decisions and this is largely responsible for public dissatisfaction with current sentencing practices.

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