One rule for the goose, one for the gander? Wrongfulness and harmfulness in determining reactions to offenders and victims of crime.

People's reactions to offenders and victims of crime follow different rationales. Whereas the punishment of the offender is primarily determined by the severity of the crime (which includes its foreseeable harmful consequences), the actual harm that is experienced by the victim drives the need for his or her support and assistance. With the introduction of the Victim Impact Statement (VIS), in which victims are allowed to express the (harmful) consequences of the crime on their lives, the question is raised whether allowing such victim input during criminal proceedings would influence the offender's sentence. The main goal of the current research is to disentangle how a crime's wrongfulness and harmfulness influence people's reactions to offenders and victims. We show that, whereas people's perceptions of the offender (and the outcome of the trial) are influenced by the severity of the crime, people's judgements related to the victim are more likely to be influenced by an interaction between the severity of the crime and the experienced harm of the crime. That is, in this study no support was found for the argument that the delivery of a VIS would lead to a violation of the proportionality principle.

La estructura conceptual de los miedos urbanos / The conceptual structure of urban fears

Este trabajo indaga por los temores que experimentan los habitantes de las ciudades y por la estructura conceptual que comparten sobre las situaciones temidas actualmente. Se analizan los resultados de 130 entrevistas semiestructuradas, orientadas a identificar los temores más comunes de hombres y mujeres asociados a la ciudad y la estructura conceptual que subyace a estos temores. Los resultados obtenidos se analizaron con un Escalamiento Multidimensional, que permitió identificar la estructura del miedo que muestran los participantes a distintas situaciones. Se proponen acciones en procura de la reducción de la percepción de inseguridad en la ciudad.

This paper focuses on fears experienced by the dwellers of the city and the conceptual structure shared on the situations that currently are feared. The results of 130 semi-structured interviews aimed at identifying the most common fears of men and women associated with the city and the conceptual structure underlying these fears are analyzed. The results were analyzed trough a Multidimensional Scaling, which identified the conceptual fear structure of participants to different situations. Actions in an attempt to reduce the perception of insecurity in the city are proposed.