This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Common beliefs that people who commit crime are inherently bad and unlikely to change may make the public more accepting of illegitimate harms within the criminal justice system, according to criminology and psychology experts in the U.S. and Australia. A new study led by Flinders University, Princeton and Rutgers University academics investigates responses from hundreds of people to assess their reactions toward unsanctioned, 'incidental' harms such as police brutality, deprivation in health care, and other additional struggles people commonly face in the justice system.
The study is published in the journal Law and Human Behavior. Flinders University criminologist and psychologist Dr. Melissa de Vel-Palumbo says people sometimes fail to sympathize—and may even relish—reports of such harms.
"In this research, we sought to understand why there is not more public concern about legally illegitimate harms which are not prescribed by laws associated with arrest or conviction," says de Vel-Palumbo from Flinders Criminology and the Centre for Social Impact at Flinders University. "We found the way people explain criminal behavior matters. When people view a person who has committed a crime as having an underlying, unchangeable criminal character, they are more likely to tolerate that person suffering a legally illegitimate experience, seeing it as deserved punishment for who they are.
"This effect may partly arise because viewing criminality as an unchangeable part of a person's character can increase perceptions that the person remains dangerous." The U.S. and Australian researchers say these insights reveal how moral judgments about people who commit crime can shape public responses to harms occurring within the criminal justice system. "People do bad things, but being labeled as a 'bad person' can lead to a raft of punitive, fear-based social responses, some of which may violate people's basic rights," says de Vel-Palumbo, who is leading an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) project to co-design and test a new framework for correctional supervision. "Promoting the idea that people can change and rehabilitation can be effective may be one way of encouraging greater concern for the treatment of people in the criminal justice system." Anna C.
Barron et al., When we do not care about what happens to "criminals": How character judgments influence indifference to incidental suffering in the criminal justice system., Law and Human Behavior (2026). DOI: 10.1037/lhb0000626 MA in English, copy editor since 2021 with experience in higher education and health content. Dedicated to trustworthy science news.
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