What people consider to be fair and just today are in line with the laws of ancient Mesopotamia and the Tang Dynasty in China – suggesting that these intuitions are part of human nature.
Convicted rapist Jayden Meyer was given a nine months home detention, sparking protests and an appeal from crown prosecutors. But the sentence is in line with the law. Is it time for change?
Members of book clubs can impose rules through penalties.
Hill Street Studios/Stone via Getty Images
People penalized for violating a group’s shared rules could go on to disrupt its functioning, out of revenge. Two scholars suggest a way of imposing rules.
Jaskirat Singh Sidhu arrives for his sentencing hearing in Melfort, Sask., in March 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kayle Neis
Sidhu is not being deported as punishment. He is being removed because he has been positioned as a foreigner in Canada who has lost the privilege to remain.
For centuries, societies have used visions of the afterlife to discipline people’s behavior.
DEA / G. Nimatallah/De Agostini via Getty Images
Ancient Christian and Jewish texts threatened women with hellfire if they stepped out of line – and those terrifying visions still resonate in U.S. society today.
Kids who’ve had traumatic experiences are more likely to act out at school.
LumiNola/E+ Collection via Getty Images
Abuse, neglect or witnessing violence at home can lead kids to misbehave. Some schools are doing away with expulsions to focus on childhood trauma instead.
Infection rates of COVID-19 have soared among prisoners in the US. An expert on penal policy considers what is ‘unjust and disproportionate’ punishment at this time.
New research shows that Canadians who live in rural areas hold more punitive attitudes about crime and how to control it than their urban counterparts.
(Pixabay)
Those living in rural areas have more punitive attitudes toward crime and how to control it than city-dwellers, and it’s a major component of the growing urban-rural divide in Canada.
Kids have no problem remembering who plays fair.
Natalia Lebedinskaia/Shutterstock.com
Do children understand the lesson that if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours? Developmental psychologists suggest they’re more likely to punish bad behavior than they are to reward good deeds.
Which way does neurobiological evidence tip the scales in sentencing?
Alexander Kirch/Shutterstock.com
How do jurors use different kinds of information about mental illness when making sentencing decisions? An experiment finds that neurobiological evidence could harm or help defendants.
A New Jersey mother shows up at her son’s class as a clown to get him to stop misbehaving in school. The boy’s principal posted a video of the visit online.
Instagram of Sean Larry
As more parents turn to social media to post videos of themselves punishing their children, an educational psychologist warns that the practice may cause more harm than good.
At least 54 countries prohibit the corporal punishment of children. Canada has neither prohibited corporal punishment, nor said it will.
Shutterstock
Until Canadians challenge the normalization of violence against children, we will continue to support, or at least tacitly condone, something that by all accounts is harmful.
Well trained and experienced staff are a crucial part of improvements.
For almost one in seven Australians aged four to 17 years, behaviour is significant in nature, persists over time and tends to mismatch their developmental stage.
Shutterstock
It can be difficult to tell the difference between disordered and difficult behaviour, and the approach is different for both.
It is commonly thought that anyone in ancient Rome who killed his father, mother, or another relative was subjected to the ‘punishment of the sack’. But is this true?
Creative Commons
From being thrown off a cliff to being sewn into a sack with animals, ancient Rome is notorious for its cruel and unusual punishments. But we must be careful what we take as historical fact.
Director, Asian Law Centre, Comparative Legal Studies Program; Associate Director, Vietnam; Director of Studies, Asian Law, The University of Melbourne