"The Retribution Heuristic"

The title of this post is the title of this intriguing new article available via SSRN authored by Stephen Koppel and Mark Fondacaro. Here is the abstract:

Cognitive heuristics are mental shortcuts that enable quick and efficient decision-making. Several converging lines of evidence suggest the existence of a retribution heuristic, which guides reactions to wrongdoing toward retributive punishment.  Although cognitive heuristics can generally be relied upon to produce sound decisions, they also are associated with cognitive biases and errors of judgment.  We show that the retribution heuristic produces systematic errors of judgment, and argue that the resulting “Fundamental Retribution Errors” serve to legitimize overly harsh, unjust, and ineffective criminal sanctions.