Dr Michael Proeve1
1University Of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
Biography:
Dr Michael Proeve is a clinical and forensic psychologist, who has worked in forensic mental health, corrections, and in private practice. He has been a psychology academic at three Australian universities. Michael is the author or editor of two books on remorse, and has published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in the areas of remorse, shame, assessment and treatment of sexual offenders, mindfulness, and clinical issues.
The presentation concerns findings regarding judges’ consideration of remorse in sentencing, obtained from an ethically approved study of 262 sentencing remarks from the higher courts in South Australia. Although offender remorse is recognised in many legal jurisdictions as a factor that leads to mitigation of sentence, judges’ practice with regard to remorse in sentencing has attracted limited systematic scholarly inquiry. Published and unpublished findings from the study include: evidence of remorse mentioned by judges; remorse across different offence types; judges’ treatment of remorse evidence in professional reports; and quantitative analysis of the influence of remorse on sentencing outcomes.
Content analysis showed that guilty pleas, accepting responsibility, seeking help in relation to offending, and making apologies appeared to be influential in findings of remorse. Across offence types, judges tended to mention more evidence of remorse in homicide cases than other offence types, and behavioural indicators of remorse differed between sexual and drug offences. With regard to professional reports, judges did not tend to accept opinions regarding remorse uncritically, but tended to make use of professionals’ observations regarding thinking, emotional reactions, or behaviour, in relation to remorse. Finally, multivariate quantitative analysis showed that judgments of remorse predicted sentence length and non-parole period, but not suspension of sentences, when accounting for offence and demographic variables. However, when controlling for the relationship of the plea to sentencing outcomes, remorse was no longer a significant predictor of sentencing outcomes. Findings will be of interest to legal and mental health practitioners engaged in the sentencing process.