Am J Psychiatry 1976; 133:973-975
Copyright © 1976 by American Psychiatric Association
Assessment of sociolegal judgment of offenders
MS Cerino and AJ Dy
While working with young male offenders the authors developed a scale to
assess sociolegal judgment, i.e., the ability to evaluate the possible
social and legal consequences of various choices of action in a given
situation. They found that some inmates had committed crimes because of
poor sociolegal judgment, whereas others understood the consequences of
their actions but chose to act illegally despite this knowledge.
