Retribution, Apology and Forgiveness
The referenced paper sheds light on retribution, apology and forgiveness and explores some implications of the framework for the role of victims in the criminal process. It provides an explanation for why victims invest so much effort in achieving retribution, often spending more than a decade filled with anger and hatred, unable to let go.
The decisions of the victim and the transgressor in the aftermath of transgressions can be reasoned out through the use of game theory. The payoff matrix is given below:
| Victim \ Transgressor | Favor | Don’t favor
+—————————+—————–+———————-+
| Favor | Low, High | Low, High
| Don’t favor | High, Low | High/Low, Low/High
For the transgressor, favoring implies apologizing to the victim and not favoring implies fleeing. For the victim, favoring means accepting the transgressor’s apology/not complaining about the transgressor to the police, and not favoring implies declining the apology/ complaining.
Now, if the criminal apologizes and the victim accepts the apology, the victim suffers a net loss and the transgressor has a high payoff. If the criminal apologizes and the victim complains, then we assume that the criminal will definitely be caught and punished. Thus, the criminal has a low payoff and the victim gets compensated, thus getting a high payoff.
But if the criminal decides to flee, two more situations arise. Either the victim decides to not compalin about the transgression to the police, in which case, the criminal has a high payoff but the victim has a low payoff. Or the victime decides to complain, in which case the criminal might be caught or be successful in fleeing. So, the victim has a high payoff if the criminal is caught because the victim is recompensated by the criminal. But the victim has a low payoff if the criminal is not caught.
Thus, the Dominant Strategy for the victim is to not favor the criminal. And thus the Best Response of the criminal is to flee without apologizing. Thus, we see why victims spend so much time to pursue retribution.
We constructed the payoff matrix considering an efficient legal system and no benefits for apologies to transgressors. Things become more interesting when the legal system is slow in responding to victim’s pleas or when there exist laws which moderate punishment for transgressors if they apologize. In such cases, the payoff matrix changes. But we’ll save that analysis for another time.
Paper: http://www.law.umn.edu/uploads/mP/IA/mPIAgBdDt90T3Yk3B-INOA/OHara_article_07.pdf