Exploring the sanction–crime relationship through a lens of procedural justice

•Procedural justice moderates the effect of legal sanctions on recidivism.•Deviance amplification occurs for those who view their sanctioning experiences as procedurally unjust.•As evaluations of procedural justice increase, legal sanctions have no effect on subsequent criminal behavior.•Increasing procedural justice can reduce unintended consequences of legal sanctions.

PurposeResearch overwhelmingly explores “kinds of people” as moderators of the sanction–crime relationship (Piquero et al., 2011). This work, on the other hand, focuses on the sanction experience and draws upon the procedural justice doctrine and key ideas in Sherman's (1993, 2014) defiance theory to test whether individual evaluations of procedural justice condition the effect of legal sanctions on subsequent criminal behavior.MethodsUsing a sample of serious adolescent offenders, generalized linear regression models with interaction terms are employed to test whether the effect of legal sanctions on involvement, variety, and frequency of offending is conditioned by procedural justice. Significant interaction effects of legal sanction and procedural justice are illustrated with graphical methods.ResultsResults suggest that evaluations of procedural justice condition the sanction–crime relationship. Sanctions lead to a higher likelihood of offending among individuals with low evaluations of procedural justice. However, among those with higher evaluations of procedural justice, there is no significant relationship between sanctions and subsequent offending.ConclusionIncreasing perceptions of procedural justice reduces unintended consequences of sanctioning experiences. In an era of heightened focus on interactions between citizens and criminal justice professionals, enhancing procedural justice is not only ethical but also protects against deviance amplification processes.