One in seven people in prison in the US is serving a life sentence, and most of these “lifers” will someday be eligible for discretionary parole. But little is known about a key aspect of parole decision-making: remorse assessments. Because remorse is a complex emotion that arises from past wrongdoing and unfolds over time, assessing the sincerity of another person's remorse is neither a simple task of lie detection, nor of determining emotional authenticity. Instead, remorse involves numerous elements, including the relationship between a person's past and present motivations, beliefs, and affective states. To understand how parole board members make sense of remorse, we draw on in-depth interviews with parole commissioners in California, the state with the largest proportion of parole-eligible lifers. We find that commissioners' remorse assessments hinge on their perceptions of lifers' relationships to law and carceral logic. In this way, relational legal consciousness—specifically, second-order legal consciousness—functions as a stand-in for the impossible task of knowing another person's heart or mind. We distinguish relational from second-order legal consciousness and argue that understanding how they operate at parole hearings reveals the larger import of relational legal consciousness as a mechanism via which existing power relations are produced and reproduced, bridging the legal consciousness and law and emotion literatures.

中文翻译：

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假释委员会如何判断悔恨：关系法律意识与监禁逻辑的再生产

美国有七分之一的监狱服刑者正在服无期徒刑，而这些“无期徒刑”中的大多数有朝一日将有资格获得酌情假释。但对假释决策的一个关键方面知之甚少：悔恨评估。因为悔恨是一种复杂的情绪，源于过去的不法行为并随着时间的推移而展开，所以评估他人悔恨的诚意既不是简单的谎言检测任务，也不是确定情绪真实性的简单任务。相反，悔恨涉及许多因素，包括一个人过去和现在的动机、信念和情感状态之间的关系。为了了解假释委员会成员如何理解悔恨，我们对加利福尼亚州的假释专员进行了深入采访，该州拥有最大比例的假释资格终身。我们发现专员的 悔恨评估取决于他们对生命与法律和监狱逻辑关系的看法。通过这种方式，关系法律意识——特别是二阶法律意识——充当了了解他人内心或思想这一不可能任务的替身。我们将关系法律意识与二阶法律意识区分开来，并认为了解它们在假释听证会上的运作方式揭示了关系法律意识作为一种机制的更大重要性，通过该机制生产和复制现有的权力关系，将法律意识与法律和情感文献联系起来。二阶法律意识——充当了解他人内心或思想的不可能任务的替身。我们将关系法律意识与二阶法律意识区分开来，并认为了解它们在假释听证会上的运作方式揭示了关系法律意识作为一种机制的更大重要性，通过该机制生产和复制现有的权力关系，将法律意识与法律和情感文献联系起来。二阶法律意识——充当了解他人内心或思想的不可能任务的替身。我们将关系法律意识与二阶法律意识区分开来，并认为了解它们在假释听证会上的运作方式揭示了关系法律意识作为一种机制的更大重要性，通过该机制生产和复制现有的权力关系，将法律意识与法律和情感文献联系起来。