Punitive justice serves to restore reciprocal cooperation in three small-scale societies

Fines, corporal punishments, and other forms of institutionalized punishment recur across small-scale societies. While they are often assumed to enforce group norms, we propose that these punitive procedures function to restore dyadic cooperation and curtail conflict between offender and victim following violations of reciprocal obligations. We test this account’s predictions against the punitive systems of three small-scale societies. We code ethnographic reports of 97 transgressions among Kiowa equestrian foragers (North America); analyze a sample of 302 transgressions among Mentawai horticulturalists (Indonesia); and review retributive procedures documented among Nuer pastoralists (South Sudan). Consistent with the relation-restoration hypothesis, we find that third-party punishment is rare; that most third-party involvement aims at resolving conflicts; that costs paid by offenders serve to achieve forgiveness by repairing victims; that punishment is accompanied by ceremonial procedures aimed at limiting conflict and restoring goodwill; and that failures to impose costs contribute to a decline in cooperation. Although much rarer, we find some instances of third-party punishment among the Kiowa (6.6% of offenses), consistent with a norm-enforcement function. Most often, however, punitive procedures serve to appease victim’s urge for revenge while not overly harming offenders’ interests to ensure reconciliation.