In contexts marked by high violence and widespread impunity, how do citizens articulate and justify their preferences about crime and punishment? What kind of moral logic and reasoning do they employ when discussing punishments? Does support for punitive punishment derive from moralistic and deontological concerns that perpetrators need to be punished because it is right and proper? Or do people support punitive punishments because they feel they are effective? To address this question, we document and analyze stated preferences for punishment in response to crime from 62 in-depth qualitative interviews with individuals affected by violence in the Mexican state of Michoacán. We conduct a quantitative analysis of how different forms of moral justifications are related to preferred punishments for specific crime events, and a qualitative content analysis to investigate possible mechanisms. We find that two types of moral reasoning are more likely to be used to justify punitive violence: (1) consequentialist reasoning which involves weighing the costs and benefits of an action; (2) and reasoning that dehumanizes accused criminals. Deontological justifications about the right or just action, while extremely common, are used fairly equally across arguments for and against punitive violence. Our study sheds light on the diverse moral frames employed to justify the endorsement of punitive violence.

中文翻译：

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犯罪后惩罚性暴力的道德推理和支持


在暴力猖獗和有罪不罚现象普遍存在的背景下，公民如何表达和证明他们对犯罪和惩罚的偏好？他们在讨论惩罚时采用什么样的道德逻辑和推理？对惩罚性惩罚的支持是否源于道德和义务论的担忧，即犯罪者需要受到惩罚，因为这是正确和适当的？或者人们支持惩罚性惩罚是因为他们认为惩罚性惩罚有效？为了解决这个问题，我们通过对墨西哥米却肯州受暴力影响的个人进行 62 次深入定性访谈，记录并分析了针对犯罪的惩罚偏好。我们对不同形式的道德理由与特定犯罪事件的首选惩罚之间的关系进行了定量分析，并进行了定性内容分析以调查可能的机制。我们发现两种类型的道德推理更有可能被用来证明惩罚性暴力的合理性：（1）结果主义推理，涉及权衡行动的成本和收益； (2) 使被指控的罪犯丧失人性的推理。关于正确或公正行动的义务论理由虽然极为常见，但在支持和反对惩罚性暴力的争论中相当平等地使用。我们的研究揭示了用来证明支持惩罚性暴力合理性的不同道德框架。