Discuss the relationship between the process of the criminalization of people, and their dehumanization, within the United States and British history

Based on the readings for Weeks 1 – 4, in 3 – 4 pages, discuss the relationship between the process of the criminalization of people, and their dehumanization, within the United States and British history. How is this process of criminalization, the rise of policing, and colonialism related?

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When criminal behavior brings harm to innocent people it has the capacity to arouse strong affective responses in third-party observers. Consider Bill Clare, who was found guilty of repeatedly raping a 6 year old girl and her 3 year old brother. The 3 year old died from the associated trauma [1]. He was sentenced to 39 years in prison and was the target of renewed calls for the death penalty for pedophiles [2]. Just the thought of Clare’s crime evokes a visceral response, not only to the criminal act, but to Clare himself.

Discuss the relationship between the process of the criminalization of people, and their dehumanization, within the United States and British history

Efforts to understand psychological responses to criminal behavior have generated a large body of knowledge within the fields of social cognition and law [3]–[10]. For example, when criminal behavior is seen as intentional (e.g., [11]–[13]), perpetrators are judged as more culpable, responsible, and blameworthy [14]–[19] and are punished more severely [20]. In these cases, when mitigating factors are scarce and crimes are viewed as intentional, people tend to endorse retributive forms of punishment [21], [22] and are highly sensitive to the harm done in forming judgements about punishment severity [22], [23].

This “just deserts” approach to punishment is grounded on the belief that offenders should be punished proportionately to the moral offensiveness and harmfulness of their crimes. Any future consequences of punishment (i.e., such as rehabilitation) become irrelevant [21]. An important factor in translating perceptions of harmfulness into recommendations for harsh punishment is the moral outrage that people feel in response to criminal acts [20]. People respond to moral transgressions with gut-level emotional responses [24]–[26] and these emotional responses play a central role in how people react to, and reason about, morally relevant behavior. Cross-cultural evidence highlights that feelings of contempt, anger, and disgust are specifically associated with these “third-party” responses to moral transgressions [27]. Providing empirical support for the role of moral outrage in punishment, Carlsmith et al. [23] found that moral outrage mediated the effects of perceived harm on the severity of recommended punishment.

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Feelings of moral outrage play an important role in determining punishment severity, but other factors may also play a role. In the current research we explored one such factor – dehumanization of the offender. Anecdotal evidence supports a link between dehumanization and punishment severity. For example, the use of dehumanizing language in victim impact statements is associated with the harshness of sentencing decisions by jurors [9]. Likewise, analyses of news articles about Black American offenders suggest an association between a portrayal of Black criminals as ape-like and likelihood to be executed by the state [28]. Theoretically, viewing others as lacking core human capacities and likening them to animals or objects [29] may make them seem less sensitive to pain, more dangerous and uncontrollable, and thus more needful of severe and coercive forms of punishment [30]–[32].

A series of studies investigating reactions to sex offenders provided some initial support for these possibilities [33]. This research found that likening sex-offenders to animals was positively correlated with endorsement of harsher punishment, reduced support for rehabilitation, exclusion from society, and support for violent treatment (e.g., castration). Although this previous work links dehumanization to support for harsh punishment, it has not been incorporated into models of retributive justice (i.e., [23]) or extended to other types of crime beyond sex offenses. Furthermore, Viki et al.’s [33] pioneering work did not examine how dehumanization may be related to moral outrage, and whether, like moral outrage, it may mediate the relationship between perceived harm and punishment severity.

We argue that both moral outrage and dehumanization of offenders may arise in response to morally reprehensible behavior and that both may independently influence punishment severity. Moreover, these two responses to criminal behavior may also be related to one another. Previous work suggests that moral emotions may be linked to dehumanization in a variety of ways. Viewing others as less human reduces feelings of guilt in harm doers and reduces reparations for past wrongdoings [34]. Dehumanizing others also facilitates moral disengagement from one’s actions [35]–[41]. This prior research indicates a link between dehumanization and self-focused emotional responses to our own immoral actions (e.g., guilt and shame). In the current studies, we examined the untested notion that experiencing moral outrage (e.g., disgust, anger and contempt) in response to others’ immoral actions would be associated with reduced perceptions of their humanity. In this way, just as past work has examined dehumanization as motivated by a desire to morally disengage from one’s own actions or those of one’s group, we examine dehumanization as motivated by a perception of others harmful and morally reprehensible behavior.