Rob Canton on How Moral Emotions Influence Attitudes Towards Punishment
In Crime, Punishment and Moral Emotions, Rob Canton highlights the significance of understanding how moral emotions influence the reactions to crime and views on punishment. Drawing from the work of Jonathan Haidt, Canton explains why the “ill-tempered” debates on punishment are defended so tenaciously by those holding such views.
Canton begins by highlighting why the focus on emotions is pertinent in understanding attitudes towards crime and punishment. He argues that while the governments claim to pursue “evidence-based” policymaking, in practice there’s a lack of agreement between “rationalised policy discourse” and the emotions that influence views on crime and punishment. While claiming how emotions have become overt in penal debates, Canton says:
“Emotion has become more overt in penal debate, with politicians and the mass media unabashed in evoking emotional and moralising responses to crimes. Politicians now seek to conjure emotions — usually punitive emotions — for political advantage rather than (as for most of the last century) seeing punitive sentiment as something to be suppressed and managed.”
Canton further submits that “justification” that underpins punishment is a moral undertaking, and therefore, criminal justice professionals must pay attention to the moralistic nature of their attitudes towards punishment. He also criticises the analytical practice of clearly demarcating emotions and cognitive as two separate zones. He says that criminological inquiry poses a risk of not only overtly distinguishing emotions and cognitive but also under-differentiating diverse set of emotions from each other. Instead, Canton suggests adopting Haidt’s model of differentiating between two different kinds of cognition — intuition and reasoning:
“Yet while the distinction between the emotional and the cognitive can be a useful device for exposition and analysis, the demarcation of these as discrete zones of psychological functioning is misleading. Feelings are not separate from cognition and may change in response to, for instance, the discovery of new information or to different descriptions of states of affairs. The emotional and the cognitive are entwined and mutually influential and a focus on the emotional character of attitudes towards punishment must not obscure this.”
Canton then goes on to propose that the emotions of punishment are “moral emotions” — emotions of judgment, righteousness and reprobation. To justify this, he highlights how punishment meets all the three criteria of moral emotions which are: ‘emotions are linked to the interests or welfare either of society as a whole or at least of persons other than the judge or agent; emotion is associated with prosocial action tendencies; emotions are typically articulated persuasively’.
After establishing this relationship, Canton goes on to apply Haidt’s insights on moral emotions of issues of crime and punishment:
- Care/Harm: Our care and compassion for the victim and our sensibility towards harm inform our outrage towards crimes. However, Canton believes that this moral emotion alone can’t explain the issues concerning punishment. For instance, he argues that the care and harm emotion doesn’t explain the selectiveness in punishment, where the powerful is not reprimanded in the same degree. It also, he continues, doesn’t explain not extending the compassionate attitude towards the family and dependents of the offenders.
- Fairness/Cheating: This moral emotion is sourced from the respect for fair-dealing and, therefore, resentment towards those who cheat and take undue advantage. This moral foundation can help explain attitudes supporting proportional retribution and consistency in sentencing. As Canton puts it:
“Perceived inconsistencies are troubling because they seem unfair. Sentencing guidelines and rules of precedent express this belief in fairness.”
3. Loyalty/Betrayal: This moral foundation explains the feeling of belongingness towards social order and denunciation of those who choose to betray the same. Therefore, punishment influences by this emotion can be seen as an expression of commitment to society, a symbolic act of calling for loyalty and solidarity among members:
“Exclusionary, in-group/out-group attitudes are also expressed in the language in which crime and punishment are discussed. The familiar metaphor of war against crime is instructive here, enjoining us to regard offenders — and by association their families and associates — as enemies to be conquered by force. An enemy is a legitimate target to whom empathy and compassion may not be extended. Liberal criminology appears as appeasement and perhaps treason.”
4. Authority/Subversion: The influence of this moral foundation perceives crime as erosion or subversion of authority, leading to the breakdown of social order. Those who hold the authority to punish claim that the harms inflicted by them are legitimate. The socio-legal order that defers to authority or seeks respect for the same informs the different mind-set in appraising the actions of those who claim to possess authority.
5. Sanctity/Degradation: Certain attitudes towards crime and punishment are influenced by the foundation of what is as ‘contaminating’, or ‘degrading the sanctity’. This moral foundation influences the attitudes to look at certain kind of crimes as a ‘disease’ and punishment as ‘an act of cleansing’.
6. Liberty/Oppression: This moral foundation is based on the hatred for those who misuse their power, creating solidarity among the masses to bring down the oppressor. Explaining how this moral emotion might influence punishment, Canton submits:
“This foundation explains the particular odium felt for those who exploit and
abuse the vulnerable. At the same time, it has a potential for a liberal opposition to punitivism. It challenges us to recognise that, always and everywhere, less powerful groups — especially the poor, women and minority ethnic groups — are at risk of oppressive treatment within the criminal justice system and frequently over-represented among penal populations. Again, at its strongest, this foundation can curb punitivism, insisting on limits to the nature and degree of criminal sanctions that may be imposed.”
Complement this with Ian Loader on the Affects of Punishment, and JL Mackie on Morality and Retributive Emotions.
