Moral Disengagement and Execution

Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement

Figure 1 presents the eight psychological mechanisms by which moral self-sanctions are suspended and the four sites in the moral control process where this can occur. At the behavioral locus, worthy ends are used to vindicate lethal means. This is achieved by moral and utilitarian justifications. They include biblical imperatives that murder must be avenged and the necessity to execute murderers to maintain societal order, deter others from homicidal crimes, and to spare societies the costs of life imprisonment. Euphemistic language sanitizes the taking of human life as simply a legal penalty and clothes executions in pallid legalese. Advantageous comparison renders executions merciful by contrasting them with the heinous homicides committed by the condemned inmates.

At the agency locus, one's role in the lethal activity is obscured or minimized by displacement and diffusion of responsibility. The path to death of a condemned inmate involves fragmentation of the execution process across jurisdictional systems and sub-functions of the lethal procedure so that no one feels that he or she is the actual agent of the death penalty. At the outcome locus, the experience suffered during the execution is minimized or disputed. At the inmate locus, the condemned are dehumanized, bestialized, and blamed for bringing the execution on themselves by their heinous crimes.

Among the various mechanisms of moral disengagement, moral justification is especially influential because it serves a dual function. Investing lethal means with moral and humanitarian purposes both enlists moral engagement in the service of the enterprise and disengages self-censure for those who have to implement the deathly means. The mechanisms usually work in concert. Moreover, they operate at the social systems level as well as at the individual level.

Moral disengagement is enlisted at each of the three levels in the application of the death penalty—at the [Page 517]societal, judicial, and execution levels. At the societal level, moral disengagement eases the public's qualms about the use of executions for capital offenses. The higher the moral disengagement, the stronger the public support for the death penalty. Moral concerns are mitigated when state executions are viewed in the abstract under the sanitized label of “capital punishment.”

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