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Missing from the picture: Men imprisoned for ‘moral crimes’ in Afghanistan

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Introduction

The law: men and consensual sexual crimes in afghan criminal codes, the numbers: men in prison for moral crimes, table 1: men and women imprisoned for adultery, running away and rape, preliminary conclusions.

Recent years have seen sustained focus on the prosecution of Afghan women and girls for ‘moral crimes’ such as adultery and ‘running away’. However, many Afghan men are also charged with and convicted for moral crimes. This paper examines how Afghan law penalizes men for consensual heterosexual acts, and presents statistics suggesting that hundreds of men are currently imprisoned for such ‘moral crimes’ in the country. It argues that although women are particularly vulnerable to prosecution for moral crimes in Afghanistan, debates and advocacy over this issue must include men’s experiences too.

This paper provides a first discussion of a neglected topic in debates and activism about gender equality in Afghanistan – the prosecution of men for ‘moral crimes’, or more specifically, consensual heterosexual crimes such as adultery and elopement. Research and advocacy have almost exclusively focused on women and girls’ imprisonment for moral crimes. We argue that although women and girls are particularly vulnerable to charges of moral crimes, this does not justify a total omission of men’s experiences and situations. Men are not exempted from the controls imposed on sexuality in Afghan society and by the Afghan state, even if such controls are applied somewhat differently to men than to women. This paper summarizes how Afghan criminal law penalizes male consensual heterosexual acts, and presents some initial statistics suggesting that hundreds of men are currently incarcerated for such crimes. It ends with some pointers regarding the need for further research on the topic.

The imprisonment of women for consensual sexual crimes such as adultery, attempted adultery and ‘running away from home,’ has received a fair amount of attention and scrutiny in post-2001 Afghanistan. At any one time during this period, between 300 and 600 women have been incarcerated in Afghan prisons for these ‘moral crimes’ (Human Rights Watch 2013; Human Rights Watch 2016). Activists and human rights workers – both local and international – have kept track of the number of women in jail for moral crimes, provided legal aid, and engaged systematically with the Afghan authorities on the issue. In particular, they have criticized the imprisonment of women for ‘running away from home’, pointing out that, in contrast to actual adultery (zina), running away from home (farar az manzel, lit. ‘escaping from the house’)2 is not listed as a crime in Afghan law.

(...) there is a noticeably lack of attention to the fate of men in debates and advocacy over moral crimes. Whilst there have been several reports on the number of women in jail for ‘moral’ crimes, we know of no attempts to map the number of men charged with, or imprisoned, for the same crimes.

Afghan legal officials have responded to this criticism by invoking article 130 of the Afghan Constitution, which they see as permitting the application of Islamic fiqh3 in matters not covered by codified legislation. In 2010, the Supreme Court issued an advisory directive4  sanctioning the charging of women who run away from home by defining it as ‘attempted adultery’ (eqdam ba jorm-e zina). This directive spelled out why, according to Sharia, women running away from home were committing a punishable crime. It argued that ‘runaway’ women who went to the home of ‘strangers’ (lovers, friends, neighbors) rather than straight to the appropriate authorities (police or judiciary) or to the house of relatives or legal intimates (mahram- e shara’i) were in danger of committing actions prohibited by Sharia, such as adultery or prostitution. By relying on the principle of the means of prevention in fiqh (sa’d-e- zaraye), the judges of the Supreme Court constructed a new legal category of ‘attempted zina’ on the basis of which runaway women are being prosecuted in state courts.

Subsequent government statements suggest there is some disagreement within the justice sector over whether women going to the house of ‘strangers’ can be charged with a crime. In 2012, the Attorney General’s Office issued a directive stating that ‘running away’ has not been criminalized under Afghan law and state prosecutors should not file criminal cases under this term (cited in Hashimi 2017).5 However, the Supreme Court has continued to insist on the distinction between those women approaching recognized authorities and those fleeing to the houses of strangers. When asked by international actors to clarify whether running away from domestic abuse was a crime, the court issued another instruction on the issue. It declared that the actions of those women who leave their homes to escape family violence and importantly, who immediately ‘go to the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, legal aid organizations or their relatives’ houses do not constitute a crime’ (cited in Hashimi, 2017:217). It also stated that those running away for the purpose of moral crimes should be prosecuted, but legal officials should not use the term ‘runaway’ for such cases (ibid).

Legal practices in Afghanistan clearly discriminate against women. An explicit government policy, as spelled out in the Supreme Court directive, states that women can be punished not only for actual sexual acts – the crime of zina – but also for simply abandoning or moving beyond spaces supervised by close relatives or state authorities. This policy must be understood as part of a broader patriarchal gender regime in which women’s bodies must be tightly monitored and placed under authorized surveillance (either by the family or the state), and where the chastity of women is given infinitively more importance than the chastity of men. As such, women’s scope for moral transgressions is much more limited than those of men.

Nonetheless, there is a noticeably lack of attention to the fate of men in debates and advocacy over moral crimes. Whilst there have been several reports on the number of women in jail for ‘moral crimes’, we know of no attempts to map the number of men charged with, or imprisoned, for the same crimes. In fact, even media reports on individual cases of women charged with moral crimes seldom report on the fate of their male partners, who might be facing jail sentences of up to 15 years.6

Below, we undertake an initial survey of when and how men might be prosecuted and convicted for consensual heterosexual acts under the Afghan legal system.7 We present Afghan government statistics indicating that the number of men imprisoned for moral crimes are in the hundreds, possibly even surpassing that of women. We discuss what we can and cannot conclude from these numbers, including from the statistics that actually suggest a considerable number of men are serving prison sentences specifically ‘for running away’ from home.

The Afghan criminal code makes the act of zina – sexual intercourse between a man and a woman not married to each other – a criminal offense.8 Under the 1976 penal code, in force until February 2018, zina was punishable with between 5 and 15 years in prison. Afghanistan’s new penal code, currently in force,9 has reduced the maximum punishment to 5 years imprisonment.10 The zina provisions in both laws apply to both men and women equally, with no differentiation.

However, the question of exactly what constitutes ‘Afghan law’ is disputed. In the early 20th century, Afghan ruler King Amanullah, then presiding over one of the few sovereign Muslim countries in the world, consolidated a unique legal system based on a pioneering combination of Islamic fiqh and codified law (Ahmed 2017). Since then, the place of Islam in Afghan state law has been understood in radically different ways by the country’s legal scholars and practitioners. As mentioned above, article 130 in the Afghan Constitution permits the application of Hanafi fiqh in matters not covered by codified law.11 To more secular oriented legal officials, this article merely provides a small, supplementary and limited role for uncodified fiqh. To others, article 130 reflects an overall perspective on Afghan law as proceeding in its totality from divine sources– the Quran and the Sunnah, the saying and deeds of the Prophet. As such, the country’s written codes (qanon) are derived from fiqh,12 and at the same time they make up only a part of the overall applicable legal framework.13 It is based on this second view that the Afghan Supreme Court has officially and explicitly sanctioned the prosecution and imprisonment of women for ‘attempted zina’, even though ‘attempted zina’ is not defined as a crime in the penal code.14

The Supreme Court directive (Approval 572) was a response to human rights officials and others demanding an explanation for the many women they had found in Afghan prisons convicted for ‘running away.’ Our research suggests, however, that Afghan jails also contain men charged with or convicted for moral crimes, including ‘running away’ from home. In turn, this means that also when it comes to men, an assessment of applicable Afghan law regarding moral crimes would need to go beyond codified law, i.e. the penal code.

Finally, it should be added that in the 1976 penal code, in force until very recently, zina also referred to coerced scenarios (i.e. rape).15 In practice, therefore, men (and very rarely, women)16 could be charged with both ‘consensual’ and ‘coerced’ zina under the 1976 code. As discussed below, this significantly impacts the practical possibility of identifying the number of men incarcerated for consensual sexual crimes – since actual records might not differentiate between rape and consensual adultery. The 2018 penal code and a 2009 separate piece of legislation on violence against women clearly differentiate between rape (tajavoz-e jinsi) and consensual adultery, reserving the term zina for consensual acts only. However, the 2009 law has been applied selectively by prosecutors and judges, with many preferring to only apply the 1976 code (Wimpelmann 2017). Whether the new penal code will have a significant impact on the adjudication of moral crimes remains to be seen.

Very little statistical data on criminal justice is readily available in Afghanistan. Although the Supreme Court collects records of individual court cases at all levels, it does not process or publish this in a form that provides information on conviction rates or detailed specification on types of crime. Neither are records specified by the gender of the offenders.17 Likewise, the Attorney General’s Office maintains individual file records, albeit in tabulated form, but does not publish statistical information related to moral crimes. A long running project intended to create an online database containing the status of all legal cases in the country apparently remains work in progress.18

We know of no published estimations of the numbers of men imprisoned for ‘moral crimes’ in Afghanistan.

This dearth of available statistics has been a major challenge to researchers and human rights workers who have sought information about women’s treatment in the Afghan justice system. They have had no option but to create their own datasets, through review and compilation of individual case files. Such undertakings could require months, if not years, of efforts by multiple-member research teams. For instance, when the Ministry of Women’s Affairs published an overview of the outcomes of registered cases of violence against women over a one year period, it was based on extensive research over several years (MOWA 2014). A 2012 research report on women’s imprisonment for moral crimes (HRW 2012) similarly found no statistics. To establish the grounds for the incarceration of women for moral crimes, Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed female prisoners (58 in total) in six different prisons and juvenile detention centers and when available, reviewed the women of girl’s individual records on file with the prison authorities and the prosecutor’s office.

When it comes to male prisoners and moral crimes, no corresponding undertakings appear to have been initiated. We know of no previously published estimations of the numbers of men imprisoned for ‘moral crimes’ in Afghanistan. The closest appears to be a 2008 UN report, which provides details on the number and legal grounds of imprisonment of juvenile boys – but not adult men (UNODC 2008). This report found that around 13 percent of all male juveniles were incarcerated for moral crimes19 – 52 boys. 35 female juveniles were incarcerated for the same crimes. The 2008 report notes that there is no data available for the legal grounds of the imprisonment of adult male inmates. Some ten years later, however, the Central Prisons Directorate under the Ministry of Interior provided our research team with data on men (and women) incarcerated for various moral crimes; categorized by the gender of the offenders and their place of incarceration (judicial custody and/or prison). The table below shows the number of male and female inmates (nationwide) in the Afghan prison system, as recorded by the Prisons Directorate in recent years, for the following moral crimes: adultery, running away from home and rape.

To our knowledge, the figures in Table 1 represent the first government data available about the number of adult men imprisoned for consensual sexual crimes in post-2001 Afghanistan. The figures are rather astonishing at first sight. Not only do they contradict commonly held assumptions that Afghan men commit sexual transgressions with impunity, they also suggest that men are incarcerated for moral crimes at a much higher rate than women. Nonetheless, these numbers must be treated with considerable caution.

Firstly, given that zina is applied to both forced and consensual sexual acts, the figures of men imprisoned for zina are likely to include a considerable number of men who have been convicted for ‘forced’ zina – i.e. rape. Even some of the men imprisoned for ‘consensual’ zina are likely to have forced themselves upon their co-defendants, since legal aid providers and others have repeatedly found female rape victims to be imprisoned for adultery instead.

Secondly, the number of men imprisoned for zina also includes those arrested in police raids on brothels, a situation where coercion can also be said to feature, since many women are forced into prostitution. In such raids, the number of men present, and therefore arrested, are typically higher than the number of women, which may go some way in explaining the higher number of men imprisoned for zina compared to women.

Thirdly, it is possible that the gender of some of these people might simply have been wrongly recorded, so that some of those appearing as men in the records might actually be women.21

Most strikingly, the statistics we have obtained indicate that a large number of men are currently in prison for ‘running away’ from home (farar az manzel).

These caveats should not detract from the fact that the statistics on male inmates merits further investigation. The fact that the number of females imprisoned for zina and running away in the Prisons Directorate’s data is broadly consistent with the patterns documented over the years – between 300 and 600 at any one time– is a good-enough reason to take the Prison Directorate’s figures on male prisoners seriously. It should be added that female prisoners have often benefited from the Afghan state’s pardoning policies, for example female prisoners detained for moral crimes are regularly pardoned by the President during Eid. The practice of pardoning women and not men for moral crimes might partly explain the high number of men detained for consensual sexual moral crimes, as reflected in official records.

Most strikingly, the statistics we have obtained indicate that a large number of men are currently in prison for ‘running away’ from home (farar az manzel).22 For example, in the year 1395 (201623) 298 men and 90 women were in prison on this basis whereas in 1396 (2017) 239 men and 88 women were imprisoned. In both years, the number of men imprisoned for running away was more than three times those of women. Given that Afghan legal and judicial authorities have never publicly endorsed the prosecution of men for ‘running away’, we sought further clarifications from the relevant government authorities (specifically from the Attorney General’s Office) in order to better understand the legal grounds for the incarceration of men currently serving jail time for ‘running away’ from home. As a result of our inquires, the Attorney General’s Office has initiated a judicial review of the case files of the 25 male prisoners presently recorded as serving jail terms for running away in Kabul’s central prison.

Even at this stage, our conversations with legal officials and practitioners suggest that men are regularly prosecuted for running away —and more generally, that the practice is endorsed by many Afghan legal officials. In particular, many legal officials see it as problematic that Afghan codified law does not criminalize, or as they prefer to put it ‘is not very clear’ about the act of running away ‘in cases involving a married or engaged women’.24 Engagement has no status as a legally binding agreement in Afghanistan, and even married women do not violate any codified law in Afghanistan by ‘running away’, as long as the act of zina does not feature. But as mentioned previously, many legal officials hold the view that Afghan law in its totality cannot be reduced to its legal codes. Consequently, and based on the view that running away with a married or engaged women is a violation of Sharia, if not codified law, some legal officials report that they apply article 130 of the Constitution and charge both the woman and the man with running away.

It should be noted that whilst women are also deemed to be committing a crime when they run away on their own, men are said to be running away only when they run away with a woman. But even if the basis for men’s incrimination in cases of running away is narrower, it nevertheless appears to occur frequently. Indeed, it has been specifically suggested that in cases involving the running away of an engaged or married woman, her male co-eloper is considered a ‘partner in crime’ and as such liable for prosecution by the state.25 The men convicted for actual zina also deserve further attention. Previous research and media reports suggest that numerous men are convicted of zina in the context of elopement. These are cases where a man and a woman have eloped with the intention of getting married. Often, the woman is already engaged to another man, sometimes with the unwanted marriage imminent. In other cases, the parents of the woman have been unwilling to agree to a match proposed by their daughter, upon which the woman runs away with the man of her choice. Whatever the case, Afghan codified law recognizes the right of men and women of majority age to marry without a guardian’s permission, and explicitly states that ‘carrying away a women for the purpose of marriage’ is not a crime (Article 425/ 599 in the 1976 and 2018 Penal Codes respectively).

Despite these legal guarantees, eloped couples often face numerous hurdles to getting married, which in turn might lead to charges of zina: local mullahs might refuse to perform the nikah (marriage rites) of an eloped couple. Our research also shows that even courts in Kabul might create extra-legal obstacles to eloped couples wanting to marry, such as consent of parents, proof of virginity (from women), proof of identity (a tazkira can only be issued on the basis of the father’s tazkira, thus requiring his consent), affidavits from witnesses, or reconciliation between the two families before a nikah can be officiated by a judge in the family court. Men (and women) might also find themselves convicted for zina based on flawed or circumstantial evidence. If a hymen examination, routinely forced upon eloped women,26 is held to show that an unmarried woman is not virgin, both parties might be charged with, and convicted of zina. Some judges are also inclined to rule that any unmarried couple who have spent time in privacy are guilty of adultery.

The debate on moral crimes prosecutions in Afghanistan has almost exclusively focused on women, but as researchers have long argued, patriarchal gender orders also marginalize certain men (Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994; Connell 1995). In the kinds of scenarios discussed in this paper, men – typically poor, young and lower status – feature as victims of patriarchal gender relations alongside their female partners. Like their female counterparts, many men are imprisoned for consensual zina, and – as it appears – merely for running away. It is certainly the case that women are, as a gender, more vulnerable to moral crimes charges, and they generally face more severe repercussions – both socially and legally. However, the disproportionate impact on women should not justify complete disregard for the plight of their male counterparts.

At the time of writing, we await further numbers and investigations on this issue, including verified statistical data from the Attorney General’s Office and the result of their internal investigation regarding 25 men currently held in Kabul’s central prison for ‘running away’. However, the numbers obtained from the Central Prisons Directorate, as well as other preliminary investigations strongly suggest that more focus on the incarceration of men for moral crimes is warranted. Admittedly, with the overall legal system in Afghanistan displaying severe weaknesses, the hundreds of men imprisoned for moral crimes are only a fraction of the male prison population, estimated at around 25,000. Many other of these 25,000 inmates might have also suffered unjust treatment in the courts. From this perspective, it might seem unfair to single out for attention only those men who are incarcerated specifically for (heterosexual) moral crimes.

However, if the starting point is to problematize the Afghan state’s prosecution of consensual relations outside of marriage, then the complete exclusion of men from the picture seems a glaring omission. The relative attention and support provided to women incarcerated for moral crimes has brought about real positive effects. The yearly rounds of presidential pardons have included significant numbers of women convicted for moral crimes. Women charged with moral crimes have also been more or less guaranteed free legal representation in recent years (Day and Rahbari 2017).

From this perspective, it only seems reasonable to ask how many men are in fact jailed for adultery and running away. The data presented in this brief represents a first and initial attempt to answer this question. It indicates that hundreds of Afghan men are currently in prison for consensual (hetero) sexual relations, including running away. More comprehensive research is needed to uncover the legal grounds for their imprisonment and to better understand how many men have been affected by the Afghan state’s prosecution of moral crimes.

A first step would be the release of the results of the Attorney General’s Office’s investigation regarding imprisonment of the 25 men for ‘running away’ in Kabul’s central prison. Moreover, similar investigations should be undertaken across all the provinces in Afghanistan. We also welcome the release of the Case Management System data on men’s prosecution and imprisonment for moral crimes. However, establishing a comprehensive, detailed picture of men’s imprisonment for moral crimes would require in depth studies of a substantial number of individual cases, including men convicted for zina as well as ‘running away’. In other words, efforts similar to those already undertaken over the Afghan state’s punitive actions against women for ‘moral crimes’.

1     The research upon which this paper is based forms part of the research project New Afghan Men? Marriage, Masculinities and Sexual Politics in Contemporary Afghanistan, funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant 249707), carried out by Peace Training and Research Organization and Chr. Michelsen Institute. We want to thank Masooma Sa’adat for her tireless, persistent and skillful research assistance. We also want to thank Deniz Kandiyoti, Magnus Marsden and Siavash Rahbari for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

2     The phrase ‘escaping from the house’ is a more accurate translation of the Dari term farar az manzel. However, since the term ‘running away’ has so far been used in English language discussions about the topic, we have chosen to use this latter term.

3     In Muslim-majority countries, the basis of law has historically been the will of God, and fiqh refers to the methodology of ascertaining legal conclusions from divine sources (the Quran and the Sunnah- sayings and deeds of the Prophet). Sharia, whilst sometimes used interchangeably with fiqh, refers to rules of God and thus includes a broader domain of life, such as fasting and praying (see Wimpelmann, 2017, 182).

4     High Council of Supreme Court Approval #572, dated 24 August 2010.

5      Hashimi argues that the AGO directive is open to misuse because it adds ”other circumstances where people runaway to commit any other crime is not covered [by this directive]” (2017: 217).

6     ‘Moral crimes’ (jarayem-e akhlaqi) might also refer to other, non-sexual acts deemed contrary to public moral and religion, such as drinking and gambling. In fact, government records sometimes include these acts under the rubric of moral crimes. In this paper, we use the term moral crimes to refer to sexual crimes only. Also, we only cover heterosexual crimes.

7     Men are also charged with and convicted of lawat (sodomy). The prosecution of homosexual acts in the Afghan justice system is beyond the scope of this study, but it is certainly a question meriting further research.

8     In classical Islamic jurisprudence, zina is one of several crimes of Hudood. The definition, punishment and evidentiary requirements of Hudood crimes are derived from holy sources (the Quran and the Sunnah- the sayings and deeds attributed to the Prophet). As such, Hudood crimes are invested with special religious significance, and to formally abolish Hudood would represent a secularization of law. Hudood punishments are formally recognized in the current Afghan Penal Code (Article 2 (2) but largely not enforced in practice. The Hudood punishment for zina is stoning to death if the perpetrator is married, and lashing if he or she is not.

9     The new penal code (as the previous one) has been enacted as a presidential decree and must be submitted to the parliament for ratification.

10     Both the old and the new penal codes also explicitly recognize the Hudood punishment for zina (Article 643 (2) in the 2018 code and article 426 in the 1976 code) - but without spelling out these punishments.

11     Article 130 reads: “In cases under consideration, the courts shall apply provisions of this Constitution as well as other laws. If there is no provision in the Constitution or other laws about a case, the courts shall, in pursuance of Hanafi jurisprudence, and, within the limits set by this Constitution, rule in a way that attains justice in the best manner.”

12     See footnote 3.

13     For a (rare) analysis of the early development of Afghanistan’s rather unique combination of codified law and Sharia, see (Ahmed 2017).

14     Approval 572, dated 24 August 2010 (1389/6/2), High Council of Supreme Court of Afghanistan. Some would argue that the enactment of the new penal code in February 2018 renders this advisory directive null and void, since the new penal code supersedes the directive.

15     The definition of all sexual intercourse (whether consensual and coercive) out of wedlock as the crime of ‘zina’ is in line with classical understandings of Islamic law (Azam 2015). The 1976 penal code therefore signals adherence to Islamic jurisprudence. For the same reason, despite the establishment of rape as a distinct crime in the 2009 EVAW law, many prosecutors and judges still prefer to use the word zina to refer to rape, sometimes (but not always) applying the term ‘forced zina’ (zina bil jabr). However, reading the 1976 penal code’s provisions on zina (articles 425-429) one is inclined to conclude that these were written mainly with rape in mind, since the articles formulate a number of aggravating factors applicable to rape scenarios. Most likely, the term zina was inserted as a late compromise to placate more conservative groups who wanted a stricter adherence to classical fiqh. Indeed, (Samandary 2014) suggests that the initial text of the law used ‘rape’ and that zina only appeared in a later version . Whatever the case, the articles have in practice been used to adjudicate both consensual zina and rape.

16    As abettors to the crime.

17     Upon our request, the Supreme Court made available the following figures; in 1394 there were 3520 convictions for moral crimes and 451 convictions for rape (tajavoz-e jinsi). The corresponding numbers for 1395 were 2197 and 285 respectively. There were no further specifications of the type of offenses contained in the moral crime category or information about the offenders’ gender.

18     We have been informed by AGO that the Case Management System (CMS) database, currently operated by a private international contractor contain technical errors that needs to be corrected before we can access data about the prosecution of men for moral crimes. One example we were given relates to the gender specification of offenders; the gender of some of the female offenders had been wrongly recorded as male.

19     The figure is believed to include an unspecified number of boys convicted of lawat (sodomy). The authors note that these boys might in reality have been raped.

20     The Afghan year 1394 corresponds to 21 March 2015-20 March 2016, 1395 corresponds to 21 March 2016-20 March 2017 and so on.

21     It appears that this error has occurred at a large scale in the Case Management System (CMS), an online database set up by donors to provide up to date information on the status of all legal cases in the country. The CMS is designed to collect and centrally process case information from all the different judicial organs, including the Supreme Court, Attorney General’s Office, Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Interior. The default gender category in the CMS is male and those entering data might have failed to change the gender to female in many cases. AGO staff compiling data from the CMS found up to 140 cases of ‘running away’ where it appeared that women had incorrectly been recorded as men. Our request for access to the data on moral crimes in the Case Management System has been put on hold by the Attorney General’s Office following the discovery of this mistake. We have been informed that we will receive new data from AGO once the technical errors had been rectified. At the time of writing it is unclear when the process of reviewing and correcting the data in the CMS will be finalized and how soon after we might get access to this data.

22     The Attorney General’s Office claims to have ceased prosecutions for running away in 1395 (2016). We have not seen any instructions issued by the AGO to that effect. Neither have we been able to access data that would verify this claim, such as details of indictments and convictions by year. The statistics from the Prisons Directorate simply provides the number of inmates currently imprisoned for running away at any one time, it does not tell us anything about the year of conviction.

23     See footnote 20.

24     Interviews with legal officials and lawyers in Kabul, autumn 2017.

25     Personal communication by a member of the research team with a group of prosecutors in the Attorney General’s Office in Kabul, 11 December 2017.

26    Following pressure from human rights activists, Article 640 of the new penal code lists virginity tests without the women’s consent or the order of an authorized court a sexual assault, punishable by short term imprisonment.

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Cornwall, A. and N. Lindisfarne, Eds. (1994). Dislocating Masculinities: Comparative Ethnographies. London, Routledge.

Day, D. and S. Rahbari (2017). Legal Aid Assessment and Roadmap (LAAR). Kabul, Asia Foundation: 1-256.

Hashimi, G. (2017). ”Defending the Principle of Legality in Afghanistan: Towards a Unified Interpretation of Article 130 to the Afghan Constitution.” Oregon Review of International Law 18(185): 185-226.

Human Rights Watch (2013) ”Afghanistan: Surge in Women Jailed for ‘Moral Crimes’. Prosecute Abusers, Not Women Fleeing Abuse.”

Human Rights Watch (2016) ”Afghanistan: End ‘Moral Crimes’ Charges, ‘Virginity’ Tests

President Ghani Should Honor Pledge not to Arrest Women Fleeing Abuse.”

MOWA (2014). First Report on the Implementation of the Elimination of Violence against Women ( EVAW) Law in Afghanistan Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

Samandary, W. (2014). Shame and Impunity: Is violence against women becoming more brutal? Kabul, Afghan Analyst Network.

UNODC (2008). Afghanistan. Implementing Alternatives to Imprisonment, in line with International Standards and National Legislation. Assessment Report. Vienna/ New York, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: 1-101

Wimpelmann, T. (2017). The Pitfalls of Protection: Gender, Violence, and Power in Afghanistan. California: University of California Press.

Torunn Wimpelmann

• [email protected]
• +47 48198799

Aziz Hakimi

• [email protected]
• +47 947 987 19

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'I Had to Run Away': Women and Girls Imprisoned for 'Moral Crimes'

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Hundreds of Women, Girls Jailed for ‘Moral Crimes’

Government Should Target Abusers, Not Victims

(Kabul, March 28, 2012) – The Afghan government should release the approximately 400 women and girls imprisoned in Afghanistan for “moral crimes,” Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The United States and other donor countries should press the Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai to end the wrongful imprisonment of women and girls who are crime victims rather than criminals.

The 120-page report, “‘I Had to Run Away’: Women and Girls Imprisoned for ‘Moral Crimes’” in Afghanistan, is based on 58 interviews conducted in three prisons and three juvenile detention facilities with women and girls accused of “moral crimes.” Almost all girls in juvenile detention in Afghanistan had been arrested for “moral crimes,” while about half of women in Afghan prisons were arrested on these charges. These “crimes” usually involve flight from unlawful forced marriage or domestic violence. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina, sex outside of marriage, after being raped or forced into prostitution.

“It is shocking that 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban, women and girls are still imprisoned for running away from domestic violence or forced marriage,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “No one should be locked up for fleeing a dangerous situation even if it’s at home. President Karzai and Afghanistan’s allies should act decisively to end this abusive and discriminatory practice.”

The fall of the Taliban government in 2001 promised a new era of women’s rights. Significant improvements have occurred in education, maternal mortality, employment, and the role of women in public life and governance. Yet the imprisonment of women and girls for “moral crimes” is just one sign of the difficult present and worrying future faced by Afghan women and girls as the international community moves to decrease substantially its commitments in Afghanistan.

Human Rights Watch interviewed many girls who had been arrested after they fled a forced marriage and women who had fled abusive husbands and relatives. Some women interviewed by Human Rights Watch had gone to the police in dire need of help, only to be arrested instead.

“Running away,” or fleeing home without permission, is not a crime under the Afghan criminal code, but the Afghan Supreme Court has instructed its judges to treat women and girls who flee as criminals. Zina is a crime under Afghan law, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Women and girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch described abuses including forced and underage marriage, beatings, stabbings, burnings, rapes, forced prostitution, kidnapping, and murder threats. Virtually none of the cases had led even to an investigation of the abuse, let alone prosecution or punishment.

One woman, Parwana S. (not her real name), 19, told Human Rights Watch how she was convicted of “running away” after fleeing a husband and mother-in-law who beat her: “I will try to become independent and divorce him. I hate the word ‘husband.’ My liver is totally black from my husband… If I knew about prison and everything [that would happen to me] I would have just jumped into the river and committed suicide.”

Human Rights Watch said that women and girls accused of “moral crimes” face a justice system stacked against them at every stage. Police arrest them solely on a complaint of a husband or relative. Prosecutors ignore evidence that supports women’s assertions of innocence. Judges often convict solely on the basis of “confessions” given in the absence of lawyers and “signed” without having been read to women who cannot read or write. After conviction, women routinely face long prison sentences, in some cases more than 10 years.

Afghanistan’s 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women makes violence against women a criminal offense. But the same police, prosecutors, and judges who work zealously to lock up women accused of “moral crimes” often ignore evidence of abuse against the accused women, Human Rights Watch said.

“Courts send women to prison for dubious ‘crimes’ while the real criminals – their abusers –walk free,” Roth said. “Even the most horrific abuses suffered by women seem to elicit nothing more than a shrug from prosecutors, despite laws criminalizing violence against women.”

Abusive prosecution of “moral crimes” is important to far more than the approximately 400 women and girls in prison or pretrial detention, Human Rights Watch said. Every time a woman or girl flees a forced marriage or domestic violence only to end up behind bars, it sends a clear message to others enduring abuse that seeking help from the government is likely to result in punishment, not rescue.

The plight of women facing domestic violence is made still worse by archaic divorce laws that permit a man simply to declare himself divorced, while making it extremely difficult for a woman to obtain a divorce, Human Rights Watch said. The Afghan government made a commitment to reform these laws in 2007 under its National Action Plan for Women in Afghanistan, and a committee of experts drafted a new Family Law that would improve the rights of women. This new law, however, has been on hold with the government since 2010, with no sign of movement toward passage.

“It is long past time for Afghanistan to act on its promises to overhaul laws that make Afghan women second-class citizens,” Roth said. “Laws that force women to endure abuse by denying them the right to divorce are not only outdated but cruel.”

By maintaining discriminatory laws on the books, and by failing to address due process and fair trial violations in “moral crimes” cases, Afghanistan is in violation of its obligations under international human rights law. United Nations expert bodies and special rapporteurs have called for the repeal of Afghanistan’s “moral crimes” laws. The UN special rapporteur on violence against women has called on Afghanistan to “abolish laws, including those related to zina, that discriminate against women and girls and lead to their imprisonment and cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment.” The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has urged Afghanistan to “[r]emove so-called moral offences as a crime and release children detained on this basis.”

“The Afghan government and its international partners should act urgently to protect women’s rights and to ensure there is no backsliding,” Roth said. “President Karzai, the United States, and others should finally make good on the bold promises they made to Afghan women a decade ago by ending imprisonment for ‘moral crimes,’ and actually implementing their stated commitment to support women’s rights.”

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Study: 400 Afghan women jailed for "moral crimes"

March 28, 2012 / 7:37 AM EDT / AP

(AP) KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's criminal justice system has made little progress in the way it treats women accused of running away or adultery, despite public commitments from the Afghan president to protect women's rights, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

The New York-based group's report on women jailed for so-called "moral crimes" comes as many women's rights activists say they're worried that President Hamid Karzai will abandon promises to protect those rights as he tries to court the Taliban for peace talks. Under the Taliban regime, women were forced to wear body-and-face covering burqas and were not allowed out of the house without a male family member as an escort.

There is no entry in the Afghan penal code for the crime of "running away" and yet hundreds of women have been jailed for fleeing their families or husbands.

11 suicide vests found at Afghan military HQ Poll: Support for Afghan war hits all-time low Video: Gen. Allen says Afghan mission "essential"

Women interviewed by Human Rights Watch often said they were trying to escape abusive husbands or forced marriages. In some cases, those who had left were assumed to have cheated on their husbands, and therefore were jailed for adultery, which is a criminal offense in Afghanistan.

The report said police, prosecutors and judges routinely ignore women's accusations of abuse, arguing even in the face of physical evidence that women are either lying about the abuse or making it seem more severe than it was.

"What's needed first is the political will on behalf of the Afghan government to prosecute violence against women," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told reporters in Kabul.

In one case cited, prosecutors declined to file charges against the husband of a woman who went to police with wounds from being stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver. The prosecutor did not question that her husband had inflicted the wounds, but declined to prosecute him because the injuries had not been life-threatening. The woman, identified as Nilofar M., was then imprisoned for adultery because she told prosecutors she had invited another man to her house.

"Police, with a crime victim sitting in front of them, see a criminal instead," said Heather Barr, the group's Afghanistan researcher and author of the report.

The report is based on interviews in October and November with 58 women and girls in Afghanistan who have been jailed for "moral crimes" — primarily running away from home or adultery. About 400 women are currently in Afghan prisons because of moral crimes, the report said. That's lower than in August 2010, when the U.N. reported that 565 women were in detention in Afghanistan for moral crimes.

But those 400 remain imprisoned despite a numbers of releases by President Hamid Karzai of groups of women accused of moral crimes in recent years. In the most recent such incident, Karzai announced a blanket pardon earlier this month for women who ran away from their parents to make a love match or who chose a different husband than their families wanted. The government says it is working on identifying and releasing these women.

Neither the Interior Ministry, which controls the police and the prisons, nor the attorney general's office responded to calls seeking comment.

A spokesman for the Supreme Court said that men and women are treated equally in Afghanistan's laws and courts.

"The courts of this country hear equally cases of all Afghan citizens, without paying attention to whether they are men or women," spokesman Abdul Wakhil Omery. He said the chief justice had seen the Human Rights Watch report, but did not find specific enough evidence to prove wrongdoing or negligence in any individual cases.

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Why young people commit crime and how moral education could help – new research

Senior lecturer in Criminology, Anglia Ruskin University

Disclosure statement

Dr Neema Trivedi-Bateman received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to carry out this work.

Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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There is a significant link between moral emotions and offending behaviour in young people. Moral emotions are learnt – and more attention needs to be given to the teaching of morals in childhood to address this link between morality and crime.

My research has proved that young people are more likely to carry out violent acts if they have weak empathy, shame and guilt, and if they do not feel violence is wrong. On the surface, this may seem obvious, but the research provides a new, evidence-based clarity about the decisions that lead to crime. It was previously thought that other personal factors – such as lack of self-control or social disadvantage – or external factors like the opportunity to commit crime were at the root of why crime occurs.

Having poor morals doesn’t mean that a young person is inherently bad. Morality is learnt in childhood. It is the people that we spend time with that teach us morals . It follows that if someone’s moral development is insufficient, they shouldn’t be immediately labelled as “bad” but that they have had inadequate or misguided teaching from the important people in their life.

Moral development programmes should be developed and taught to children to reduce the likelihood of them growing up to believe that criminal behaviour could be seen as morally acceptable. Moral education should be considered to be as crucial as nutrition, health, and formal education for our future generations to thrive.

Moral emotions

I carried out in-depth interviews with 50 young and prolific violent offenders, looking at the role of moral emotions in the decision to commit violence. I asked them about their most recent act of violence. In some cases, this had occurred the day before the interview itself.

My findings provided evidence that empathy, shame and guilt were lacking. For example, when asked “did you feel ashamed or guilty when others found out?” one person responded that “there’s not much guilt involved in the whole situation to be honest”.

My findings are backed up by the results of a groundbreaking study carried out at the University of Cambridge. I worked with the study team for eight years and led the research team during some of the interview phases.

The Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development study (PADS+) tracked the lives of a large, representative sample of young people for ten years, a unique and thorough approach to discovering how and why we behave in certain ways.

Around 4% of the study sample – roughly only 35 young people – were responsible for almost half of all total crimes reported by approximately 700 people across a ten-year period from the age of 12 until they reached 22.

This small handful of individuals reported weak moral emotions: empathy, shame and guilt. We found that the individuals who reported the weakest moral emotions admitted to involvement in, on average, 71 crimes. By contrast, those reporting the strongest sense of moral emotion only admitted involvement in one crime.

Peer influence

Young people tend to spend most of their time with parents or primary caregivers, teachers and their peer groups. If a child’s peers or parents don’t think it’s wrong to commit a crime, or lack empathy or guilty feelings towards the people affected by that crime, then this a likely to affect how the young person feels as well. Research shows that lack of guilt for rule-breaking behaviour can be displayed from as young as three .

It is very likely that the primary and critical time windows for morality development begin in early childhood, and extend to later childhood and adolescence. It appears that major life events – such as having stable relationships with family members or a partner, or a job, or having a child – can reinforce one’s moral code and reduce the likelihood of offending behaviour.

This partially explains the dip in the age-crime curve , which is a general and widely reported trend: young people peak in terms of offending in middle to late adolescence and reduce offending substantially by their early twenties.

Moral education

Research shows that spending time with people who provide examples of strong morals can lead to law-abiding behaviour. If a child does not successfully experience early bonding experiences and develop moral and emotional commitments to others, the development of empathy may be prevented or blocked .

Students absorb positive moral behaviours when surrounded with just and fair role models, rules, and interactions . Schools that foster a sense of community and hold discussions about morality can provide this environment. But if environments that foster moral development are not prolonged and sustained across several years, the effect on moral behaviour may be shortlived .

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The role of substance use and morality in violent crime - a qualitative study among imprisoned individuals in opioid maintenance treatment

Ingrid amalia havnes.

1 Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital, PO Box 4956, Oslo, Nydalen 0424, Norway

2 SERAF - Norwegian Centre for Addiction Research, University of Oslo, PO Box 1039, Oslo, Blindern 0315, Norway

Thomas Clausen

Christina brux.

3 Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo, PO Box 1130, Oslo, Blindern 0318, Norway

Anne-Lise Middelthon

Opioid maintenance treatment (OMT) is regarded as a crime control measure. Yet, some individuals are charged with violent criminal offenses while enrolled in OMT. This article aims to generate nuanced knowledge about violent crime among a group of imprisoned, OMT-enrolled individuals by exploring their understandings of the role of substances in violent crime prior to and during OMT, moral values related to violent crime, and post-crime processing of their moral transgressions.

Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were undertaken among 12 OMT-enrolled prisoners. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. An exploratory, thematic analysis was carried out with a reflexive and interactive approach.

Prior to OMT, substances and, in particular, high-dose benzodiazepines were deliberately used to induce ‘antisocial selves’ capable of transgressing individual moral codes and performing non-violent and violent criminal acts, mainly to support costly heroin use. During OMT, impulsive and uncontrolled substance use just prior to the violent acts that the participants were imprisoned for was reported. Yet, to conduct a (violent) criminal act does not necessarily imply that one is without moral principles. The study participants maintain moral standards, engage in complex moral negotiations, and struggle to reconcile their moral transgressions. Benzodiazepines were also used to reduce memories of and alleviate the guilt associated with having committed violent crimes.

Conclusions

Substances are used to transgress moral codes prior to committing and to neutralize the shame and guilt experienced after having committed violent crimes. Being simultaneously enrolled in OMT and imprisoned for a (violent) crime might evoke feelings of ‘double’ shame and guilt for both the criminal behavior prior to treatment and the actual case(s) one is imprisoned for while in OMT. Treatment providers should identify individuals with histories of violent behavior and, together with them, explore concrete episodes of violence and their emotional reactions. Particular attention should be given to potential relationships between substance use and violence and treatment approaches tailored accordingly. What appears as severe antisocial personality disorder may be partly explained by substance use.

Violent behavior cannot be attributed to any single factor; rather, a complexity of individual and environmental factors is involved [ 1 - 3 ]. Previous research identifies the following as among important factors associated with increased violence risk: earlier violent crime [ 4 ], ‘history of problems with other antisocial behavior’ [ 3 ], severe personality disorders [ 5 - 7 ], and substance abuse [ 8 , 9 ]. Most psychoactive substance use occurs among individuals who do not behave violently [ 8 ]. Nonetheless, the relationship between psychoactive substances and violence warrants attention and can be conceptualized as a tripartite model [ 10 , 11 ]: the systemic violence involved in the illegal drug market [ 10 , 12 - 14 ], the economic compulsive violence enacted to support costly drug use, and heroin use in particular [ 15 ], and the psychopharmacological violence that can occur during substance use, including acute intoxication, drug-seeking behavior associated with withdrawal, and episodes of drug-induced psychosis and paranoid symptoms [ 8 , 9 ].

Research suggests that alcohol is the substance most closely associated with aggression and violent behavior [ 8 , 9 , 16 ]. Violence has also been associated with the influence of stimulants like amphetamines/methamphetamines [ 17 , 18 ] and cocaine/crack cocaine [ 19 , 20 ]. Heavy and frequent use of amphetamines is also related to violence [ 17 ]. Disinhibitory benzodiazepine reactions, such as hostility, agitation, and loss of impulse control, have been reported [ 21 , 22 ], and high-dose benzodiazepine use is found to be a high risk factor for interpersonal violent crime [ 23 ]. Opioid use depresses activity and, thereby, temporarily inhibits violent behavior. During withdrawal, physical discomfort and agitation can result in violent behavior [ 8 ].

Opioid dependence is often associated with criminal activity [ 24 - 26 ]. Reductions in acquisitive and drug-related crime during opioid maintenance treatment (OMT) are widely reported [ 27 - 29 ]. Violent crime is found to be relatively uncommon among heroin users [ 30 - 32 ] and to decrease during OMT [ 33 , 34 ]. However, one group of individuals in OMT who had been convicted of violent crime prior to enrollment was found to have a higher risk of both violent and non-violent criminal convictions during OMT [ 34 ].

There is a need to gain a deeper understanding of criminal behavior among persons enrolled in OMT and, in particular, among those who exhibit violent behavior during treatment, thereby enabling treatment providers to tailor their treatment approaches accordingly and strategically incorporate violence risk management. This article aims to generate multifaceted and nuanced knowledge about violent crime among a group of imprisoned, OMT-enrolled individuals by exploring their understandings and articulations of the role of substances in violent crime prior to and during OMT, moral values related to violent crime, and post-crime processing of their moral transgressions.

The exploratory, qualitative study upon which this and two other articles [ 35 , 36 ] are based formed part of a larger study focusing on criminal convictions in a national OMT cohort [ 29 , 34 ]. Violence, in this study, is defined as actual, attempted, or threatened bodily harm to another person [ 3 ].

The Norwegian OMT program started in 1998 and was intended to reach a population of severely dependent heroin users who were not benefiting from other types of treatment [ 37 ]. Imprisoned, opioid-dependent individuals, including those serving long sentences, may enter the national OMT program. For individuals who are already enrolled in OMT when imprisoned, the treatment is continued [ 38 ].

Sampling and recruitment

The inclusion criteria were that the study participants were of or above legal age, in a state to provide informed consent and enrolled in OMT at the time of imprisonment for suspected crime. To minimize recall bias, the study design set a short time span between the arrest and the first interview in prison, thereby targeting remand prisoners. Recruitment occurred in prisons; prison staff contacted the prisoners and those who agreed to meet the first author were given written and verbal information about the study. Three individuals chose not to participate, explaining that they needed time to prepare for court or did not want to discuss negative life experiences or sensitive matters.

Data collection and analysis

28 one-hour long interviews were carried out in prison with the 12 participants. The interviews were conducted by IAH, who is a trained specialist in psychiatry. Most of the participants were interviewed between two and four times, though two individuals were interviewed only once due to short notice release from the remand wing. Given the exploratory character of the study, the interview guide was regularly revised [ 39 , 40 ]. We sought to narrativize topics [ 41 ] in order to facilitate nuanced, detailed, and concrete accounts of participant experiences, from their own perspectives.

To access normative responses on sensitive subjects, we sometimes utilized vignettes [ 42 ] and individualized guides were developed for subsequent interviews to validate findings from previous interviews [ 39 ] and facilitate cross-case analysis. Among the topics explored were the following: experiences with OMT, understandings of crime and violent behavior, understandings of substance use and its role in violent crime prior to and during OMT, norm systems and moral codes, life situations before imprisonment, and mental and physical health. The interviews were audio recorded, with the exception of one individual who preferred note-taking. Identification and analysis of emerging themes was jointly carried out by IAH and ALM as a ceaseless task that was integrated throughout the entire research process [ 43 ], and CB took part in the final stages of thematic analysis.

The biosocial model of violence and antisocial behavior [ 2 ] suggests that genes, environment, social, and biological factors can predispose individuals to aggression and violence and that biological and social risk factors can be linked to dysregulation of cognitive (thinking), affective (emotions), and motor (behaviors) brain processes. The findings from the thematic analysis have a special focus on how substance use were experienced by the participants to affect thinking, emotions, and behavior related to violent crime.

Sample characteristics

Twelve persons, nine men, and three women between 22 and 50 years of age, participated in the study. Ten individuals were formerly convicted of several accounts of violent crime. Four of the individuals had been released from prison between 1 week and 1 month prior to being reinstated in prison when they were included in this study. There were eight cases of imprisonment for violent offenses during the study period. Though we are obliged to remain vague for the sake of upholding ethical standards, the types of violence they were imprisoned for during OMT vary, including violent threats and physical violence towards family members and staff in the treatment system, threats and physical violence against police officers during arrest, grievous robberies, severe interpersonal violence, and interpersonal violence resulting in death.

Time previously served in prison ranged from 1.5 to 20 years. All participants had been opioid dependent and poly-drug users for nearly 10 years or more prior to OMT. Half the sample was homeless and, at the time of our first interview, time spent in OMT varied from a few months to nearly 10 years. All participants had tight medication control regimes due to non-compliance with treatment regulations at the time of imprisonment [ 36 ].

The study was approved by the Regional Committee for Medical Research Ethics, the Norwegian Social Science Data Services and the Norwegian Correctional Service Region East. All participants provided voluntary and written informed consent. In addition to the formal requirements, emphasis was placed on ensuring anonymity throughout the publication process.

This exploratory study generated rich, empirical material on a number of phenomena related to criminal and, in particular, violent behavior among OMT-enrolled individuals prior to imprisonment. In this article, we focus on the participants' experiences and understandings of substance use and altered perceptions of reality and behavior related to violent behavior , mostly prior to OMT, and experiences of uncontrolled substance use and violence during OMT . The last part of this section explores moral principles related to violent behavior , and particular attention is given to how the participants understand, rationalize, and/or struggle to reconcile their violent behavior.

Drug use and altered perceptions of reality and behavior prior to OMT

The participants of this study commonly recognized the ways in which various substances influence their behavior and contribute to violent crime. While many reported having induced violent and criminal behavior through instrumental drug use prior to OMT, they explained that, while enrolled in OMT, their substance use, though still contributing to violent behavior, is most often impulsive. Victor had been a drug dealer and debt collector for several years prior to enrolling in OMT. He has served nearly a decade in prison for property crimes, drug-related crimes, robberies, and interpersonal violence. He is well aware of his ability to temporarily alter his ‘personality’ by taking pills and, in an effort to enable criminal behavior, deliberately sought certain changes prior to OMT. He continues to do so while enrolled in OMT, but to a lesser extent:

I could eat 20–30 pills [flunitrazepam and clonazepam]. [..] – Then you change… poor contact with others and reality. Even though I'm well aware of how I change, I do it sometimes every now and then, that's why I get imprisoned, like now… When I take these pills, I change personality completely. I am not a nice person then. I get mean. My reality… I become unconcerned. I don't give a damn about what people say. If you try to stop me, don't wear a uniform or happen to be two persons… then you have to watch out, because you restrict me in my world - inside my head. Because inside my head this is normal. And when I come home, I sit down to watch TV and start to think: ‘shit, what have I done now?’ Then it's too late, and you might use pills the next day or later because you'd rather forget about it.

Victor participates in an anger management program and recognizes that he has a problem with violent behavior in general and, particularly, when his perception of reality is altered due to the influence of high-dose flunitrazepam. Based on his description above, he could then be temporarily characterized as callous, unempathetic, and hostile; but, after committing a violent crime, he is compelled to use more pills to reduce guilt, alleviate remorse, and attempt to forget.

Impulsivity is a personality trait that several of the participants claim to have, and one that several experience to be enhanced while using substances and, particularly, high-dose benzodiazepines.

Simon has a long history as a drug dealer prior to OMT and provides yet another example of altered behavior while under the influence of drugs. He had, at the time of the interview, served several sentences for convictions of violence. Prior to OMT, Simon frequently used flunitrazepam instrumentally to decrease inhibitions and enable himself to commit crimes. During OMT, this happened on a few occasions:

Pills get you damn impulsive… I've usually taken pills if I commit crimes. I don't have the nerve to do it when I'm sober.

He claimed that his criminal behavior was greatly reduced following OMT enrollment. However, when collecting his daily methadone dose from the pharmacy, he was accessible to illicit drug dealers who offered him ‘pills’ on a daily basis. He explained that, on a bad day, he might accept, even though he knew that this impulsive flunitrazepam use may subsequently lead to violence and crime. He defines a ‘relapse’ as taking 10 mg or more of flunitrazepam and, when asked how this drug affects him, responds:

I get damn aggressive. Rude. When it comes to crime and such, I overcome barriers, lose inhibitions… I've always been high [on flunitrazepam and alcohol], when I've been convicted of violence.

Finally, Simon was also clear that regular use of benzodiazepines makes him more aggressive. But, as he saw it, the manner and dose in which benzodiazepines are used is of importance for instrumentally reducing inhibitions and/or inducing impulsivity and aggressive behavior:

One valium [diazepam] doesn't get you high. It's the way you eat it. There's a difference between shaving your head and cutting it off.

Several participants described the ways in which they can deliberately lower their inhibitions, induce temporary antisociality and thereby enable themselves to commit violent and other crimes through strategic drug intake informed by the experience and knowledge obtained from years of carefully monitored substance use.

Experiencing and understanding uncontrolled substance use and violence during OMT

Participants of the study explain that their moral principles are also compromised by impulsive substance use during OMT. When discussing this matter, they demonstrate keen awareness of the ways in which various substances influence them and their behavior. Frederic had, at the age of 30, served several years in prison due to a pattern of crime, multisubstance use, and violent behavior. He then decided to enroll in OMT to reduce criminal behavior and avoid being imprisoned. However, at the time of the first interview, he had been imprisoned several times during OMT and recalls his most recent prison release. He had been offered a room in an institution but soon broke a house rule and was forced to leave immediately. Fredric despaired:

OK, I'll go all the way [I thought]. I got high - on everything. [..] The police came and I was taken into custody again. I think [this time] I'll get almost a year - violence against a public officer. I kicked his leg and spat on his face. Possession of drugs; resisted arrest violently; was carried to the car. I don't remember it all, I was so high. I black out when I take pills.

When asked if certain drugs make him violent, he responds:

It isn't amphetamine, but pills that make me mad and aggressive. Heroin is not my main problem [regarding violence]… But I also have a somewhat aggressive way of being without drugs. It is mainly because of intoxication that I serve sentences. [..] Every time I get arrested for details I resist. That is a problem when I'm high on pills. I feel that I am treated unfairly and resist, and that is what I am sentenced for.

Frederic demonstrates insight into the relationship between his drug intake, hot-tempered character, and violent behavior. He knows well the diverse ways that different drugs affect him and contribute to violence. He has learned that, for him, heroin is protective against violence and amphetamine neutral, and that, in high doses, benzodiazepines increase the risk of becoming violent by reinforcing his otherwise ‘somewhat aggressive way of being’. While he holds intoxication to be instrumental to his violent behavior and subsequent incarcerations, he neither eradicates himself as a subject nor externalizes his violent acts. On the contrary, he draws attention to aggression as a general feature of his mode of being in the world and pattern of reacting violently to unjust ‘details’ when ‘high on pills’. He explains that, in the absence of high-dose benzodiazepine use, he would have a higher tolerance for unjust experiences. As a result of still being imprisoned for violent crimes when enrolled in OMT, Frederic plans to discontinue OMT before being released from prison and instead continue outpatient treatment for benzodiazepine dependence.

While Fredric recalled and, to a certain extent, rationalized what had happened, others have experienced episodes of impulsive and uncontrolled drug use and/or blackouts during which they have violated what they hold to be important moral principles. Afterwards, they have struggled to recall, understand, and reconcile their moral transgressions.

Morten experienced an episode of what he describes as massive and unplanned drug intake, which led to a loss of control and blackout during which he committed a serious violent crime. He had been opioid dependent for nearly two decades and, though he was convicted of several violent and non-violent crimes prior to OMT, claimed to have discontinued all criminal behavior upon OMT enrollment. He had moved out of Oslo to limit his access to illicit drugs and committed himself to avoiding illicit drugs and sedatives in his new hometown to prevent destroying the new life he had built up. For some time prior to imprisonment, he had clean urine tests, worked, and maintained an apartment. However, he experienced increasing social and economic stress and purposively traveled to Oslo to use benzodiazepines on a few occasions. When he felt that he was losing control, he applied for institutional treatment. Meanwhile, he again went to Oslo deliberately to temporarily relieve stress by using benzodiazepines:

I was going to the capital [Oslo] to buy some pills and then [had planned to go] back home again. And I took more and more [pills] plus other things and lost it completely. I don't remember anything, had a real blackout, terrible, and got into deep shit. When I came to my senses I understood nothing, was arrested and in hell. [..] I have spent the entire time of my first two weeks in custody trying to collect myself in order to avoid a complete collapse.

Prior to OMT, Morten had violated his moral standards when financially desperate and, though he managed to accept these transgressions, this was not the case in the situation described above. Rather, Morten found it impossible to understand how he could lose control, relapse completely, and experience a blackout during which he committed a morally off-limits act that he could otherwise never imagine himself capable of. He neither remembered the violent act nor his motive for it, and this seriously threatened his sense of self and led him to the brink of a breakdown.

Ulf, who had previously served several long-lasting sentences for drug, property, and violent crimes, and who organized smuggling of buprenorphine into prison prior to OMT enrollment [ 36 ], offers another example of uncontrolled drug use and violence in OMT. While imprisoned, he feels that he can control his drug use. This control, however, was compromised shortly after his most recent release, prior to which he had used central stimulants in prison. He describes his loss of control and substance use as follows:

They wanted to release me to an institution, but I didn't want that. I didn't want to be a part of the treatment system… I wanted to run my own life. Well, I had taken cocaine in prison the last two weeks. When I got out, I went through the last gram of cocaine and a quarter of heroin, plus pills and alcohol. I took it all, plus amphetamine. I went berserk and was taken back to prison.

Going ‘berserk’, in this case, involved committing a severe violent crime, for which he is now imprisoned. Ulf thinks a lot about this episode of uncontrolled and indiscriminate substance intake and, not the least, about the violent crime he committed.

When I think about those days, it eats me, my body twists in disgust. But I know that if I was released now, I would do the same again.

Ulf has undergone several forensic psychiatric evaluations, concluding with an antisocial personality disorder diagnosis. His own understanding of his personality, which he regards as a permanent condition independent of drug use, is based on the years he spent in prison.

I have come to realize that I don't always send good signals … I am immature and have a low development of empathy.

Although Ulf states that he has a low level of empathy, he regrets his violent crime and worries about doing it again if released. Ulf relates the diagnosis to his antisocial behavior, but the diagnosis is not used to disclaim responsibility for his violent behavior and he does not believe that there is a possibility for change. Ulf explains that he can manage life in prison and thinks that he will probably spend most of his adult life incarcerated. So far, by committing high profile crimes, he has, in effect, ensured that his time spent outside of prison is limited. In a way, his unplanned execution of violence might be paradoxically seen as his way of preventing more of the same.

Moral principles related to violent behavior

As almost all the participants had been imprisoned for violence against others, conceptualizations of violence and crime were among the interview themes. None of the participants regarded violence as external to the law. However, while some regarded the law as the undisputable authority in defining crime, others held that situational needs, such as self-defense, motive, or maintenance of subcultural order, should have consequences for whether or not particular acts of violence constitute crime. Erik, for example, made concessions for cases in which he considered physical force to be a rightful and necessary disciplinary reaction within drug culture:

You do not cheat, you do not sell bad drugs to the ones you have around you and think of as friends. [..] If someone breaks those rules, then he will be punished - usually. That's the reaction… and he will be beaten up.

Other participants would, as a general principle, recognize violence as a crime but, at the same time, define the crime's severity in accordance with the degree of harm inflicted. For a few, like Frederic, whether or not violence should be regarded as crime depended upon the motive. More concretely, he does not consider self-defense a crime:

I don't feel like a criminal. To me fighting isn't a crime [but] that's what they put me in prison for. Blind violence is a crime. I get pressured and pushed several times. Then I finally hit. To me that is self-defense.

All of the study participants operate according to moral principles, with a few identifying all and the rest identifying certain forms of violence as morally off-limits. Victor provides an example:

Never break into people's homes… Never rob families, old people. I do not rob people on the street. I never beat up people for money, unless they owe me money.

Victor has served many sentences in prison for drug, property, and violent crime. Nevertheless, he explains that, upon each release, he must readjust to life outside of prison and ease back into criminal activity, negotiating and eventually transgressing his moral principles .

He has thus developed a routine of beginning with minor criminal acts and gradually habituating himself to more serious, potentially violent, and exhilarating criminal behavior that leads to an excitement rush comparable to the high achieved through substance use. As he explains:

When I come out, I begin carefully. I must do something, because I need to get going again… Yes, you begin to steal a little in stores and you begin to feel the warmth again. You get comfortable with that and eventually begin to think bigger. [..] It is much more exciting to wear a robber's mask and do something than to buy a half kilogram of heroin and stand and sell it. It provides a different type of ‘high’ or kick.

Other study participants try to maintain a high threshold for enacting violent behavior. For example, Paul had been a heroin dealer for many years prior to OMT and had experienced that the demand for heroin declined as OMT became available for a large proportion of opioid-dependent individuals, which made it difficult for him to support himself. When enrolled in OMT, he struggles to avoid being a part of the drug distribution system, but, in certain periods, he still is. He explains why disrespecting certain drug culture norms, such as honoring deals and paying debt, may justify violent consequences:

It takes a lot, at least in my case, for me to use violence and such. But, sometimes, one must do so. One must send signals to others that it is not acceptable. If you do not do so within a certain time frame, more and more will take advantage of you. This is how it is in on the street. If you give a little, they will take everything.

Other times, however, the study participants violate their moral principles without such justifications. The majority of the participants, for example, have experienced that the desperation associated with withdrawal interferes with their ability to uphold all moral principles and increases their vulnerability for committing violent crimes. While heroin dependent, Mona had served several sentences for drug, property, and violent crimes. Some years prior to entering OMT, she made a decision to sell sex [ 35 ] as to avoid both violent and non-violent criminal behavior. While enrolled in OMT and using mainly OMT medications, Mona finds it difficult to think about her former life. She describes her experiences and emotions related to many years of heroin use and continuously breaking her own moral codes like this:

When you're high, you lose inhibitions. You have the same moral, I think, somewhere deep inside. And then you get so desperate, mentally - but also physically, especially with heroin…you get so sick and you are so afraid that you'll stay there forever… Then you break your own rules: that you shouldn't steal, that you shouldn't do this and that… even if you know that it's terribly wrong… To justify these actions is one thing, but to understand it is harder. To accept that I was like that and maybe that it's a part of me since I was like that…. That is something I will have to live with the rest of my life. That is something that will never disappear: that feeling of shame and the bad conscience.

Prior to OMT, the participants intentionally induced an ‘antisocial self’ by use of substances - high-dose benzodiazepines, in particular, but also central stimulants and alcohol or combinations of substances. They did so to reduce inhibitions, empathy, and impulse control and, thereby, enable themselves to transgress individual moral codes and perform economically compulsive violent and non-violent crimes, mainly to support costly heroin use. During OMT, impulsive and uncontrolled substance use and subsequent unplanned violent crime was reported. Post-violence use of benzodiazepines was reported to reduce memories of and alleviate the emotional unease and guilt associated with this violence.

The participants operate according to moral codes that often parallel logics of morality commonly found throughout both mainstream and drug cultures that serve important functions within drug culture and that designate the conditions under which violent crime is and is not justified and the types of violence that are and are not permissible. While some participants rationalize their violent behavior, others struggle to reconcile the resulting shame, guilt, and fractured sense of self. This study's findings suggest that a violation of one's moral principles cannot be read as a lack of moral principles entirely; on the contrary, in order to break a rule, the rule needs to exist in the first place.

Shame and guilt are ‘self-reflective’ moral emotions [ 44 ]. Rather than using cognitive neutralization techniques described by other researchers, such as using self-talk to deny responsibility, injury, and the victim, condemning the condemners, and appealing to higher loyalties to reduce feelings of guilt before they break the law [ 45 - 47 ], the participants in this study report substance use and use of high-dose benzodiazepines, in particular, prior to committing (violent) crimes to achieve the same effect. Use of ‘unusually high doses of benzodiazepines’ was found to be related to high violence risk, and a low dose was found to reduce the violence risk in a sample of remand prisoners where the most commonly reported motivation for taking benzodiazepines were ‘reduced anxiety’ and ‘feeling better [ 23 ]. Benzodiazepines are also known to affect memory [ 48 - 50 ], and use of flunitrazepam is reported to lead to anterograde amnesia [ 51 ]. In this study, we find that the study participants deliberately use these substances to reduce memory and feelings of guilt after having committed a violent crime.

A study among imprisoned violent offenders found research interviews of importance for the participants to ‘construct themselves as morally decent persons’ [ 52 ]. This was also of importance for our study participants. But, for these study participants, to morally justify violent and non-violent behavior seemed to be easier while using heroin prior to OMT, as some individuals found it difficult to be enrolled in OMT and no longer able to use substances to reduce thinking and emotions related to previous criminal behavior. We suggest that some individuals might experience simultaneous OMT enrollment and imprisonment for a (violent) crime to elicit feelings of ‘double’ shame and guilt for both their criminal behavior prior to treatment and the actual case(s) they are imprisoned for while in treatment.

Some study limitations should be recognized. The participant sample was highly selective and the findings cannot be generalized in a statistical sense, but should instead be considered for the ways that they contribute to a more nuanced understanding of some OMT-enrolled individuals' experienced relationship between substance use and violent crime and the potential clinical implications. The interviews took place in prison, were conducted by a mental health practitioner, and addressed sensitive topics—all of which may have influenced the participants' retrospective reflections, their decisions to share particular experiences, and their understandings of these events and their consequences [ 53 ], possibly encouraging them to provide a positive self-presentation, as seen from their perspective.

In a clinical OMT setting, treatment providers may take measures to identify individuals with histories of violent behavior while under the influence of substances, intoxicated, or in a state of blackout. These individuals may be capable of reflecting upon and problematizing their violent behavior in treatment. Violent behavior is situational, and the concrete situations that precede, motivate, and contextualize violence, as well as the potential role of substances, should be matters of joint exploration between treatment providers and OMT patients to tailor individual treatment approaches accordingly. Some individuals may be at risk for further violent behavior if they continue to use substances while in OMT, and treatment for poly-substance dependence and, in particular, benzodiazepine dependence, may be provided. Furthermore, feelings of remorse, guilt, and shame related to violent and non-violent crimes both prior to and during OMT are of importance throughout treatment and especially among (remand) prisoners. When assessing personality disorders in OMT populations, the identification of dysfunctional traits should demand stability over time and consistency across situations.

Abbreviations

OMT: opioid maintenance treatment.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

TC was the project manager. TC, IH, and ALM conceived the qualitative project and constructed the interview guide. IH conducted the interviews. IH, CB, and ALM conducted the analysis and wrote up the first draft of the paper. All authors contributed to and have approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgements

The authors are employed by Oslo University Hospital or the University of Oslo. The study was partly funded by a grant from the Regional Centre for Co-occurring Disorders of Substance Abuse and Mental Health in Norway. The funding sources had no further role in the study. We thank Kristian Mjåland and two anonymous reviewers for giving constructive feedback on an earlier version of this article.

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The Impact of Moral Panic on the Criminal Justice System : Hit-and-run Traffic Offenses as a Case Study

Miriam Gur-Arye is Judge Basil Wunsh Professor of Criminal Law on the Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her doctorate in law ( summa cum laude ) from the Hebrew University. Her research interests center on theoretical foundations of criminal liability, constitutional restraints on substantive criminal law, and the overuse of the criminal law in times of crisis.

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Miriam Gur-Arye; The Impact of Moral Panic on the Criminal Justice System : Hit-and-run Traffic Offenses as a Case Study . New Criminal Law Review 1 May 2017; 20 (2): 309–353. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nclr.2017.20.2.309

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This article reveals the relationship between the societal phenomenon of moral panic and the specific waves that it generates in the legal system. It focuses on hit-and-run traffic offenses and suggests that a moral panic with regard to these offenses uniquely affected the Israeli criminal justice system during 2002–2013. The media generates concern, fear, and outrage that are disproportionate to both the size and the nature of the offenses. In describing hit-and-run accidents, both the media and the courts demonize the drivers. Both the courts and the legislature react to the panic with disproportionally harsh punishments. This article also offers a possible explanation for why hit-and-run traffic offenses generated moral panic uniquely in Israel, and why this occurred during the period 2002–2013. Although the article focuses on hit-and-run traffic offenses in Israel, it has more general implications: it reveals in detail the interaction between constructed public anxieties and systems charged with delivering justice.

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'Honour' crimes: six cases

Tulay goren.

Tulay Goren, 15, from Woodford Green in north London, was killed in January 1999 for running away from home to live with her boyfriend. He was a fellow Turkish Kurd twice her age whom her family disapproved of because he was from a different branch of Islam. Her father, Mehmet Goren, was jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 22 years in 2009 for killing the schoolgirl after kidnapping, drugging and tying her up. Her remains, which police believe were buried in the family garden temporarily, have never been recovered.

Surjit Athwal

Surjit Athwal, a 27-year-old Sikh, disappeared after going to a family wedding in India in December 1998. Her mother-in-law Bachan Athwal, a mother of six and grandmother of 16, ordered Surjit's death at a family meeting after discovering that her daughter-in-law, a customs officer at Heathrow airport, had been having an affair and wanted a divorce from her son Sukhdave. The 70-year-old was ordered to spend a minimum of 20 years in jail for the murder, while her son, 43, was sentenced a minimum of 27 years behind bars in September 2007.

Awais Akram

Awais Akram was left severely disfigured after being attacked because of a liaison with a married businesswoman whom he had met on Facebook. The 25-year-old was beaten and stabbed before concentrated sulphuric acid was poured over his head, leaving him with 47% burns, in July 2009. The woman's brother Mohammed Vakas, 26, was jailed for 30 years in May 2010 for conspiracy to murder.

Samaira Nazir

Samaira Nazir, a 25-year-old graduate and recruitment consultant, died after she tried to escape her family home following a row with her family over her plans to marry an Afghan asylum seeker. Her brother Azhar Nazir, 30, dragged her back into the house where he and his distant cousin Imran Mohammed, 17, worked together to hold her and stab her to death. Her throat was cut and she was stabbed 18 times in the attack which took place in April 2005. The killers were given life sentences in 2006.

Ahmed Bashir

Ahmed Bashir died after he was attacked with a sword and a machete in the garden of his own west London home. Waseem Afsar, 32, and Nisar Khan, 31, both of Slough, stabbed and slashed the 21-year-old Afghan 43 times in 1996 for being in a relationship with Afsar's younger sister Nighat. The men were given life sentences with minimum terms of 18 years and 14 years respectively in November 2005.

Abdullah and Aysha Mohammed

Abdullah Mohammed, 41, and his wife, Aysha, 39, died after they were overcome by smoke and fumes at their home in Blackburn, Lancashire in a bungled "honour" killing. Four men firebombed their house in an attempt to kill a Muslim man who was having an affair with a married woman, but poured petrol through the wrong letterbox. All four were convicted of the double murder in August 2010.

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A landmark study of criminal activity in teenagers indicates that some never see crime as a course of action while others are vulnerable to environmental inducements to crime. The study reveals factors that explains why some young people are ‘crime-prone’ and others ‘crime-averse’, and explains why crime hot spots occur.

The idea that opportunity makes the thief - that young people will inevitably commit crime in certain environments - runs counter to our findings. Per-Olof H Wikström

A unique study of teenagers and the community in Peterborough over ten years shows that most adolescent crime is not just youthful opportunism but the combined result of personal characteristics and environmental factors. The findings show that certain urban environments provide triggers for crime to which some teenagers are more vulnerable, while others remain highly resistant to the potential for crime – regardless of the circumstances.

The groundbreaking Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study - or PADS+ - at Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, tracked in detail the criminal activities of around 700 young people and explored how these relate to both their personal characteristics and social environments - while most studies of crime and its causes only focus on one or the other. The findings from the first 5 years of the study from ages 12-16 have been published in the book ‘ Breaking Rules ’ (Oxford University Press).

The young people self-reported about 16,000 crimes during the study period - dominant types being violence, vandalism and shoplifting. Crime is often publicly perceived to be a natural part of teenage life in the 21 st century - but the findings show that a third of teenagers committed no crimes at all, and the vast majority of the rest only occasionally - one or two minor crimes a year on average.

The bulk of offences were committed by a small group - with around 4% responsible for almost half the crime and the overwhelming majority of the most serious property crimes - such as burglaries, robberies and car theft. Often beginning before the age of 12, the most persistent offenders in the study were also highly versatile in their criminality – committing a wide range of offences.

The study suggests that a major reason why certain young people refrain from crime is not because they fear the consequences; it’s that their morality simply prevents them from even seeing crime as a possible course of action in the first place.

The researchers found two main characteristics in teenagers resistant to committing crime - who they describe as ‘crime-averse’ - namely, a personal morality that closely matches the law and greater self-control. Those who committed little or no crime fit this model to a large extent.

Young people at the other end of the spectrum don’t care very much about breaking the rules of the law and tend to be impulsive and short-sighted, leaving them more vulnerable to the temptations of crime – they are ‘crime-prone’.

The 16% most ‘crime-prone’ young people committed 60% of the crimes, while the 16% most ‘crime-averse’ were only responsible for 0.5% of the crimes.

“Many young people are ‘crime-averse’ and simply don’t perceive crime as a possible course of action - it doesn’t matter what the situation is,” says Professor Per-Olof H Wikström, FBA, who leads the PADS+ research team. “The idea that opportunity makes the thief - that young people will inevitably commit crime in certain environments - runs counter to our findings. Rather, only the ‘crime-prone’ become vulnerable to said opportunities when taking part in environments with a moral context that encourages, or, at least, does not discourage, crime.”

The research included not just an in-depth longitudinal study of the lives and habits of 700 young people, but also a survey of over 6,000 local residents combined with large amounts of cross-referenced census and land use data to create a detailed impression of the environments in which the young people spend their time.

The findings show that crime is not only concentrated to a small group of young people, but also in certain times and places - known as ‘hot spots’. In many previous studies, crime hot spots have often been explained by the fact that they occur in areas where opportunities for crime are plentiful.

This new study goes much further, showing that crime hot spots are not only a consequence of opportunity but crucially the moral context - the level of enforcement of key common rules of conduct - in which these opportunities occur, and the presence of ‘crime-prone’ young people. Essentially, crime happens when ‘crime-prone’ people take part in moral contexts that encourage crime.

While some urban environments are largely free of youth crime, others include hot spots for young people’s crime. The study findings show that these crime hot spots occur in city and local centres, and residential areas that are characterised by poor informal social control resulting from weak social cohesion – known as poor collective efficacy. The findings also show that poor collective efficacy almost exclusively occurs in areas with a higher level of social disadvantage.

City and local centres and residential areas with poor collective efficacy have moral contexts in which ‘crime-prone’ young people are vulnerable to committing crime, particularly when they are engaged in unstructured and unsupervised activities.

The city and local centres provide many opportunities and frictions due to the presence of retail outlets and entertainment venues and also lack social cohesion among temporary visitors. Residents of areas which lack collective efficacy are less likely to intervene when young people engage in disorders and crime.

“In prevention we need to focus on developing policies that affect children and young people’s moral education and cognitive nurturing – which aids the development of greater self-control - and policies that help minimise the emergence of moral contexts conducive to crime” says Wikström. “In this context, one of the most important but least understood questions is the role of social disadvantage and how it affects the content and efficacy of young people’s moral education and cognitive nurturing.”

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Exploring the relationship between morality and offending through the use of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire

• Original Article
• Published: 13 September 2021
• Volume 23 , pages 381–399, ( 2021 )

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• Rachael Thompson 1 , 2 ,
• Andrew Newton 3 &
• Carla Reeves 4  

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This study applies the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) to examine the relationship between morality and self-reported offending, captured using a questionnaire ( N  = 184). One hundred and forty-one respondents (77%) reported previously committing an offence. Identified measures of morality revealed no statistically significant differences between self-reported offenders and non-offenders, challenging commonly held presumptions that offending is associated with lower levels of morality. Moreover, this pattern was consistent across a range of offence types and offence severities. Using the MFQ, morality was broken down by individual MFQ foundations (sub-domains). A consistent although non-significant pattern emerged: scores for the in-group/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity foundations were lower than the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations for all respondents. This highlights the importance of future research into morality and offending moving beyond the use of single metric measures of morality, and deconstructing this further into sub-domain measures, such as those offered by the MFQ.

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Rachael Thompson

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Thompson, R., Newton, A. & Reeves, C. Exploring the relationship between morality and offending through the use of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. Crime Prev Community Saf 23 , 381–399 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41300-021-00126-w

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Accepted : 25 August 2021

Published : 13 September 2021

Issue Date : December 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41300-021-00126-w

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