Anger and Support for Punitive Justice in Mexico's Drug
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Anger and Support for Punitive Justice in Mexico’s Drug War⇤ § Omar García-Ponce† Lauren Young‡ Thomas Zeitzoff May 8, 2018 Abstract Why do civilians affected by violence support vigilante groups? We argue that the anger raised in the wake of violence increases the demand for punitiveness, even at the expense of the rule of law. We test the implications of this view using three observational and experimental studies with data from an original survey of nearly 1,200 individuals in Western Mexico, where many civilians have been exposed to narco- violence, and vigilante justice. We have three principal findings. First, our observational analysis shows that individuals who have historically been exposed to violence tend to be angrier and more supportive of punitive criminal justice policies, as well as policies that enable vigilante groups to punish criminals. Second, both experiments show that citizens that are induced to feel more anger, are more supportive of harsh punishments, and place less value on the legality of a punishment for morally outrageous crimes. Third, the experimental results suggest that the innocence of a crime’s victim has a stronger effect on anger and moral outrage than the severity of the violence. These results shed light on how the emotional and cognitive reactions of civilians in violence-affected communities may lead to cycles of retributive violence that undermine the rule of law. ⇤Our deepest thanks to Daniel Hirschel-Burns, Stathis Kalyvas, Beatriz Magaloni, David Shirk, and seminar partici- pants at Essex, USC, UC Davis, MIT, Uppsala, NYU, Yale, and UCSD, for feedback at various stages of this project. We also thank Buendía & Laredo for managing the data collection. Isabel Mejía Fontanot and Julio Solís Arce provided excellent research assistance. †Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis. [email protected] ‡Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis. [email protected] §Assistant Professor, American University. [email protected] 2 1 Introduction In 2015, Washington D.C. experienced a sharp 54% increase in homicides.1 In response, the D.C. Council endorsed a proposal to pay young offenders most at risk of committing firearm crimes up to $1,000 per month to ‘stay out of trouble.’2 This model, based loosely on similar programs in Richmond (California), Chicago, and Boston, is credited with causing sharp drops in the rates of homicide victimization and perpetration among its participants (Davis, May 5, 2016).3 For all its purported success, the idea of paying violent offenders to not commit crimes does have its share of detractors. As one victims advocate in Richmond and critic of the program argued,“If I were to find out that the guy who murdered my twin sons was getting a thousand dollars for a promise (not to commit crimes)? I mean, how can you trust (them)?”4 It can be hard to garner support for seemingly effective, but less punitive justice policies. Conversely, harsh justice policies remain quite popular. The Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte won election by a wide margin on a platform pledging to end crime in six months by ignoring human rights conventions and killing tens of thousands of criminals. Human rights groups have condemned Duterte for running vigilante death squads that have killed more than 7,000 people as of March 2017 (Macaraig, May 10, 2016).5 However, political analysts have argued that Duterte’s popularity actually directly stems from his support for vigilantism stretching back to his alleged support for death squads when he was mayor of the city of Davao (Kim, July 17, 2015).6 In Central America there is a history of such “Mano Dura” (literally “iron fist”) policies to deal with violence perpetrated by criminal gangs (Hume, 2007). These policies included the state taking harsh and punitive measures against suspected gang members, stiffer prison sentences, and tacit 1Based on data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, Washington D.C. experienced 162 homicides in 2015 (around 24 per 100,000 people), up from 105 (16 per 100,000 people) the year before. 2Most of those identified as ‘at-risk’ had committed crimes in the past with firearms. In addition to not committing further crimes, offenders would have to regularly attend behavioral health, education, and as well as job skills training to receiving payments. 3The D.C. program was ultimately rejected. 4See Cowan, Claudia. 2016, August 24. “One California city is paying people not to commit crimes.” Fox News, Retrieved from: https://goo.gl/7wWny3 5See Soong, Martin. 2017, March 28. “As Rodrigo Duterte turns 72, a look at his controversial presidency so far.” CNBC, Retrieved from: https://goo.gl/3ncyKN 6See Marshall, Andrew and Manuel Mogato. 2016, May 24. “Philippine death squads very much in business as Duterte set for presidency.” Reuters, Retrieved from: https://goo.gl/4qZ9Jd 3 and sometimes more overt support for human rights violations against suspected criminals. While enjoying widespread support (Holland, 2013), many of these Mano Dura policies have had at best mixed effectiveness,7 and have been linked to state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings (Wolf, 2017). Why are non-punitive policies to reduce violent crime like the stipend program proposed in D.C. often unpopular? Why do severe punishments of questionable effectiveness, such as the extrajudicial killings championed by Duterte, and the Mano Dura policies in Central America, elicit such strong support? We argue that the popularity of harsh policies is not driven by mispercep- tions of their effectiveness. When thinking about criminal justice regimes citizens do care about effectiveness. Yet they also have preferences for punishing criminals in a way that corresponds to the crimes they have committed. In many cases this preference for punishment outweighs the demand for other principles that people generally care about in their criminal justice policy, such as legality and even effectiveness in preventing future violence. In this paper, we argue that how people make trade-offs between justice and effectiveness changes when they are exposed to heinous acts of violence that induce anger. To test whether exposure to violence increases support for punitive and vigilante punishment of criminals, we draw on cognitive appraisal theory from psychology to theorize that some forms of violence cause people to feel outraged, which in turn increases perceptions of blame and preferences for punitiveness in criminal justice policy. We use three separate observational and experimental tests to elicit these preferences, and to test whether the emotion of anger plays an important role in the process. First, we examine whether people who are exposed to higher levels of violence report feeling anger more frequently, assign higher overall levels of blame to actors involved in the Mexican drug conflict, and report preferences for more punitive policies than those who are not (Study 1). Second, we use a survey experiment designed to generate moral outrage by violating community norms to test whether extreme violence 1) induces higher levels of anger, and 2) causes people to prefer extrajudicial and harsh punishments (Study 2). Finally, we use a second set of 125 7Many have argued that the policy which has swelled prisons has perversely increased the prison population. See Dudley, Steven. 2010, November 22. “How ’Mano Dura’ is Strengthening Gangs.” Insight Crime, Retrieved from: http://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/how-mano-dura-is-strengthening-gangs 4 randomly generated scenarios to elicit preferences for criminal justice policy across a wide range of perpetrators, victims, and types of violence. We again test whether across this broad spectrum of common types of violence, more severe violence against more innocent victims 1) induces higher levels of anger, and 2) causes people to prefer extrajudicial and harsh punishments (Study 3). The combination of these three research designs—all of which were preregistered in advance of our analysis—enables us to draw conclusions that are based on highly realistic variation, gen- eralizable to a large population of interest, and causal.8 The first study’s observational design has the advantage of looking at real variation in the independent variable of interest (exposure to violence) in a representative sample of Western Mexican citizens, many of whom have been exposed to violence by narcos (drug traffickers), vigilante groups known as autodefensas, and even govern- mental security forces.9 Although the estimates from the observational study may not be causal, the research design enables us to examine whether there is any relationship between emotions and exposure to violence. The second study, a survey experiment, enables us to test for specific causal mechanisms and to estimate the effects of anger exposure to outrageous violence through hypothetical scenarios. Finally, in the third study, we use a factorial experimental design that provides both causal estimates and an assessment of the generalizability of the experimental results. Our multi-method research design combines many of the advantages of large-scale observational research with the precision and causal identification benefits of experiments. Understanding how exposure to violence and emotions influence attitudes towards justice and security policy are fundamental questions in political science and psychology. Anger is considered a core emotion that prepares individuals to take risks and correct perceived wrongs (Frijda, Kuipers and Ter Schure, 1989). Past research finds that anger makes individuals less risk-averse (Lerner and Keltner, 2001), more likely to participate in politics (Valentino et al., 2011), and more likely to support an aggressive foreign policy (Lerner et al., 2003; Skitka et al., 2006). Anger at a perceived moral transgression may lead to moral outrage or a desire to punish the transgressor (Bastian, 8See EGAP ID #20170504AB for more information. 9See Woody, Christopher. 2017, May 23. ”Deadly violence continues to climb in Mexico, where an ascendant cartel is strengthening its grip on power.” Business Insider, Retrieved from: https://goo.gl/PS4xq1 and Ahmed, Azam.