Anger and support for retribution in Mexico’s drug war

Abstract

How does exposure to criminal violence shape attitudes towards justice and the rule of law? Citizens care about crime prevention and procedural legality, yet they also value punishing perpetrators for the harm they have done. We argue that anger induced by exposure to criminal violence increases the demand for retribution and harsh punishments, even at the expense of the rule of law. We test this theory using one observational and two experimental studies from an original survey of 1,200 individuals in Western Mexico, a region affected by organized criminal violence and vigilantism. First, we first show that exposure to violence is correlated with increased anger and support for punitive justice, including vigilante actions. Second, across our two experiments, we show that citizens are more supportive of harsh punishments and place less value on their legality in response to morally outrageous crimes. Third, we find that the innocence of the victim, rather than the severity of the crime, is what triggers outrage and punitiveness. This suggests that citizens may support extreme levels of violence as long as they perceive that its targets are criminals. Finally, we show that outrageous forms of violence against civilians can lead individuals to prioritize harsh punishment regardless of its legality. When criminal actors target perceived innocents with common crimes like extortion, there is greater support for harsh, vigilante action. These patterns provide a bottom-up explanation for harsh justice.

Mexico’s Armed Vigilante Movements (2012–2015): The Impact of Low State Capacity and Economic Inequality

“…The dependent variable not only captures high-risk mobilization, but it does so across four years in time. As such, my data go beyond studies that measure attitudes toward vigilantism (Zizumbo-Colunga 2017; García-Ponce et al 2021) or attitudes toward the use of violence (Cruz and Kloppe-Santamaría 2019). My dependent variable also offers more variation than either Phillips’s (2017) or Osorio et al’s (2019) dummy variable measuring whether at least one vigilante group existed in a Mexican municipality in just one year.…”

Police legitimacy and approval of vigilante violence: The significance of anger

“…These incidents suggest that vigilante violence continues to be inflicted on perceived offenders, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, as an emotional reaction to (perceived) crimes. According to the Center for Research and Security Studies (2014) and Hashim (2020), since 1990, approximately 52–77 alleged blasphemers have been killed by angry vigilantes. This indicates that people may be emotionally attached to religion and that whenever they construe encroachment on their religious values, they vent their anger by punishing the alleged offenders themselves.…”

“…Adzimah-Alade et al (2020) analyzed 172 media reports from 2000–2018 in Ghana and found that theft and robbery were the main reasons (117/172) for which offenders were attacked and lynched by vigilantes. Likewise, the Center for Research and Security Studies (2014) and Hashim (2020) have reported that since 1990, approximately 52–77 people have been killed extrajudicially in Pakistan by vigilantes owing to reports of the offenders making blasphemous statements. Thus, the researcher created vignette scenarios regarding such offenses (for precedents on the use of situation-based vignettes regarding such offenses, see Haas et al, 2012, 2014; Nivette, 2016).…”

Habituation of Fear—Israeli-Jewish Population during Protracted Belligerence

“…The psychological impact of war, terror, and LICs on civilians and societies has been widely studied, dealing with the vulnerability and resiliency of communities and individuals who facing terrorism and war [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. Researchers conducted in many countries that indicate that armed conflicts and terror attacks have a significant impact on emotions, fears, stress, and posttraumatic stress disorder [ 7 , 12 , 13 , 19 , 20 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ].…”