K. Wagner

The purpose of this research was to explore the perceived seriousness of crimes, such as abuse and neglect, committed against nonhuman animals. Drawing upon the methods of previous work on crime seriousness, it was hypothesized that perceptions of the harmfulness and wrongfulness of animal offenses would influence perceptions of seriousness, with wrongfulness being the most powerful predictor. A survey was administered to a sample of college students (n = 245), and the hypotheses were supported. The results also indicated that crimes against animals were ranked as more serious than property offenses but less serious than crimes against persons. Furthermore, the two predictors—harmfulness and wrongfulness—explained a greater amount of variance in the perceived seriousness of offenses against animals than for property or person offenses. Results are contextualized within policy and philosophical perspectives pertaining to how offenses against animals are viewed by society and addressed by the legal system.

Commentary as part of the book symposium on Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic’s, Perpetrator Disgust: The Moral Limits of Gut Feelings (2022): In Perpetrator Disgust, Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic provides a fascinating exploration of the emotional anguish experienced by perpetrators of atrocity during the 20th century. One of her most poignant insights is that physical discomfort rarely, if ever, compelled perpetrators to stop or reconsider the morality of their actions. Instead, it forced them to develop new strategies to avoid the emotional toll and to achieve their aims with greater efficiency. In this commentary, I discuss some of the aspects of Munch-Jurisic’s argument, especially in regard to the definition of “perpetrator” as an analytical concept that might warrant further examination.