Sergio Herzog

The Lenient Social and Legal Response to Trafficking in Women An Empirical Analysis of Public Perceptions in Israel

Trafficking in women for prostitution remains a modern form of slavery. Paradoxically, governments and legal systems tend to target the victims (trafficked women) instead of the criminal traffickers. The present study attempted to investigate the roots of such a lenient social response. Following a consensus perspective, it was first hypothesized that this offense was considered by the public to be a relatively nonserious offense because it involved prostitutes, and second, as in other cases of male violence against women, it was hypothesized that the public views toward this offense were affected by traditional gender-role attitudes toward women. To this end, respondents from a national sample were asked to evaluate hypothetical short crime scenarios representing cases of trafficking in women and other offenses. The findings indicate that the public perceives such criminal acts as serious, both for egalitarian and traditional respondents. This finding challenges the consensual basis of the lenient approach toward traffickers in women. The implications of the findings are discussed.

A New Perspective for Delinquency: Culture Conflict Measured by Seriousness Perceptions

Numerous theories have attempted to analyze and understand the factors and etiology of juvenile delinquency. The present study is the first to suggest the use of Sellin’s “culture conflict” theory as a possible cultural explanation for the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency. According to Sellin, crime in many instances is a product of culture conflict between the values and norms of a certain subculture in a given society and those of the general culture. Following Sellin’s rationale, this study argues that youths constitute a social subculture with certain values, norms, and stances toward the criminal law that is not necessarily concordant with the moral values and formal norms of the general culture of adults, who determine the content of the criminal law. These assertions are analyzed via a crime seriousness study, in which adult and teenage respondents from a national (Israeli) sample were asked to evaluate the seriousness of various criminal offenses committed by adolescents. Generally, significant differences were found between the seriousness and punishment values given by the adult and juvenile respondents to violent offenses (high) and self-use of illegal drugs (low), with adult respondents providing significantly higher seriousness values and punishment options for them. Moreover, in a regression analysis, the variable of respondents’ age was found as decisive in understanding both dependent variables. The implications of these findings are discussed in this study.

Moral Judgment, Crime Seriousness, and the Relations Between Them An Exploratory Study

The present study analyzes the relationship between moral judgment and perceptions of crime seriousness. This analysis is done with special attention to Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Main research findings: Significant correlations exist between perceived seriousness of offenses and consideration of such conducts as immoral, and between the levels of the perceived seriousness of offenses and the levels of the moral judgment of their moral dilemmas. In addition, attitudes toward various moral dilemmas are found to be influenced by education, ethnicity and social strata. Main conclusions: Correlation between moral reasoning and perceptions of crime seriousness is weak at best, and that mature-level socio-moral development and perceptions of crime seriousness might not necessarily protect a person from identifying with criminal acts.