Do moral intuitions influence judges' sentencing decisions? A multilevel study of criminal court sentencing in Pennsylvania.

The influence of judges' personal moral values on their sentencing decisions is of longstanding interest to researchers and the public. Few studies, however, have examined this influence empirically. Using a unique data set that combines a survey of 81 criminal court judges with archival data on their 40,385 criminal sentences over a 2-year period, and drawing on Moral Foundations Theory, we hypothesize that judges with strong care and fairness intuitions will sentence defendants less severely while judges with strong loyalty, authority, and sanctity intuitions will sentence defendants more severely.

Is compassion the flip side of punitiveness? Incorporating COVID-19 crisis in experimental vignettes to examine support for visitation and vaccination in prison.

Objectives: The public hold both punitive and pragmatic attitudes toward prison policy. Yet it is unclear whether the public supports compassionate efforts that do not directly relate to recidivism. This study explores the role of exclusionary symbolic aims (prioritizing non-prisoner groups), inclusionary symbolic aims (minimizing health risk for the vulnerable), and cost (taxes).

Why Men (Don't) Buy Sex: Purity Moralization and Perceived Harm as Constraints on Prostitution Offending.

This study explores the moralization of purity and perceptions of harm as constraints on sex buying among men. Purchasing sex has long been considered an offense against public morality. While personal morality provides a powerful constraint on offending, and people may vary in the extent to which they experience moral intuitions about bodily and spiritual purity, research has so far neglected the role of purity moralization in understanding sex buying behavior.