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Prof. Susanne Karstedt
Prof. Susanne Karstedt
INTERVIEW
"What makes normal people commit crimes?"
Interview with professor of criminology Susanne Karstedt
10. 12. 2013 | Susanne Karstedt studies how cultural values and people's moral decision making a�ect violent and other crimes. She is professor for criminology and criminal justice at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom.
AcademiaNet: One of your research areas is middle class and white collar crime. A study you did while
you were chair of criminology at Keele University found that middle class people commit numerous
crimes – from tax evasion to cheating their fellow citizens on eBay and in car boot sales. Why is it that
middle class people commit more of these sorts of crimes?
Prof. Susanne Karstedt: I have always been interested in the morality of the middle classes, or
what is often seen as the "law-abiding majority". Why do people who otherwise lead very
normal lives and are respected members of their communities commit crimes? How can we
make these people comply?
Here, the role of moral decision making comes to the fore. I don't see criminal behaviour as just a reaction to some
kind of environmental pressure, whether that is a very disadvantaging environment or opportunities that crop up. I
look at criminality through the lens of the values that people have and how these in�uence their decisions. Some
middle class people venture into quite fraudulent and shady practices, and they have a lot of ways of justifying such
behaviour and reconciling it with their own moral self. Criminologists call this "techniques of neutralisation": people
justify an act of deviancy that they would otherwise censure and �nd morally objectionable.
A big area of your research in your current post as professor of criminology and criminal justice at
University of Leeds is the place of democracy in crime and justice. What have you observed about how the
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values of democracy in�uence crime and violence in a society?
We're looking at whether democracies have comparative advantages with regard to levels of crime - violent crime,
white collar crime or corruption. We're also interested in whether their justice systems in democracies are better and
more just in dealing with o�enders, and whether the population invest higher trust in police and justice. This is large
scale comparative research. I mainly use large data sets from international surveys to probe into the values of the
population to see whether democratic societies di�er in these respects, for example, how their values impact on the
use of prison for punishing o�enders.
In his recent book "The Better Angels of Our Nature", the Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker considers how
democracy might in�uence crime levels by encouraging the "better angels" of our nature, meaning that democracy
brings out our "better selves" and nourishes sympathy. I look at democratic values like egalitarianism and
individualism. Individualism does not mean egotism, but that people have certain expectations of how they wish to be
treated as individuals, and they are willing to comply with such expectations if asked from them. In individualistic and
egalitarian cultures, people do not see themselves as members of a group, and they are inclined to treat others in the
same way – as individuals, and as equals. This signi�cantly reduces violence committed for the honour of a group or
against other groups.
Contemporary societies thrive on what has been called "weak bonds", meaning tolerance and respect. Strong bonds
in communities, in particular if they inhibit outreach to others, breed violence rather than prevent it. Tightly knit
communities can have a lot of violence in their midst, and, in addition, there is more violence between groups.
One of your present research themes is mass atrocity crimes and genocide. In your recent fellowship at
the Australian National University, you were working on a paper on this topic. What is this research
looking at?
The �eld of genocide studies developed in the aftermath of the Holocaust. This exceptional crime, which also was a
unique genocide in many ways, shaped our thinking over the past decades. However, since the 1980s we have been
dealing with very di�erent situations, like in former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Congo or Syria. These
atrocities have a range of di�erent types of perpetrators, from warlords to militias and normal citizens, and victims
and perpetrators can change sides, as they did several times in the region of Rwanda and Burundi.
At present, these types of mass atrocity crimes tend to be embedded in international and local con�icts. We look
more at the dynamics of how they develop, and at the micro-level of local massacres, rather than analyse them
predominantly as state and hate crimes. I hope that such new perspectives will help us to develop better prevention
and intervention strategies - for example, to protect citizens on the ground.
As you mention, our view of the Holocaust a�ects our perspective on other types of mass atrocity crime
and criminals. One recent project of yours looks at Nazi war criminals who were sentenced in the
Nuremberg trials 1945–1949: How much of their sentence they actually served, and how they were
received in post-war Germany. What ideas have you developed from this project?
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When the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia issued the �rst sentences, it was not clear how these
would be carried out. Meanwhile, many of the perpetrators have been released from prison. I looked at what
happened to those who had been sentenced as war criminals in post-war Germany: when they had been released
from prison, how they had been received back by post-war society, and how they had managed their reputation as a
sentenced war criminal. Many of the death sentences were commuted to life-long imprisonment, and most of the
criminals did not serve their full sentences in the end.
There even were campaigns for their release, surprisingly from the Lutheran Church. A particularly glaring example is
a member of the SS, who was sentenced to death because he had killed 3,000 Jewish people and disabled children in
an orphanage. The church not only campaigned for his release, but also o�ered him a position as teacher at a faith
based school. Such cases make us think about justice, and impunity, punishment and rehabilitation, not only for these
o�enders but for all others.
Dear Prof. Karstedt, thank you very much for this interesting interview!
Interview: Helen Jaques
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Prof. Susanne Karstedt at the University of Leeds