levels of moral reasoning

• link to criminality:

  tend to have lower levels of moral reasoning and development
• moral development

  level 1 and 2- pre-conventional based on punishment and reward egocentric

  level 3 and 4- conventional tend to follow/ break rules for social approval

  level 5 and 6- post- conventional tend to make decisions based on own principles
• +link moral reasoning and crime. palmer and hollin 1998 compared moral reasoning 330 non offenders to 126 convicted using smf which contains 11 moral dilemmas related questions e.g keeping a promise. offenders showed less mature moral reasoning than non offenders which supports kohlbergs predictions. suggesting that there is a direct causal relationship between lower levels moral reasoning and criminality
• -level moral reasoning may depend on the offence. thorton and keid found people who committed crime for financial gain had pre-conventional level moral reasoning than those convicted of impulsive crimes who had a conventional level. pre-conventional offenders believe that they are able to get away with the crime. means that kohlbergs theory is difficult to generalise to all crimes, so it is not universal.
• kohlbergs theory useful that it provides insight to the mechanics of criminal mind that offenders are more child like when it comes to making moral decisions and judgement than the law abiding majority. but moral thinking is not the same as moral reasoning. what kohlberg is in interested more likely to justify behaviour after it happened- krebs and denton 2005