Regarding cross-cultural universals, I think there’s some empirical research on cross-cultural universals in which kinds of violent or non-violent crime are considered worst, most harmful, and most deserving of punishment. I couldn’t find a great reference for that in a cursory lit search, but there is related work on the evolutionary psychology of crime and criminal law that might be useful, e.g. work by Owen Jones: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470939376.ch34
Thanks for this reply; it all makes sense.
Regarding cross-cultural universals, I think there’s some empirical research on cross-cultural universals in which kinds of violent or non-violent crime are considered worst, most harmful, and most deserving of punishment. I couldn’t find a great reference for that in a cursory lit search, but there is related work on the evolutionary psychology of crime and criminal law that might be useful, e.g. work by Owen Jones: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470939376.ch34
Also David Buss (UT Austin) has written a lot about violent crime, esp. murder, e.g. https://labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2015/09/Evolutionary-psychology-and-crime.pdf
Thanks!