Shared responsibility for criminal acts binds accomplices together

Evidence

Nothing binds people to each other stronger than shared responsibility for an act that they admit is criminal. Commonsensically, we explain this kind of solidarity by the natural wish to escape punishment; the game theorists’ analyses of the famous ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ also teach us that (providing no one confuses the stakes) to assume that the rest of the team will remain solidary is the most rational decision any member may make. We may wonder, however, to what extent the accomplices’ solidarity is brought about and reinforced by the fact that only the members of the team which originally engaged in the sequential action are likely to conspire to defuse the paradox, and by common consent offer some credibility to the belief in the legitimacy of past action in spite of the growing evidence to the contrary. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 454

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Induced complicity in murder binds members to the movement while front organizations lend respectability; Each person shares responsibility for every injustice committed in his presence — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 926; Criminal associations can create internal legal orders parallel to the state’s (+2 more)

Related

• Induced complicity in murder binds members to the movement while front organizations lend respectability (similarity 0.88)
• Human solidarity makes every person an accomplice to injustice they do not prevent. (similarity 0.80)
• Each person shares responsibility for every injustice committed in his presence (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Each person shares responsibility for every injustice committed in his presence #expands (0.82) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 926
• Gang leaders command obedience through expected mutual punishment coordination #exemplifies (0.80) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 188
• Continuous responsibility shifting across a hierarchy creates free-floating responsibility that incapacitates moral authority #complicates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 463
• Criminal associations can create internal legal orders parallel to the state’s #expands (0.72)