At the outset, readers may find it helpful if we explain what this book is and
what it is not.

What It Is. The purpose of our investigation has been to reveal aspects of
moral reasoning that underlie the consequences people believe wrongdoers should
experience. Our approach has consisted of presenting six cases of wrongdoing to
a large number of teenagers and young adults and asking them (1) what
consequences they would recommend and (2) why they believe their proposals are
appropriate. Then we used the participants' answers as the raw material for
constructing a taxonomy to use in categorizing features of people's moral
reasoning. Subsequently, we applied the resulting taxonomy in comparing
group and individual modes of moral decision making.

What It Is Not. This book is not a survey of the scholarly and professional
literature in such fields as moral development, crime and punishment, social
custom, or the like. Rather, in our attempt to adopt a fresh approach to our
task, we set aside the writings of others and concentrated entirely on the opinions
expressed by the respondents in this study. Hence, we derived the taxonomy
solely by following our data -- by trying to understand the thought processes
implied in the participants' judgments of the six cases. As a consequence, the
book contains very few references to the work of others. Whenever a reference
does appear, it has been chosen simply to illustrate a point we wished to make.

We wish to express our appreciation to a variety of people who contributed
significantly to the success of the project. We are particularly indebted to eight
educators who collected students' opinions about appropriate consequences for
wrongdoers -- Patricia Meu Ling Leong, George Petersen, Mohammed Rasheed,
Abdul Rasheed, Matt Scanlon, Stephen Stamnes, Randy Sweeney, and Darius K.
Jonathan. We also wish to thank the 542 respondents who completed quewtion-
naires and the 20 individuals who offered their opinions during interviews, with
special thanks to Jonathan Lau, Jeff Sterkel, Kelly Sterkel, and Courtney
Thomas.

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