The executioner who apologises: saying sorry lets you carry on
Bertholdt weeps as he breaks the wall, and breaks it anyway. His guilt does not stop him: it certifies him as decent, and that is what lets him carry on.
Bertholdt Hoover weeps while kicking in a fifty-metre wall and causing a famine that kills a fifth of humanity. Naki Kito calls two hundred years of feeding children to a worm an "offering". The Mantisian declares himself a pacifist while taking money to fight. None of them enjoys it. All of them continue. That makes them more unsettling than the sadist, and not because they do more harm.
The easy reading is to call it hypocrisy. The useful reading is that this is a mechanism, known since 1957, with five catalogued forms and —this is the decisive part— it works before the act, not after.
// The theoryNobody thinks they are the villain, and that is not an excuse: it is the finding
In the mid-fifties criminology assumed the offender belonged to a subculture with inverted values: people who simply approved of stealing and hitting. Gresham Sykes and David Matza looked at the data and found the opposite. Offenders feel guilt and shame, admire the law-abiding, and distinguish carefully between targets they consider legitimate and targets they do not. They have not replaced conventional morality: they have learned to suspend it in episodes.
They called these devices techniques of neutralization, and there are five.
The full catalogue
1 · Denial of responsibility. "It was not really me; I was pushed." This is Bertholdt's: he was a child when chosen, he was told it was the only way, the world is what is broken. Every premise is true and the conclusion follows from none of them.
2 · Denial of injury. "Nobody was really hurt." It thrives where the victim is diffuse —a company, a state, a market— and is the most used in white-collar crime.
3 · Denial of the victim. "They had it coming", or simply: they do not count as people. It is the gateway to everything else.
4 · Condemnation of the condemners. "Those judging me are worse." It shifts attention from the act to the judge's legitimacy.
5 · Appeal to higher loyalties. "I did it for my own people." The most powerful, because it is usually true.
Bertholdt Hoover
Read Bertholdt Hoover’s full case file · Neutralization →
// The findingThe excuse comes first, and that is why it works
It would be comfortable to assume these lines are alibis invented afterwards, when someone is caught and needs a story. Sykes and Matza argued the opposite: the justification typically comes before the act and is what makes it possible. It is not a defence; it is an enabling condition.
From which follows the most useful part of the whole theory: neutralization works best when the justification is true. A lie can be dismantled by anyone who checks; a fact cannot. The Mantisian's son really does need transfusions. Bertholdt really was a conscripted child. Naki Kito's village really did sit under a volcano. Every premise is verifiable, and the conclusion —therefore I may do this— follows from none of them. The technique lives in that gap.
// How to tell them apartRemorse changes behaviour; neutralization preserves it
This is the practical test, and it works outside fiction. A perpetrator's visible pain is not evidence of repentance: look at what they do after feeling it. Genuine remorse modifies behaviour —it stops, repairs, turns itself in—. Neutralization preserves it: it allows everything to continue exactly as before.
And there is a more uncomfortable detail. The emotional cost the perpetrator visibly pays is part of the mechanism: it certifies to him that he is still a decent person, which is precisely the certificate he needs in order to continue. Which is why a viewer who forgives Bertholdt for weeping is doing exactly what the technique was designed to achieve. And why his guilt, far from mitigating, proves full moral capacity: he knew perfectly well what a person is and what he was doing to them.
// Why it mattersThe five sentences, in ordinary mouths
The techniques of neutralization are not a description of criminals: they are a description of people. They appear wherever a decent person needs to do an indecent thing —the accountant who moves a figure because everyone in the sector does, the official who signs because refusing would cost him his job, the employee who follows the instruction because it came from above—. Criminology finds the same five sentences, in almost the same words, in tax fraud, workplace violations, corruption and domestic violence.
Which is why their value is preventive before it is diagnostic. If the permission comes before the act, the place to intervene is before the act: by removing the strain that makes the justification necessary, and by refusing to let the sentence stand when someone says it aloud. "Nobody is at fault" is not an observation about the world. It is a request, addressed to whoever is listening, to be absolved in advance of what the speaker is about to do.
Three key ideas
- Sykes and Matza showed that offenders usually share conventional morality and suspend it episodically with five techniques: denial of responsibility, of injury and of the victim, condemnation of the condemners, and appeal to higher loyalties.
- The decisive finding is timing: the justification precedes the act and is what permits it. And it works best when true —a lie can be checked, a fact cannot— because the conclusion never follows from the premise.
- The practical test against genuine repentance: remorse changes behaviour, neutralization preserves it. Visible suffering is part of the mechanism, not a payment on account.
Sources · further reading
- Sykes, G. M. & Matza, D. (1957). "Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency". American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664-670.
- Matza, D. (1964). Delinquency and Drift. John Wiley & Sons.
- Maruna, S. & Copes, H. (2005). "What Have We Learned from Five Decades of Neutralization Research?". Crime and Justice, 32, 221-320.
- Browning, C. R. (1992). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. HarperCollins.
// Quick challengeWhich theory best explains Bertholdt Hoover?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the techniques of neutralization?
Five justifications described by Sykes and Matza in 1957 that allow someone with conventional morality to suspend it situationally: denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim, condemnation of the condemners, and appeal to higher loyalties.
Why does apologising not stop someone from continuing?
Because the apology can be part of the mechanism rather than opposed to it. The emotional cost the perpetrator visibly pays certifies that he is still decent, and that certificate is exactly what he needs to continue. The practical test: remorse changes behaviour, neutralization preserves it.
Does the justification come before or after the offence?
Before, and that is the theory's central finding. These are not alibis invented after arrest but permissions granted in advance, which is what makes the act possible. Hence their usefulness is preventive: if the permission precedes the act, the moment to intervene is beforehand.
Does feeling guilt reduce responsibility?
On the contrary: it proves full moral capacity. Someone who feels guilt knew exactly what they were doing and to whom. Criminal law has never treated a perpetrator's distress as a discount on the harm, because the suffering of the person who caused it is not a currency the victim can spend.