Moral disengagement is enlisted at each of the three levels in the application of
the death penalty – at the societal, judicial, and execution levels. At the societal level,
moral disengagement eases the public’s qualms about the use of executions for capital
offenses. The higher the moral disengagement the stronger the public support for the
death penalty. Moral concerns are mitigated when state executions are viewed in the
abstract under the sanitized label of “capital punishment.”