An insurance policy may not only affect the consequences for victims but also forperpetrators. In six experiments we find that people recommend milderpunishments for perpetrators when the victim was insured, although peoplebelieve that a sentence should not depend on the victim’s insurancestatus. The robustness of this effect is demonstrated by showing thatrecommendations can even be more lenient for crimes that are in fact moreserious but in which the victim was insured. Moreover, even when harm waspossible but did not materialize, people still prefer to punish crimes lessseverely when the (potential) victim was insured. The final two experimentssuggest that the effect is associated with a change in (1) compassion for thevictim and (2) perceived severity of the transgression. Implications of thisphenomenon are briefly discussed.
