The object of criminal punishment (what exactly an offender is punished for) is a central construct of criminal law theory, but it remains hard to identify in many contexts. This is especially relevant in the case of proxy crimes—offenses that criminalize behavior that does not seem wrongful per se but stands in for some other hard-to-prove wrongdoing. What is the object of punishment imposed on a person convicted of a proxy crime? Is it the criminalized conduct itself or the primary wrongdoing (which could not have been proven)? Our experimental study demonstrates that people tend to find a defendant guilty of a proxy crime most frequently when there is an indication of the primary wrongdoing as opposed to being charged with a primary offense in the context of the same evidence and being charged with a proxy in the absence of suspicion of the primary offense. However, we find evidence of discrepancies between laypeople and legal experts: the former seeing the object of punishment in a rather naively legalistic way, and the latter adhering to an instrumental vision. This challenges theories that postulate that the task of criminal law is to send messages that are understandable to both legal officials and citizens.

中文翻译：

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不确定性和谴责。外行与专家对刑事处罚客体直觉的实验研究

刑事处罚的对象（犯罪者具体受到何种处罚）为了）是刑法理论的核心构造，但在许多情况下仍然很难识别。这在代理人犯罪的情况下尤其重要——这些犯罪行为本身似乎并不违法，但却代表了其他一些难以证明的不当行为。对代理犯罪的人的处罚对象是什么？是犯罪行为本身还是主要不当行为（无法得到证实）？我们的实验研究表明，当有迹象表明被告有主要不法行为时，人们最常倾向于认为被告犯有代理犯罪，而不是在相同证据的情况下被指控犯有主要罪行，然后被指控代理犯罪。不存在对主要犯罪的怀疑。然而，我们发现外行和法律专家之间存在差异的证据：前者以一种相当天真的法律主义方式看待惩罚的对象，而后者则坚持工具性的视野。这对假设刑法的任务是传递法律官员和公民都可以理解的信息的理论提出了挑战。