Yes. In the few times I have interacted with criminals doing something that essentially everyone agrees is wrong -- not just people violating laws that many dis

Yes. In the few times I have interacted with criminals doing something that essentially everyone agrees is wrong -- not just people violating laws that many disagree with, but really unambiguously bad stuff -- they have all consistently had some strained story (that I think they truly believed, at some level) for why what they were doing is OK. It's really sobering to see in person, and deeply undermines the faith one has in one's justification for one's own behavior. There was a story a while back, perhaps on HN, discussing the results of an academic survey of prisoners (in the UK, I think). They consistently evaluated themselves as more honorable than the average person on almost every dimension.