The results of two research literatures, one dealing with criminal sentencing and the other with public ranking of crime seriousness, have raised doubts that conflict exists in American society about issues of criminal justice. This paper offers a different and more direct approach to this issue by analyzing public perceptions of criminal injustice and by assessing the capacity of conflict theory to explain them. Our analysis is based on a national survey, and it focuses on the race, class, and status positions of the respondents, with class position measured in neo-Marxian terms. Three major findings are (i) that black Americans are considerably more likely than white Americans to perceive criminal injustice; (ii) that regardless of race, members of the surplus population are significantly more likely than members of other classes to perceive criminal injustice; and (iii) that class position conditions the relationship of race to the perception of criminal injustice, with the division between the races i...

Race, Class, and the Perception of Criminal Injustice in America'

A sizeable body of literature has found a surprising amount of agreement among racial and other demographic subgroups on punitive attitudes toward criminals. This consensus has been widely interpreted as evidence for functionalist views of crime and society. Challenging this interpretation, this paper argues that the similar attitudes between the races on punitiveness may in fact mask underlying hostilities and conflicting interests. Analyzing data from the 1987 National Opinion Research Center (NORC) General Social Survey, we find that the punitive attitudes of whites toward criminals are based partly on racial prejudice, while those of blacks are associated with their fear of crime. These results suggest that the consensus found in many previous studies between whites and blacks on punitiveness toward criminals may be apparent rather than real, and that their attitudes toward punitiveness reflect their disparate positions in the social and economic orders.

Punitive Attitudes Toward Criminals: Racial Consensus or Racial Conflict?

This article examines whether and in what ways punitive attitudes toward criminals can be understood as having roots in two hypothesized sources of anxiety in western society. The first is the danger of crime and its salience and the second is economic insecurity. Both have been seen as sources of growing perceptions that the State is failing in its responsibility to provide for citizen’s physical safety and economic security. Punitiveness toward criminals is hypothesized by some to be a way to act decisively in a time of relative uncertainty. It also serves to distinguish between the ‘undeserving poor’ and those who are economically insecure. Interviews with 2250 randomly selected Florida residents provide the data for this study. Our results indicate that crime salience, especially fear and concern about crime consistently predict punitiveness. When economic insecurity is measured in terms of expected circumstances in the near future, it is significantly linked to punitive attitudes among white males, particularly those who are less well educated and earn less income. The results are consistent with some aspects of an ‘angry white male’ phenomenon, particularly to the extent that those negative sentiments have a racial focus.

Punitive attitudes toward criminals

The impact of race on perceptions of criminal injustice

Miethe (1982) has recently argued that the consistent findings of wide-spread consensus in the rankings of the seriousness of crimes may be more a rejection of the methodological approaches used by past researchers than of actual public sentiments. Building on Miethe's insights, this paper examines the extent to which the nature of the techniques employed to analyze data influences seriousness evaluations. The results indicate that consensus is affected by such factors as the rating task given to the subjects, how consensus is measured, and the type of offense under investigation. In turn these methodological considerations caution against using existing research as the bask either for the verification of consensus theories of justice or for the formulation of sanctioning policy.

Consensus in crime seriousness: empirical reality or methodological artifact?*

Repression and Criminal Justice in Capitalist America

CRIMINAL justice research has given considerable attention to the roles of the police and the prosecutor in the administration of justice. Particular attention has been given to the correspondence between the discretionary judgements governing their behaviors (Skolnik 1966, Newman 000, Goldstein 1960, Gray 1967, Reiss 1972). While some research has been focussed upon the court and the general problems faced by it in the daily administration of justice (Blumberg 1967, 1971, Downie 1972, Cicourel 1968) little attention has been given to the actual judicial decision-making

The Application of Shock Probation in Judicial Practice

The commentary of Mr. Denton and Mr. Farmer is correct insofar as it implies our data do not reflect current shock probation practices. Certainly our article should be viewed as an analysis of judicial discretion with respect to shock probation at a given point in time. Published social science data are seldom co-terminus with ongoing activities due to the constantly shifting nature of social events.

Edward W. Bohlander

Papers

Repression and Criminal Justice in Capitalist America

The Application of Shock Probation in Judicial Practice

Remarks by the Authors