"Get tough" control policies in the United States are often portrayed as the reflection of the public's will: Americans are punitive and want offenders locked up. Research from the past decade both reinforces and challenges this assessment. The public clearly accepts, if not prefers, a range of punitive policies (e. g., capital punishment, three-strikes-and-you're-out laws, imprisonment). But support for get-tough policies is "mushy." Thus citizens may be willing to substitute a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for the death penalty. Especially when nonviolent offenders are involved, there is substantial support for intermediate sanctions and for restorative justice. Despite three decades of criticism, rehabilitation-particularly for the young-remains an integral part of Americans' correctional philosophy. There is also widespread support for early intervention programs. In the end, the public shows a tendency to be punitive and progressive, wishing the correctional system to achieve the diver...

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Public Opinion about Punishment and Corrections

This paper assesses whether support for harsh punitive policies toward crime is related to the racial typification of crime for a national random sample of households (N=885), surveyed in 2002. Results from OLS regression show that the racial typification of crime is a significant predictor of punitiveness, independent of the influence of racial prejudice, conservatism, crime salience, southern residence and other factors. This relationship is shown to be concentrated among whites who are either less prejudiced, not southern, conservative and for whom crime salience is low. The results broaden our understanding of the links between racial threat and social control, beyond those typically associated with racial composition of place. They also resonate important themes in what some have termed modern racism and what others have described as the politics of exclusion.

Racial typification of crime and support for punitive measures

This research examines the individual-level and contextual correlates of punitive attitudes in the United States. Prior research suggests that the demographic composition and economic conditions of geographic areas influence public support for punitive policies. Yet, these findings rest on assumptions about individual perceptions of minority groups as threatening. This work builds on the threat framework by measuring the concept of "perceived threat" and examining the association between aggregate social conditions, perceived threat and punitive sentiments. Analysis of newly collected data suggests that individual perceptions of African Americans as threatening to economic resources is a strong predictor of punitive attitudes. In addition, respondents residing in areas with higher unemployment rates and places that experienced a recent increase in the size of the African American population are more punitive. The latter effect is largely mediated by perceptions of African Americans as threatening to material resources for white respondents. The results agree with racial threat perspectives on social control, but we go beyond extant research by unpacking the micro-level processes that are central to the threat hypothesis.

Group Threat and Social Control: Race, Perceptions of Minorities and the Desire to Punish

Despite considerable theoretical interest, little is known about the political determinants ofpunishment. This study uses a pooled time-series design to fill this gap by examining political and other determinants of state imprisonment rates. The presence of Republican elected officials is used to assess the strength of the law-and-order political party. Ethnic threat theories suggest that imprisonments will be more likely in jurisdictions with the most blacks or Hispanics, while economic threat theories suggest that the imprisoned population will be greater where economic stratification is most pronounced. After controllingfor social disorganization, religious fundamentalism, political conservatism, and violent crimes, the results show that Republican strength and minority threat lead to higher imprisonment rates. Statistical interactions support predictions that these relationships became stronger after greater Republican stress on law and order. The latter findings confirm theoretical expectations that these relationships are historically contingent.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2675532.pdf

The Politics of Punishment across Time and Space: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis of Imprisonment Rates

We extend earlier analyses of the factors that explain differences among the U.S. states in imprisonment rates by demonstrating the importance of state culture and political arrangements to the explanation of imprisonment rates, and growth in those rates, for the years 1971–1991.

State prison populations and their growth, 1971–1991*

In Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that public opinion, including the public's presumed desire for retribution, can be a legitimate basis for penal policy. Subsequently, the retributive doctrine has guided sentencing reform across the nation. But variation among the public in support for retribution as the goal of punishment and the effects of religion in shaping public sentiments about punishment have received little attention from researchers. Drawing from recent work on attribution theory and religion, this paper proposes and reports evidence that public support for the retributive doctrine is closely linked to affiliation with fundamentalist Protestant denominations and fundamentalist religious beliefs. The normative implications of such a connection are addressed.

Elizabeth Davenport

Papers

Protestant fundamentalism and the retributive doctrine of punishment