Showing papers by "Francis T. Cullen published in 1987"

The Social Rejection of Former Mental Patients: Understanding Why Labels Matter'

Abstract: Recent research shows that the crucial factor determining the rejection of former mental patients is their behavior rather than their stigmantized status. The study reported here, based on a vignette experiment (with a design that varies patient status with the nature of behavior), challenges this conclusion. Like previous research, it indicates that a simple assessment of labelings shows little effect on a social distance scale. However, when a measure of perceived dangerousness of mental patients is introduced, strong labeling effects emerge. Specifically, the data reveal that the lable of "previous hospitalization" fosters high social distance among those who perceive mental patients to be dangerous and low social distance among those who do not see patients as a threat. It appears that past investigators have missed these effects because they have averaged excessively lenient responses with excessively rejecting ones. This suggests that labels play an important role in how former mental patients are p...

Sources of judicial attitudes toward criminal sanctioning

Abstract: Through a 1979 survey of 89 Illinois judges, the present study attempts to assess how various social, political, and occupational factors influence judicial attitudes toward criminal sanctioning. Specifically, our analysis examined the relative impact of background characteristics (e.g. age, community context) versus occupational variables (e.g., years on the bench, former prosecutor and/or defense attorney) on five sanctioning scales: rehabilitation, punishment, capital punishment, punishing white-collar offenders, and the treatment of juvenile delinquents. The analysis revealed that political orientation was the most important variable examined. Political ideology was found to be related to all but one of the sanctioning scales (punishing white-collar offenders). In contrast, the social and occupational variables generally were not significantly related to judicial attitudes on the purposes of sentencing.