Beyond the retributive public: governance and public opinion on penal policy

Abstract

The notion of a retributive public underlies many explanations of the USA's high incarceration rate. However, accounting for political context may undermine the retributive public assumption. Jonathan Simon's ‘governing through crime’ perspective provides one theory about the relationship between political context and public opinion on punitive penal policies. From this perspective, public support for punitive policies mirrors politicians’ focus on incapacitation and inadequate courts. Using data from a national telephone survey conducted in 1995 during the height of the public's concern about crime, this study uses logistic regression analyses to examine the relationship between beliefs about sentencing goals, distrust in courts, and support for mandatory sentencing. Consistent with agoverning through crime perspective, the results suggest that wanting to separate offenders from society and distrusting the courts increases the likelihood of supporting mandatory sentencing. Further analyses also suggest that the governing through crime perspective could be expanded to include the role of racial bias in support for punitive penal policies, especially as racist attitudes may interact with beliefs about sentencing goals. These findings call into question the retributive public assumption and point toward new directions for explaining public support for punitive policies in the USA.