Must the show go on? The (in)ability of counterevidence to change attitudes toward crime control theater policies.

Abstract

Crime control theater refers to intuitively appealing laws that appear to address crime while lacking any evidence that they actually do so (e.g., sex offender registration and residence restriction laws, which do not reduce recidivism). Despite their ineffectiveness, public support for such laws tends to be high. We predicted that making people aware of these laws' failure to reduce crime would lower support for them. Participants (recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk; Study 1: N = 298, mean age = 35.60, 47.7% self-identified as women and 75.8% as White; Study 2: N = 147, mean age = 35.03, 40.1% self-identified as women and 85.0% as White; Study 3: N = 552, mean age = 35.86, 42.9% self-identified as women and 76.4% as White) read about sex offender registration and residence restriction policies and rated their support for these laws, confidence in their opinions about them, and perceptions of their efficacy before and after reading counterevidence highlighting these laws' failure to reduce sex crimes. Although exposure to counterevidence somewhat lowered support (average within-subjects d = -0.69), general attitudes remained positive even at the postcounterevidence phase (average d = 0.46 against the scale midpoint). This pattern held when manipulating the criminal population being targeted (sex offenders vs. white-collar offenders; Study 1), when tailoring counterevidence to people's self-stated justifications for supporting these laws (Studies 2-3), and despite favorable ratings of the counterevidence's strength and credibility. Support for crime control theater policies persists despite explicit knowledge that they do not reduce crime, highlighting the need for alternative methods of dissuading people from their support for these ineffective laws. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).