Punitiveness and the Acknowledgement of Systemic Racism among Criminal Justice Students

Abstract

Those studying criminal justice at the undergraduate level are an important bellwether for understanding future reform efforts. If students are unwilling to acknowledge systemic issues needing reform, this suggests that reform efforts are likely to face internal opposition. The current study examines the extent to which criminal justice students acknowledge that systemic racial issues present a need for criminal justice reform. Using survey data from students at a single university, the findings reveal that students are willing to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism, although expected individual-level factors predicted variation in such acknowledgment. In addition, the current study explores the relationship between willingness to acknowledge systemic issues and general punitive attitudes. Consistent with the extant research, criminal justice students’ racialized attitudes are significantly related to more punitive crime-control preferences. These findings have implications for understanding efforts to reform criminal justice, and they raise essential questions for criminal justice educators.