Punitive Criminal Justice Policies Research Articles

Stigmatizing ‘evildoers’: how beliefs about evil and public stigma explain criminal justice policy preferences

ABSTRACT Characterizations of offenders as ‘evil’ appear in popular entertainment, political rhetoric, and scholarship and may be rooted in widely endorsed cultural narratives. Integrating psychological and criminological literatures, we argue that endorsement of good-and-evil myths may be associated with criminal justice policy support via stigmatizing attitudes about those who engage in crime. We partially tested these hypotheses in a preliminary study using an online convenience sample (recruited using Amazon MTurk in 2015), then tested the full theoretical model using more comprehensive measures in a survey of American adults conducted via Qualtrics Panel in 2021 (N = 1,162). We found that both belief in evil (i.e. belief in evil forces) and belief in redemptive violence (i.e. belief in a clash between good and evil) were positively associated with punitive policy support, and stigmatizing attitudes partially mediated the effects of both. While belief in redemptive violence was negatively associated with rehabilitative policy support and stigmatizing attitudes mediated that relationship, belief in evil was not associated with support for rehabilitation. We consider the implications of our findings for mitigating the harms of public stigma and punitive criminal justice policy.

Drug transactions and the dark web: Public perceptions of the locational setting of offenders and support for drug policy outcomes

BackgroundBoth legal and extra-legal factors influence judicial and non-judicial opinions about persons who use drugs. Yet, how the locational setting of drug transactions influences public perceptions of drug control policies remains understudied. In particular, the public's view of drug exchanges on the dark web could directly and indirectly influence drug policy, legal decision making, and spending decisions. The study's aim is to identify whether the location of a drug exchange, specifically the dark web, influences public preferences for drug policy and police resourcing. MethodsA sample (n = 1359) from the United States of America was recruited and participated in a discrete choice experiment. The participants compared and repeatedly chose across five iterations between two drug offender profiles with nine set features, such as the location of drug transactions, all with randomized levels. The resulting sample included a total of 13,590 contest pairs. ResultsAveraging over the non-locational attributes, respondents indicated that, compared to the dark web, several locational settings for drug exchange (such as the street corner, social media, and an unknown location) needed fewer police resources and offenders were less deserving of longer punishments. No statistically significant difference was found for opinions about harm to communities, and offenders involved in drug exchanges on university campuses were considered more deserving of a substance abuse treatment program than offenders on the dark web. ConclusionThere appears to be a preference for more punitive criminal justice policies for drug transactions occurring on the dark web relative to some other common settings. Such preferences may indicate a novelty effect driven by negative sentiment surrounding the dark web or a perceived deficit in the police's ability to deal with drug crimes on the dark web. These findings suggest that the public may prefer supply-side policing efforts over demand-side policies, which emphasizes harm reduction.

Racial Threat and Punitive Police Attitudes

Racial Threat Theory posits that punitive attitudes are produced when Whites are alarmed by large or growing Black populations. While research has identified a relationship between Black composition and support from community members for more punitive criminal justice policy, no research has examined whether racial composition influences punitive attitudes among criminal justice personnel—even though they represent a key population that can engage in discrimination. This study advances our understanding of racial threat and police force by examining the relationship between Black population and punitive use-of-force attitudes on the part of police. Using survey and census data for approximately 10,000 police officers in 97 agencies, multilevel analyses reveal that officers report more punitive attitudes in jurisdictions with larger Black populations and that this relationship is concentrated among White police officers. The results provide evidence that racial disparities in police outcomes are at least partly driven by motivational criteria (such as discrimination).

Community consequences of mass incarceration: sparking neighborhood social problems and violent crime

ABSTRACT Punitive criminal justice policies caused incarceration and reentry rates to sharply increase in the era of mass incarceration. Disadvantaged communities of color have been disproportionately affected by those policies through heightened levels of prison cycling, which is the flow of individuals into and out of prison. Community-level prison cycling has harmful neighborhood consequences, including increased violent crime. This Boston-based study investigates how prison cycling influences crime by exploring three potential pathways. First, prison cycling may undermine beneficial social behavior, reduce collective efficacy, and create an environment susceptible to crime; second, prison cycling may stimulate neighborhood social problems that encourage crime; and third, prison cycling may simply have a direct, toxic relationship with neighborhood violent crime. The analysis employs Boston crime and prison cycling data,and neighborhood social environment data from the 2008 Boston Neighborhood Survey. Contrary to existing theoretical and empirical research, results suggest that prison cycling is not associated with collective efficacy. However, results indicate that prison cycling predicts neighborhood social problems and community violent crime, offering support for alternative theories on the prison cycling and crime relationship. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and policy implications.

Crime trend perceptions, negative emotions, and public punitiveness: a survey experiment of information treatment

Public punitiveness is closely related to the expansion of the US penal system. Prior studies have examined inaccurate crime trend perceptions and negative emotions as key predictors of punitive attitudes. However, the interconnections between crime trend perceptions, negative emotions, and punitive attitudes have not been explored. It is yet unknown if exposure to accurate crime trend information reduces negative emotions and public punitiveness. I analyzed data from a survey-based experiment with a nationwide sample (N = 441) using conditional process analysis. Perceptions of rising crime trends were related to punitiveness both directly and indirectly through anger about crime. Exposure to accurate crime information did not alleviate anger about or fear of crime, but, surprisingly, increased support for punitive criminal justice policies. The study highlights the importance of understanding the expressive and emotional elements of punishment and the possible positive effect of providing people with accurate crime information on punitiveness.

Review: Unusually Cruel: Prisons, Punishment, and the Real American Exceptionalism, by Marc Morjé Howard

Review: Unusually Cruel: Prisons, Punishment, and the Real American Exceptionalism, by Marc Morjé Howard

The Value of Social Control: Racial Resentment, Punitiveness, and White Support for Spending on Law Enforcement

A well-established body of research finds that racial resentment predicts support for punitive criminal justice policy. This article links racial resentment with punitiveness, expanding the existing research—a body of work that largely treats punitivity as a response to threat. Data for this study come from three nationally representative samples and incorporate individual and contextual factors. Key variables include Racial Resentment, Political Ideology, Punitiveness, Crime—both objective crime (i.e., county-level crime rates) and subjective crime (i.e., fear of crime), racial population characteristics, and theoretically relevant controls. Contextual factors help to clarify whether support for spending is a “rational” response to crime or a “nonrational” response to perceived racial threat as expressed through punitiveness. Findings indicate that, net of a host of factors, a punitive value orientation as well as racial resentment predicts support for increased spending on law enforcement. Our analysis also suggests that racial resentment and punitivity are more consistent and stronger predictors of support even when controlling for Crime. The article closes with a discussion of opportunity cost vis-à-vis law enforcement and other community needs. Implications for further study of race and criminal justice policy get discussed with suggestions for dealing with the future of identity-based politics.

Arab Threat and Social Control: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Ethnic Attitudes and Punitiveness Among Israeli Jews

Numerous studies in the United States, as well as a smaller number of studies in other Westernized countries, have linked racial and ethnic attitudes to support for more punitive forms of crime control. The current study explores this relationship in Israel by assessing whether the degree to which Israeli Jews typify crime as an Israeli Arab phenomenon and/or resent Israeli Arabs is related to support for punitive criminal justice policies. The findings suggest that ethnic typification and resentment are related to general punitive attitudes, whereas ethnic apathy and resentment are related to greater support for the death penalty. Also, the relationship between ethnic typification and punitiveness is stronger among those who are less resentful.

Edward Orozco Flores, “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con”: Political Activism and Redemption after Incarceration

American Religion 1, no. 2 (Spring 2020), pp. 139–141 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.1.2.15 Book Review Edward Orozco Flores, “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con”: Political Activism and Redemption after Incarceration (New York: New York University Press, 2018) Brad Stoddard McDaniel College, Westminster, USA In “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con”, sociologist Edward Orozco Flores joins a growing chorus of scholars, activists, and theologians who argue that religious responses to mass incarceration and criminal justice reform more broadly help the formerly incarcerated not only regain their dignity and repair the damage caused by mass incarceration, but also, according to Orozco, “expand the boundaries of democratic inclusion to facilitate social integration” (2). To demonstrate this, Flores conducted qualitative, ethnographic research on two faith-based organizations (FBOs)—Community Renewal Society (CRS) from Chicago and LA Voice from Los Angeles—to document how these groups work with formerly incarcerated gang members both to inspire and nurture personal religiosity and to lobby for structural changes through criminal justice reform. Based on this research, Flores argues that faith-based community organizing fosters progressive prophetic activism or prophetic redemption for people furthest on the margins of American society and American democracy. Prophetic redemption, Flores argues, finds its roots in the Black Social Gospel and the work of sociologist and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, who argued that institutional factors like racism and racial segregation perpetuate poverty and impede socioeconomic mobility. Du Bois’s insights are particularly relevant today, where the formerly American Religion 1:2 140 incarcerated face legalized forms of discrimination that prevent them from voting , that prevent them from obtaining public assistance, and that make it difficult for them to find jobs. Du Bois’s arguments later influenced sociologists and criminologists, particularly the Chicago School of sociology, which provided intellectual support for the Age of Roosevelt crime control efforts that “shifted power to the elites, without regard for power building among the marginalized” (10). This shift enabled the rise of the surveillance state (as it relates to incarceration) and to punitive criminal justice policies. The Chicago School continues to study criminology, ignoring important work in the sociology of religion, which argues that civil religion continues to inspire both personal and political reform. Faith-based groups like CRS and LA Voice embrace this notion of civil religion as they fight for criminal justice reform, providing spaces for formerly incarcerated gang members to find meaning post-incarceration, to participate in democratic reforms, and to foster prophetic redemption. Flores begins the book by outlining the history of political and criminal justice reform that created a space for FBOs and community-based organizations (CBOs) to become more involved in criminal justice reform. This history includes Age of Reagan neoliberalism, the privatization of probation, and the emphasis on reentry. These changes gave FBOs and CBOs a seat at the proverbial table, where they advocated for insurgent grassroots resistance instead of topdown criminal justice reform. In the process, members of FBOs participated in religious and civic practices that helped give meaning to their incarceration and their lives more broadly, that fostered social acceptance, and that inspired them “to expand the boundaries of democratic inclusion” (66). In chapters four and five, Flores returns to the theme of prophetic redemption , first, where he argues that FBOs engaged in insurgent prophetic redemption that allowed them to draw from their experiences on the street, in gangs, and in recovery programs. These experiences provided rhetorics and strategies for community engagement and personal transformation that affected their organizational efforts. FBOs also engage in pastoral prophetic redemption as they foster a diverse and inclusive movement to engage the community in substantive reform. Flores also argues that FBOs’ efforts to engage their communities and their democracies created opportunities for “collective subjectivity and empowerment ” (161) by redefining their notions of manhood, masculinity, parenthood, and engaged citizenship. Flores concludes by summarizing his argument where he contends that scholars interested in criminal justice reform should concern themselves not only with personal claims or displays of religiosity, but with civil religion, where religious people organize for personal, communal, and political transformations. Brad Stoddard 141 “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con” is a well-researched...

Assessing the Effect of Social Science Education on Punitive Attitudes.

Purpose: One of the most consistent predictors of punitiveness is education, with more educated individuals expressing less punitive sentiments. While much of the earlier research focused on the level of education, some researchers have recently begun to look more closely at the nature of that education such as examining the effect of specific majors on punitiveness. This paper goes even further by also analyzing more broadly the effect of a social science education on punitive attitudes.Methods: This article presents results from an online survey of 4,000 undergraduate students attending a United States’ university. Ordinary least squares analysis is used to examine the effect of majoring in the social sciences on support for punitive criminal justice policies, while controlling for a number of theoretically relevant variables.Findings: We find that more educated students and those majoring in social science disciplines are generally less punitive than their counterparts. If we are to unburden ourselves of the intricately intermingled economic and social costs of mass incarceration, it will require a re-visioning of how we do justice in America. Social scientists can play a crucial role in this regard through focused research and in educating young people to be critical thinkers and thoughtful citizens.

Confidence in the Police, Due Process, and Perp Walks

Research SummaryPerp walks have been declared constitutionally acceptable even though the practice could be perceived to be a form of preconviction punishment and a manifestation of populist punitiveness. In adjudicating the constitutionality of perp walks, courts have employed a balancing test in which the interests of the press and the public's desire to know about the activities of law enforcement are weighted heavily. No research has been aimed at examining public opinion about this practice, however. We report the results of a national opt‐in survey of public opinion on perp walks and find that less than one third of the sample respondents support them. By employing models derived from research on the influence of race and ethnicity on attitudes toward criminal justice policies, we find that, after controlling for concerns about the police and due process rights violations, African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos are more supportive of perp walks than are Whites. These findings suggest that perp walks are one of a few areas in which racial/ethnic minorities might take a harsher view of punitive criminal justice policies compared with Whites.Policy ImplicationsMedia coverage of some perp walks is likely unavoidable in a society with a free press, but the unscripted media coverage of a perp walk is different than the intentional coordination of a perp walk between law enforcement and the media. This practice of deliberately publicizing the arrest of criminal suspects has been defended by prosecutors and police. Contrary to claims that the public wants perp walks, however, we find that more people oppose than support perp walks. In light of the multiple constitutional concerns surrounding this practice, these results suggest that the orchestration of perp walks by law enforcement should be reconsidered.

The Long Shadow of Police Racial Treatment: Racial Disparity in Criminal Justice Processing

AbstractThis article explores racial disproportionality in criminal justice processing in an era of punitive criminal justice policies and mass incarceration. Using arrest data from New York State, the authors compare the racial disparity in prison sentencing with the disparity at arrest while controlling for crime type and criminal history of the arrest population. Findings show that the racial disparity in prison sentencing at the state level is established before courts begin criminal case proceedings. Scholars and policy makers interested in the sources of racial disparity in incarceration should concentrate on the processes that generate crime and arrests. However, a decrease in racial disparity at prison sentencing, relative to arrest, suggests that the practices of courtroom actors still merit scholarly attention.

Cultivating Support for Punitive Criminal Justice Policies: News Sectors and the Moderating Effects of Audience Characteristics

This study investigates whether exposure to various news sectors (local television, network television, cable television, radio, daily print newspapers, and Internet) is associated with audience members' criminal justice policy preferences, and how these relationships are moderated by audience members' socio-demographic characteristics. I propose that the relationship between news exposure and punitiveness is mediated by audience members' instrumental concerns (fear of crime and previous victimization) and expressive concerns (belief in the importance of traditional ties, feelings of racial resentment, and pessimism about the national economy). I further suggest that the relationship between news exposure and punitiveness is moderated by audience members' socio-demographic characteristics (race/ethnicity, local crime rate, and political ideology). Finally, I contend that individual news sectors vary in their attention to crime and their rhetorical framing, and thus have differing relationships with punitiveness. Results of a nationally representative survey suggest that news exposure cultivates punitiveness among whites, but not among blacks or Hispanics. Among whites, local news viewership has a significant positive relationship with punitiveness, particularly among individuals living in low-crime areas. Cable television, radio, print newspaper, and Internet news exposure have significant relationships with punitiveness, the direction of which hinges on audience members' partisanship. I discuss the results in the context of the social construction of reality, highlighting the interplay between experienced and vicarious sources of knowledge, and in terms of selective exposure, emphasizing that audience members' news outlet choices have profound implications for their worldviews.

The 'Iron Fist’ of the Citizens’ Revolution: The Punitive Turn of Ecuadorian Left-wing Politics

The punitive turn in Ecuadorian left-wing politics embodies a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand it involved extending social rights and resisting neoliberalism. On the other hand, punitive criminal justice policies intensified. This paper explores what, how, when and why this occurred to explain the complexity of Ecuador’s punitive turn under a period of twenty-first century socialism. Two eras of national policy will be compared. The first is known as the ‘long neoliberal night’ (the before); while the second is known as the ‘Citizens' Revolution’ (the present). The Citizens’ Revolution replaced neoliberal policies with social development, infrastructure, services and programs alongside the more equitable distribution of wealth. In a first moment, it also deployed strategies and actions towards penal moderation. However, since 2010, it has changed dramatically, generating an astonishing punitive turn. The article concludes that law and order policies in Ecuador therefore do not fit Loïc Wacquant’s (2013: 22) description of the ‘neoliberal penal paradox’.

Blame Avoidance and Policy Stability in Developing Democracies: The Politics of Public Security in Buenos Aires

Author(s): Flom, H; Post, AE | Abstract: Democratization originally inspired hope that new regimes would privilege human rights. However, progressive reforms to the criminal code have been insufficient to stem dramatic increases in incarceration rates, and developing democracies have made little headway reforming their ineffective police forces. How can we explain the stability and enforcement of punitive criminal justice policies and the erosion of police reforms? We offer a novel theoretical explanation of these contrasting patterns through a comparison of these two policy areas in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Incentives to avoid blame for salient crimes discourage politicians from repealing punitive criminal justice policies and incentivize judges to enforce them. Responsibility for failed police reforms, however, is harder to assign, giving the police and their allies opportunities to undermine them.

Experience Versus Expectation: Economic Insecurity, the Great Recession, and Support for the Death Penalty

Scholars have theorized that people who report past economic hardship and those who forecast future economic instability will be more likely to support punitive criminal justice policies than those who do not. Only recently have researchers begun to empirically examine this association, and the findings from this small literature have been highly inconsistent. The current study contributes to this line of inquiry by investigating a uniquely rich set of economic insecurity measures included in a very large national survey (N = 9,060) fielded during a time period of special theoretical salience: the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Specifically, using survey data from the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, we explore the effects of experienced and expected personal, vicarious, and societal economic insecurity on support for the death penalty. Contrary to the hypotheses, expectations of future economic insecurity are negatively associated with death penalty support, but this relationship is conditional on respondents’ demographics.

A New Approach to Voir Dire on Racial Bias

One question that attorneys in racially charged cases face is whether to attempt to conduct voir dire into racial bias. Voir dire is the process of questioning prospective jurors to ensure that those chosen to sit on the jury will be impartial and unbiased. Whether it is a good idea from a trial strategy perspective to voir dire prospective jurors when an attorney believes racial bias may have played a role in the events underlying the case is a question over which reasonable minds can disagree. Perhaps the most common view is that reflected by Albert Alschuler who suggested twenty-five years ago that any voir dire into racial bias would be minimally useful. In this article, I challenge Alschuler's belief that voir dire into racial bias is of minimal benefit. I argue that calling attention to the possibility of racial bias in either the actions of the individuals involved in the case or the jurors themselves can raise the salience of race and encourage jurors to view the evidence in a less biased way than if they were not paying attention to the possibility of racial bias. While I agree with Alschuler that a simple, close-ended question like Are you going to be biased against the defendant because of his race? is unlikely to be helpful, I believe a series of open-ended questions, asking jurors to reflect upon how racial bias, both explicit and implicit, might affect their ability to impartially consider the evidence, can be beneficial. My article proceeds in three parts. In Part I, I review the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on voir dire into racial bias. In Part II, I examine recent social science research that may help answer the question whether calling attention to race during voir dire helps or hurts. On the one hand is a wealth of empirical research conducted over the last decade that strongly suggests calling attention to race motivates jurors to treat Black and White defendants equally. These studies indicate that when race is not highlighted, jurors tend to be more punitive and less empathetic toward Black defendants than White defendants. On the other hand are a few recent studies suggesting that when individuals are made aware of extreme racial differences in the prison population, i.e. when they are given information that suggests there are many more Blacks and Latinos than Whites in prison, Whites are more likely to support punitive criminal justice policies. I conclude in Part III that as a matter of trial strategy, it is best for an attorney concerned about racial bias to confront the issue of race head on. I argue that it is best to do so early and often, rather than waiting until just before the jury deliberates, as it may be too late by then to change jurors' minds.

‘What on earth can this possibly mean’? French reentry courts and experts' risk assessment

Against the backdrop of ten years of punitive criminal justice policies, the number of cases in which risk assessments by psychiatrist experts are mandatory has considerably increased in France. Because of complex and deeply ingrained cultural factors, most experts and academics oppose the use of actuarial or other structured judgement tools, which they assimilate to these policy changes. Parallel to this, the reentry judges in charge of making release and other community sentence decisions have maintained a strong rehabilitative and desistance-focused culture. Drawing on interviews with these judges and experts, the author wanted to assess the judges' expectations of experts' reports, their opinion on actuarial tools, and how they perceived experts and their aptitude to assess risk. The study showed that French reentry judges manage to keep experts' conclusions at bay when they do not fit with their desistance goals, as they can draw upon their own expertise and that of probation services. They do not have much faith in the professionalism and methodology of experts, and would like them to better demonstrate how they reach their conclusions. Moreover, criminogenic needs assessment would be much more useful to them than static risk assessment, which raises the issue as to why this is not the French probation services' role. Reentry judges who never encountered a report which uses a structured tool are influenced by the French ideological debate; those who have read such reports are unanimously in favour of such tools. It thus seems clear that they would like experts to be more strongly guided by science, but are not yet fully aware of what this entails.

The Time Varying Nature of Political Communication

Research shows that political actors can employ a variety of communication strategies to influence the political preferences of the mass public --- agenda-setting, persuasion, issue framing, and priming. Existing research assumes, however, that the effectiveness of these messages is time invariant. Yet, the dynamic and competitive nature of politics should lead to a time-varying relationship between some political messages and public opinion. Moreover, the time-varying nature of this relationship should not be entirely idiosyncratic. Instead, it should depend on several systematic factors such as changes in social conditions and changes in social norms. An analysis of the over-time movement in public preferences toward punitive criminal justice policies provides an ideal means to test the time-varying relationship between political communication and public opinion. Scholars agree that the rising support for punitive policies is tied to the social construction of crime by politicians and the news media, but disagree about what type of political message is responsible for the increase in punitive sentiment.

PUNITIVE SENTIMENT

Scholarship has long noted the importance of understanding the changes that occur over time in aggregate public support for punitive criminal justice policies. Yet, the lack of a reliable and valid measure of this concept limits our understanding of this aspect of the criminal justice system. This research develops a measure of public support for punitive policies from 1951 to 2006 using 242 administrations of 24 unique survey indicators. It argues that punitive sentiment is politically constructed via frames focusing on the permissiveness of the criminal justice system. Punitive sentiment is estimated with an error‐correction model showing both the short‐ and long‐term relationships between punitive sentiment and presidential framing of crime, public dissatisfaction with social welfare policies, and perceptions of racial integration. The results highlight the complex dynamics responsible for the change over time in punitive sentiment as well as the possibilities of obtaining public support for alternative solutions to crime.