NCJ Number
169558
Journal
Adolescence Volume: 32 Issue: 126 Dated: (Summer 1997) Pages: 447-449
Date Published
1997
Length
3 pages
Annotation
High school and college students were surveyed regarding their attitude toward the death penalty for certain criminal acts.
Abstract
Seventy-two boys and 70 girls at two high schools and 36 men and 76 women at a state college received a questionnaire asking whether they favored the death penalty for certain criminal acts. A questionnaire was also administered to assess extroversion and neuroticism. High school students rated more criminal acts as meriting the death penalty than did college students. The two groups agreed that the crimes most deserving of the death penalty were when a person: murders several people at different times, tortures the victim before killing, murders someone else's child, kills several people at once, or assassinates the President of the United States. The study found no association between gender and personality and attitudes toward the death penalty. The finding that high school students were more in favor of capital punishment than were college students raises two possibilities: that adolescents become less punitive after some college experience or that more punitive high school students are less likely to go to college. Table, references