NCJ Number
173843
Date Published
1995
Length
250 pages
Annotation
This book examines public attitudes about criminal justice.
Abstract
The book explores the politics of crime and criminal justice and examines in depth what Americans think about penalties for criminal offenders. While attitudes vary from hopeful and forgiving to frustrated and angry, fully 80 percent of the population believes that the court system should deal more harshly with criminal offenders. The book attempts to understand and explain why Americans support harsh penal policies when crime rates are actually falling, how this attitude squares with the country's often liberal social ideas, and what logic there is to support stiff sentencing when the vast majority of the public acknowledges that prisons have been powerless to reduce crime to an acceptable level. The book theorizes about who joins and who spurns the consensus on criminal justice and explores the complex relationship between political beliefs and attitudes toward crime, revealing in some cases a telling dissonance. The book concludes that Americans have become harsher on crime not in spite of becoming more liberal on a variety of other social issues but, at least in part, because of having done so. Table, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index