NCJ Number
170845
Date Published
Unknown
Length
11 pages
Annotation
More than 1,700 citizens throughout the United States provided their opinions on punishment and crime seriousness issues as part of a recent U.S. Sentencing Commission study.
Abstract
This first-ever survey of public attitudes toward Federal sentences used a series of crime vignettes that incorporated relevant offense and offender characteristics (e.g., a bank robbery with a gun, injury, and $10,000 taken). These vignettes were presented at personal interviews, and respondents were asked to record what they considered to be a "just" and appropriate punishment in each case. In addition, respondents completed a short questionnaire that described their experience with, attitudes toward, and opinions about the criminal justice system. After describing the survey and its methodology, this bulletin compares public perceptions with the corresponding sentencing guideline ranges for four selected Federal offenses: drug trafficking, bank robbery, immigration offenses, and fraud. The survey included vignettes on drug trafficking that involved in powder cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. The vignettes selected for the bank robbery analysis compared the public perceptions of bank robbery at five different gun and injury combinations. Vignettes for immigration offenses encompassed illegal entry using false papers, the smuggling of family members, the smuggling of unrelated aliens for profit, and the smuggling of unrelated aliens into the United States for profit in a manner that endangered the safety of the aliens. The survey contained a wide variety of fraud offense vignettes; three are selected for comment in this report: Medicare fraud, savings failure, and the selling of worthless stocks and bonds. 6 figures