NCJ Number
226412
Journal
Punishment & Society Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2009 Pages: 25-49
Date Published
January 2009
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This study examined whether and in what ways punitive attitudes toward criminals have roots in two sources of anxiety: danger of crime and its salience, and economic insecurity.
Abstract
Results show that crime salience when measured by concern about crime and fear of crime consistently and strongly predicted punitive attitudes whereas victim experience did not. The significance of concern and fear in this regard is manifest regardless of the sex, race, or ethnicity of respondents. When economic insecurity is indicated by the expectation that one’s financial circumstance will not improve, but will stay the same in the coming year, there is little consequence for punitiveness. However, among those who expected their financial circumstances to get worse in the near future, support for punitive measures to deal with criminals was consistently elevated. This link between punitive attitudes and economic insecurity is found only for White males, and in particular, those White males who are less well educated and have relatively low income. The consistency of the effects of fear on punitive attitudes found across racial and ethnic groups runs counter to previous results which found no such relationship for Whites. This could indicate the increase and more widespread salience of crime in popular culture. Data were collected through interviews with 2,250 randomly selected Florida residents. Tables, notes, and references