The sustained movement to “get tough” on crime, especially through mass imprisonment, has prompted several prominent efforts to explain the public's harshness toward crime. From the extant literature, we demarcate the following three competing theories of public punitiveness: the escalating crime‐distrust model, the moral decline model, and the racial animus model. Controlling for other known predictors of crime‐related opinions, we test the explanatory power of these perspectives to account for support for the death penalty and for a punitive crime‐control approach. Our analysis of a national sample of respondents surveyed in the 2000 National Election Study reveals partial support for each model. Racial animus, however, seems to exert the most consistent effect on public sentiments. This finding suggests that racial resentments are inextricably entwined in public punitiveness and thus should be incorporated into any complete theory of this phenomenon.

We investigated the influence of low self-control and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) on bullying and bully victimization in a sample of 1,315 middleschool students using a school survey. Students who reported taking medication for ADHD were at increased risk for bullying as well as victimization by bullies. The correlation between ADHD status and bullying could be explained by low self-control, a construct theorized by Gottfredson and Hirschi to be the most important determinant of criminality. In contrast, the correlation between ADHD status and bullying victimization was independent of self-control. Subsequent analyses found that self-control influenced bullying victimization through interactions with student gender and measures of physical size and strength. These findings identify low self-control and ADHD as potential risk factors for bullying and victimization and have implications for research on self-control in young adolescents.

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This study examined factors that influence a student's decision to report being bullied at school. An anonymous survey of 2,437 students in six middle schools identified 898 students who had been bullied, including 25% who had not told anyone that they were bullied and 40% who had not told an adult about their victimization. We investigated chronicity and type of bullying, school climate, familial, demographic, and attitudinal factors that influenced victim reporting to anyone versus no one, to adults versus no one, and to adults versus peers. Logistic regression analyses indicated that reporting increased with the chronicity of victimization. Reporting was generally more frequent among girls than boys, and among lower grade levels. Students who perceived the school climate to be tolerant of bullying, and students who described their parents as using coercive discipline were less likely to report being bullied. Implications for improving victim reporting of bullying are discussed.

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