Collective Outbursts, Politics, and Punitive Resources: Toward a Political Sociology of Spending on Social Control

Jacobs, David; Helms, Ronald

doi:10.2307/3005884

Cited by 80 publications

(59 citation statements)

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“…Informal mechanisms of social control, such as lynchings (Corzine, Creech, and Corzine, 1983) and hate crimes (Green, Strolovitch, and Wong, 1998), also have been tied to racial threat dynamics, as have various types of state‐sponsored social control. For instance, the relative size of the Black population is associated with police size in addition to expenditures and use of force (Chamlin, 1987; Greenberg, Kessler, and Loftin, 1985; Jackson, 1989; Jackson and Carroll, 1981; Kent and Jacobs, 2005; Liska, Lawrence, and Benson, 1981) as well as arrest rates (Brown and Warner, 1992; Liska, Chamlin, and Reed, 1985), use of imprisonment (Britt, 2000; Greenberg and West, 2001; Jacobs and Carmichael, 2001; Myers and Talarico, 1987), and overall criminal justice expenditures (Jacobs and Helms, 1999). Support for capital punishment even has been shown to be higher in contexts of increased racial group threat (Baumer, Messner, and Rosenfeld, 2003; Phillips, 1986).…”

Section: Race Ethnicity Threat and Punishmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retracted: Ethnic Threat and Social Control: Examining Public Support for Judicial Use of Ethnicity in Punishment*

et al. 2011

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Research on social inequality in punishment has focused for a long time on the complex relationship among race, ethnicity, and criminal sentencing, with a particular interest in the theoretical importance that group threat plays in the exercise of social control in society. Prior research typically relies on aggregate measures of group threat and focuses on racial rather than on ethnic group composition. The current study uses data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. residents to investigate the influence of more proximate and diverse measures of ethnic group threat, examining public support for the judicial use of ethnic considerations in sentencing. Findings indicate that both aggregate and perceptual measures of threat influence popular support for ethnic disparity in punishment and that individual perceptions of criminal and economic threat are particularly important. Moreover, we find that perceived threat is conditioned by aggregate group threat contexts. *The authors would like to thank Ryan King for his helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper and Jason Bratton for his helpful technical assistance. Results from this work were presented at the

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Section: Race Ethnicity Threat and Punishmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retracted: Ethnic Threat and Social Control: Examining Public Support for Judicial Use of Ethnicity in Punishment*

et al. 2011

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“…Studies of this effect eventually came to include the presumption of black crime as one potential source of threat, an influence identified as social threat (Liska 1992) and, more recently due to its substantially crime-specific nature, racial threat (Baumer, Messner, and Rosenfeld 2003;Crawford, Chiricos, and Kleck 1998). 4 Racial composition of place-the most common proxy for racial threat-is related to rates of arrest (Mosher 2001), resources and size of both law enforcement (Chamlin 1989) and corrections (Jacobs and Helms 1999), rates of incarceration (Jacobs and Kleban 2003), and executions (Tolnay, Beck, and Massey 1992). The effect of racial composition on social control also appears to be mediated by micro-level perceptions of racial threat, such that widespread associations made between blacks and dangerous predatory criminality are consequential for public support for harsh criminal policies (Chiricos, Welch, and Gertz 2004) and crime reduction expenditures (Barkan and Cohn 2005).…”

Section: Racial Threatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racial Threat and Punitive School Discipline

2010

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Tests of the racial threat hypothesis, linking the racial composition of place to various measures of social control, find that where there are greater percentages of blacks, more punitive criminal justice policies are implemented. Just as the criminal justice system continues to get tougher on crime despite stagnant crime rates, it is also clear that schools are becoming harsher toward student misbehavior and delinquency despite decreases in these school-based occurrences. However, only a very limited number of studies have been able to partially explain this trend of intensifying social control in schools. Using a national sample of 294 public schools, the present study is the first to test the racial threat hypothesis within schools to determine if the racial composition of students predicts greater use of punitive controls, regardless of levels of misbehavior and delinquency. Results of multivariate analyses support the racial threat perspective, finding that schools with a larger percentage of black students are not only more likely to use punitive disciplinary responses, but also more likely to use extremely punitive discipline and to implement zero tolerance policies. They also use fewer mild disciplinary practices and restitutive techniques. In addition, racial threat is more influential when school delinquency and disorder are lower.

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“…Republican control of the national elected branches is associated with greater justice expenditures (Jacobs & Helms, 1999). In the states, incarceration rates increase under Republican governors and with more Republicans in the legislature (Greenberg & West, 2001;Yates & Fording, 2005).…”

Section: Politics Criminal Justice and Punitive Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Racial Disparity Reform: Racial Inequality and Criminal Justice Policymaking in the States

Donnelly

2016

Am J Crim Just

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Racial inequalities in criminal justice are pressing problems for policymakers. Prior literature suggests elected officials promulgate punitive, racially disparate criminal justice policies due to partisanship and racial fears, but scholarship has yet to explain how and why elected officials address racial problems in criminal processing. This article introduces the framework of racial disparity reform policymaking. A racial disparity reform is a policy that seeks to reduce distinctions in criminal justice institutions' treatment of racial groups. Elected officials pursue these policies due to ideological beliefs in civil rights ideals and political interests in appearing to solve social problems. Using an original database of policy enactments, this article first presents the distribution and types of reform measures adopted by elected officials in all 50 states between 1998 and 2011. It then examines social and political explanations for when state legislatures and executives adopt racial disparity reforms. Policy enactment is predicted by worsening problems of racial disproportion in criminal processing, Democratic control of elected branches, and the absence of judicial efforts to improve racial fairness within a state's criminal justice system. Similar dynamics encourage the development of different measures types within policies. Such ideological and problem-solving explanations for racial disparity reform show a potential for elected officials to forge more racially just criminal justice practices.

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Collective Outbursts, Politics, and Punitive Resources: Toward a Political Sociology of Spending on Social Control

Cited by 80 publications

References 0 publications

Retracted: Ethnic Threat and Social Control: Examining Public Support for Judicial Use of Ethnicity in Punishment*

Retracted: Ethnic Threat and Social Control: Examining Public Support for Judicial Use of Ethnicity in Punishment*

Racial Threat and Punitive School Discipline

The Politics of Racial Disparity Reform: Racial Inequality and Criminal Justice Policymaking in the States

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