Controlling Other People's Children: Racialized Views of Delinquency and Whites’ Punitive Attitudes Toward Juvenile Offenders*

Abstract

The juvenile justice system was founded on, and until recently developed around, the idea that society should afford delinquents more leniency and rehabilitative care than adult criminals because of their lower levels of physical and cognitive development and, thus, diminished culpability for law violations and higher amenability to treatment. The past four decades, however, have witnessed a sustained movement to recriminalize delinquency through the enactment of policies that treat juvenile offenders more like their adult counterparts. Feld (1999a) and others have argued that this punitive turn in juvenile justice is in part a result of the racialization of delinquency and violent victimization in the post–Civil Rights era. This study provides the first test of the key assumption underlying this thesis, namely, that Whites’ support for getting tough with juvenile offenders is in part tied to racialized views of youth crime. Drawing on data from a recent national survey, we examine the extent to which relative racial typifications about delinquency and victimization, as well as racial resentment, are associated with general punitiveness toward juvenile offenders as well as support for lower minimum ages of criminal justice jurisdiction. Regression results show that Whites who hold such typifications and those who are more racially resentful are both more likely to embrace punitive youth justice policies and favor transfers for younger offenders. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Support for Balanced Juvenile Justice: Assessing Views About Youth, Rehabilitation, and Punishment

“…In response to calls for more nuanced, theoretically informed analyses of views toward juvenile justice and, more generally, punishment (see, e.g., Jonson et al 2013;Mears et al 2007;Pickett and Baker 2014;Pickett and Chiricos 2012), this paper drew on several lines of scholarship to argue that opinion about core philosophical tenets or dimensions of the juvenile court may influence support for balanced justice, itself an approach to sanctioning that comports with the ideals envisioned by the court's founders. Briefly, the analyses indicated that these views influence support for balanced justice.…”

“…In addition, some scholars have drawn on such theories as racial threat and focal concerns (Leiber and Mack 2003;Steffensmeier et al 1998) to understand which individuals or social groups support punitive sanctioning. Pickett and Chiricos (2012), for example, have argued that individuals who are more likely to typify youth crime as a predominantly ''black'' phenomenon are more likely to support punitive measures (see, generally, Feld 1999; Ward 2012). Other theories (e.g., Applegate et al 2000;Jacobs and Carmichael 2004;Taylor et al 1979), along with studies focused on juvenile offenders (e.g., Garland et al 2012;Mears 2001;Triplett 1996), have suggested that support for tougher punishment may be greater among whites and political or religious conservatives.…”

“…Scholars have made considerable strides in theorizing and empirically investigating public opinion about youth justice, focusing in particular on support for rehabilitation or for various punitive sanctions, including life without parole and the death penalty (see, e.g., Cullen et al 2000;Mears et al 2007; Moon et al 2000a, b;Nagin et al 2006;Pickett and Chiricos 2012;Roberts 2004;Schiraldi and Soler 1998). However, the bulk of research on public views about sanctioning youth has largely ignored the potential salience of philosophical tenets and beliefs central to the juvenile court.…”

Stereotyping Online? Internet News, Social Media, and the Racial Typification of Crime

“…The analysis includes three dependent variables to gauge the racial typification of crime. Consistent to prior research (Drakulich ; Pickett and Chiricos ; Unnever and Cullen ), we utilize relative measures to capture the perceived percentage of violent, property, and drug crimes committed by African Americans in relation to the perceived percentage of these crimes committed by whites. Typification of Criminals as African Americans was measured by asking respondents, “Out of every 100 people who commit [a violent crime/a property crime/sell illegal drugs] in this country, what number do you think are white, black, Latino, or some other race/ethnicity?” The three outcomes (violence, property, and selling illegal drugs) were calculated by subtracting the responses about whites from the responses about blacks (e.g., percentage committed by blacks minus percentage committed by whites) for each typology of crime, respectively.…”

Factores explicativos de las actitudes hacia el castigo juvenil. Evidencias de un diseño factorial

“…En efecto, son abundantes los estudios que, empleando técnicas diferentes, han encontrado una relación positiva entre la ideología conservadora y los posicionamientos de carácter punitivo (Applegate y Davis, 2006;Mancini et al, 2009;Miller y Applegate, 2015;Picket y Chiricos, 2012;Roberts y Indermaur, 2007;Turner et al, 1997).…”