Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Policy: Theory and Research

Pickett, Justin T.

doi:10.1146/annurev-criminol-011518-024826

Cited by 155 publications

(145 citation statements)

References 120 publications

(191 reference statements)

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“…2 To isolate the effect of punitive policy support among the white public, representative measures of their punitive attitudes are required at aggregate levels. Because these measures are difficult to construct, few studies have examined threat mechanisms, or crime policy responsiveness to public attitudes more generally (Pickett 2019).…”

Section: Who Controls the Law?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the most consistently polled questions typically relate only to specific dimensions of criminal justice policy, such as death penalty support. Because policy responsiveness to public attitudes typically evolves as lawmakers anticipate the types of policies-rather than specific policies-the public prefers (Stimson 1999(Stimson , 2004, singleindicator measures of policy opinion risk overstating temporal variation in punitive attitudes and underestimating the effects of punitive opinion on sentencing policy (Pickett 2019).…”

Section: Measuring Racial Differences In Punitiveness At the State Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Who Controls Criminal Law? Racial Threat and the Adoption of State Sentencing Law, 1975 to 2012

Duxbury

2020

Am Sociol Rev

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Threat theory argues that states toughen criminal laws to repress the competitive power of large minority groups. Yet, research on threat suffers from a poor understanding of why minority group size contributes to social control and a lack of evidence on whether criminal law is uniquely responsive to the political interests of majority racial groups at all. By compiling a unique state-level dataset on 230 sentencing policy changes during mass incarceration and using data from 257,362 responses to 79 national surveys to construct new state-level measures of racial differences in punitive policy support, I evaluate whether criminal sentencing law is uniquely responsive to white public policy interests. Pooled event history models and mediation analyses support three primary conclusions: (1) states adopted new sentencing policies as a nonlinear response to minority group size, (2) sentencing policies were adopted in response to white public, but not black public, support for punitive crime policy, and (3) minority group size and race-specific homicide victimization both indirectly affect sentencing policy by increasing white public punitive policy support. These findings support key theoretical propositions for the threat explanation of legal change and identify white public policy opinion as a mechanism linking minority group size to variation in criminal law.

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Section: Who Controls the Law?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Measuring Racial Differences In Punitiveness At the State Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Controls Criminal Law? Racial Threat and the Adoption of State Sentencing Law, 1975 to 2012

Duxbury

2020

Am Sociol Rev

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“…On the contrary, macrolevel public opinion often does respond in sensible ways to major events and widely disseminated information (Page & Shapiro, ; Pickett, ). At the micro level, individuals confronted with a stream of incongruent information can reach an affective tipping point after which they feel moved to change their views (Redlawsk, Civettini, & Emmerson, ).…”

Section: Theory and Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing the Boundaries of Motivated Reasoning: How Deliberative Minipublics Can Improve Voter Knowledge

Már

Gastil

2019

Political Psychology

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A large body of work shows that reasoning motivated by partisan cues and prior attitudes leads to unreflective decisions and disparities in empirical beliefs across groups. Surprisingly little research, however, has tested the limits of motivated reasoning. We argue that the publicly circulated findings of deliberative minipublics can spark a more reflective motivation in voters when these bodies provide policy‐relevant factual information. To test that proposition, we conducted a survey experiment using information generated by one such minipublic during an election. Results showed that exposure to the minipublic's findings improved the accuracy of voters' empirical beliefs regarding a ballot proposition on the regulation of genetically modified seeds. This treatment effect transcended voters' partisan identities and prior environmental attitudes. In some instances, the respondents showing the greatest knowledge gains were those who a directional motivated‐reasoning account would have expected to resist the treatment most effectively, owing to party identity or prior attitudes.

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“…Catholics favoring the death penalty have apparently not been directly confronted that their death penalty belief violates Church doctrine. Notably, the America of today is marked by declining punitiveness, increasing support for offender inclusion, and growing concern about racial justice (Burton et al, 2020;Butler, 2020;Cullen, Lee, Butler, & Thielo, 2020;Enns, 2016;Pickett, 2019). Further instructive is the Gallup Poll of October 14-31, 2019, that probed what is the "better penalty for murder."…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Catholics and Capital Punishment: Do Pope Francis's Teachings Matter in Policy Preferences?

et al. 2020

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In the United States, Catholics make up more than 50 million members of the adult population, or about 1 in 5 Americans. It is unclear whether their religious affiliation shapes Catholics' views on public policy issues, ranging from the legality of abortion to criminal justice practices. Capital punishment is especially salient, given that Pope Francis announced in 2018-as official Catholic Church doctrine-that the death penalty is "inadmissible" under all circumstances. Based on two national surveys, the current project explores Catholics' support for state executions before (2017) and after (2019) the Pope's momentous change in the church's Catechism. At present, little evidence exists that Pope Francis's doctrinal reform has impacted Catholics, a majority of whom-like Americans generally-continue to favor the death penalty for murders. Data from our 2020 MTurk survey shows that only 12.7% of Catholic respondents could correctly identify the Church's position on capital punishment. Despite these results, Pope Francis's teachings provide Catholic leaders and activists with a compelling rationale for opposing the death penalty and holding Catholic public officials accountable for espousing offenders' execution. Further, for the next generation of Catholics, instruction in the impermissibility of capital punishment, as part of the Church's consistent ethic of life, will be integral to their religious training. 2013). He has celebrated the Holy Thursday Mass in a detention facility four more times, the latest on April 18, 2019, at the Velletri Correctional Facility near Rome, where "the detainees

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Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Policy: Theory and Research

Cited by 155 publications

References 120 publications

Who Controls Criminal Law? Racial Threat and the Adoption of State Sentencing Law, 1975 to 2012

Who Controls Criminal Law? Racial Threat and the Adoption of State Sentencing Law, 1975 to 2012

Tracing the Boundaries of Motivated Reasoning: How Deliberative Minipublics Can Improve Voter Knowledge

Catholics and Capital Punishment: Do Pope Francis's Teachings Matter in Policy Preferences?

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