Race Matters: Public Views on Sentencing

Abstract

Research consistently finds that while the public expresses concerns about sentence leniency in the abstract, when presented with a specific case, people are typically not particularly punitive (Hough and Roberts 2012). While Canadian studies have further explored the effect of various social-structural factors on sentencing preferences, absent is any empirical investigation of the role, if any, that the offender's ethnicity plays. We explore this question using a convenience sample of adult Canadians and four vignettes (of an armed robbery), which were identical except for the racialized identity of the offender. Respondents' sentencing choices and perceptions of offender dangerousness, culpability, and recidivism risk were elicited. Results revealed that the “black” offender was rated as being significantly more dangerous than the “white” offender and also received a significantly more punitive sentence. After controlling for the impact of the criminal record and views of dangerousness, culpability, and recidivism risk, there was still an independent, albeit very small, effect of the racialized identity of the offender on sentencing preferences. The strongest predictor of the sentence, however, was how dangerous respondents viewed the offender. Part of the desire for a harsher sentence for the black offender likely related to views of dangerousness. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Predicting Israeli Public Support for Capital Punishment: Crime Type and Severity, Offender, Observer, and Victim Characteristics

“…As we hypothesized (H 3 ) and in correspondence with prior research (Eberhardt et al, 2004;Singh & Sprott, 2017), the bivariate analysis showed that offender ethnicity was significantly associated with support for capital punishment. In the cases of Arab offenders, the support for capital punishment was more frequent than in the cases of Jewish offenders.…”

“…As for race and ethnicity, citizens support capital punishment more in cases of minority-group offenders than in cases of majority-group offenders (Cochran et al, 2019;Dotson & Carter, 2012). For example, racial bias against African Americans manifests itself in the perception that African American offenders are more dangerous, leading to the subsequent desire to impose on them harsher punishments (Eberhardt et al, 2004;Singh & Sprott, 2017). These findings imply that the death penalty is administered unfairly based on the defendant's ethnicity.…”

Attribution of Blame Toward Offenders: Victim and Offender Ethnicity, and Observer Ethnic and Religious Background

“…Blame attribution toward the offender is also affected by offender and victim ethnicity. The majority of studies on offender ethnicity/race have been conducted in the United States, indicating that Black offenders are perceived as more dangerous than their White counterparts (Singh & Sprott, 2017). Also, African American (Doerner & Demuth, 2010; Lowder, Morrison, Kroner, & Desmarais, 2019; Singh & Sprott, 2017) and Latino (Doerner & Demuth, 2010) offenders receive harsher sentences than White offenders.…”

The association of gender role attitudes and offense type with public punitiveness toward male and female offenders

“…The use of vignettes is preferable to simple, abstract questions that participants answer subjectively because vignettes produce more reliable and valid responses (Alexander and Becker, 1978). Numerous studies have employed vignettes to measure public punitiveness by systematically varying the variable to be tested in the scenarios, such as offense type (Michel, 2015), offender's ethnicity (Singh and Sprott, 2017) and offense characteristics (Applegate and Davis, 2006). In light of these studies, we prepared three vignettes that depicted three different offenses with male and female offender versions.…”