Hardening of the Attitudes: Americans' Views on the Death Penalty (original) (raw)

Hardening of the Attitudes: Americans\u27 Views on the Death Penalty

1994

American support for the death penalty has steadily increased since 1966, when opponents outnumbered supporters, and now in the mid-1990s is at a near record high. Research over the last 20 years has tended to confirm the hypothesis that most people’s death penalty attitudes (pro or con) are based on emotion rather than information or rational argument. People feel strongly about the death penalty, know little about it, and feel no need to know more. Factual information (e.g., about deterrence and discrimination) is generally irrelevant to people’s attitudes, and they are aware that this is so. Support for the death penalty has risen for most major felonies. Youth is seen as much less of a mitigating factor than it was 35 years ago, but most people still oppose the execution of the mentally retarded. As crime rates have risen despite repeated promises by politicians to “get tough on crime,” the death penalty has become an increasingly prominent issue in electoral politics, suggestin...

Public Opinion on Capital Punishment

2020

The death penalty in the United States has its set of controversies from the people who support and those who oppose the policy. I want to examine how the death penalty and public opinion has changed over time. I also want to examine if there are statistical differences in regard to gender and political party. I would also like to compare different generations, such as millennials and baby boomers, to see if they vary in support for the death penalty. The last variable I would like to analyze is difference in regard to race and ethnicities. As a Deputy Juvenile Officer, this topic is important to me because I work daily in the criminal justice field. Advancements in criminal reform have been happening for the juvenile world, but I am not as up to date on issues facing the adult courts. In the juvenile world, criminal justice is restorative and rehabilitative. In the adult world, the system is punitive based. Since I work on the side of rehabilitation, I am interested in seeing how o...

Emotions, Attitudes, and the Death Penalty (Research Proposal)

The death penalty is a much disputed aspect of today's criminal justice system. Many people believe that it should be abolished while others believe that it should be harsher on offenders. This research proposal is designed to look at the different emotions and attitudes that affect the death penalty and its usage and determine people's standing on capital punishment because of these attitudes and emotions in order to determine how much of a factor these ideas are in death penalty sentencing and legislation.

Expanding the Spectrum of Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty

Criminal Justice Review, 2014

Overall, studies show that the majority of Americans support the use of the death penalty for murderers; however, few studies have investigated response patterns to death penalty survey questions that offer more than yes/no response options. Without a realistic understanding of Americans’ attitudes, the existence of this controversial legislation may hinge on inaccurate depictions of public opinion. The current study utilizes a college sample of students from a southern university ( N = 775, average age 22) to investigate how nondichotomous response options affect our understandings of death penalty attitudes. Using independent variables that are commonly found in quantitative studies about death penalty attitudes (i.e., religiosity, biblical literalism, political attitudes, race, gender, age, southern region) as well as independent variables less commonly seen in death penalty studies (i.e., feminist identity, and student-specific variables: grade point average, freshman status, hi...

Reasons for Supporting and Opposing Capital Punishment in the USA: A Preliminary Study

2000

The death penalty is a controversial subject in our society. Research has explored why people support or oppose capital punishment. Most the literature to date looks at the reasons provided one at a time. In this study, a multivariate analysis was conducted to see which reasons best explain the observed variation of support and opposition for capital punishment. It was found that emotional retribution, emotional opposition, morality, and law and order, were the only reasons which had statistically significant effects on the degree of death penalty support among college students at a Midwestern university. Other variables, such as fear of crime, religious measures, other punishment ideologies, and personal characteristics (which earlier studies found statistically significant using bivariate analysis) were not statistically significant in this study. The results suggest the need for greater attention to and more study of death penalty attitudes using multivariate analysis.

Exploring the Effects of Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty on Capital Sentencing Verdicts.

2004

Abstract 1. Attitudes toward the death penalty are multifaceted and strongly held, but little research outside of the death-qualification literature has focused on the role that such attitudes and beliefs play in jurors' capital sentencing verdicts. A single item is insufficient to properly measure attitudes toward the death penalty; therefore, a new 15-item, 5-factor scale was constructed and validated.

Ideology, Social Threat, and the Death Sentence: Capital Sentences across Time and Space

Social Forces, 2004

Capital punishment is tlze most severe criminal penalty, yet we know little about the factors that produce jurisdictional differences in the use of the death sentence. Political explanations emphasize conservative values and the strength of more conservative political parties. Threat accounts suggest that this sentence will be more likely in jurisdictions with larger minority populations. After controlling for many explanations using two-equation count models, the results show that larger numbers of death sentences are probable in states with greater membership in conservative churches and in states with higher violent crime rates. The findings suggest that political conservatism, a stronger Republican party, and racial threat explain whether a state ever used the death sentence, but these hypotheses do not account for the number of death sentences beyond one. By highlighting tlze explanatory power of public ideologies, these findings support political explanations for the harshest criminal punishment. Is there a connection between the political climate and the propensity to sentence offenders to death? Probably no other current legal sanction in any advanced society is as harsh, yet there is little research on the environmental conditions that influence trial court decisions about capital punishment. In part because public officials determine the criminal codes and decide sentences, many theorists view punishment as a political phenolnenon (Chambliss 1994; Foucault 1977; Garland 1990; Savelsberg 1994), yet the political determinants of death sentences have not been studied. The literature has focused instead on the ascriptive characteristics of individual offenders and " We thank Lisa Keister and especially Jim Moody for helpful comments on a prior draft. All data used in this study and the unreported analyses mentioned in the text are avialable on request.

The Political Sociology of the Death Penalty: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis

American Sociological Review, 2002

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The enduring racial divide in death penalty support

One of the more enduring observations in the study of death penalty support within the United States is the strong divide between Whites and Blacks. Whites show significantly higher levels of support for capital punishment than Blacks. This divide between Whites and Blacks appeared in all surveys, over time, and across a variety of methodological designs. Using data from three separate studies (two local surveys of venirepersons and the NORC-General Social Surveys), this study attempted to understand the basis for this divide. It examined racial differences in socioeconomic status, religion/religiosity, political ideology, positions on right-to-life and other social issues, fear of crime and victimization experience, experience with the criminal justice system, philosophies of punishment, and attribution styles. The findings revealed that the effect of race/ethnicity on capital punishment support continued to hold while controlling for the effects of nearly all of these bexplanations.Q