Cullen 2000

University of South Carolina
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Faculty Publications Criminology and Criminal Justice
2000
Public Opinion about Punishment and Corrections

Francis T. Cullen
Bonnie S. Fisher
Brandon K. Applegate
University of South Carolina - Columbia, [email protected]
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Published in Crime and Justice, Volume 27, 2000, pages 1-79.
Cullen, F.T., Fisher, B.S. and Applegate, B.K. (2000). Public Opinion about Punishment and Corrections.
Crime and Justice, 27, 1-79.
@ 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
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FrancisT. Cullen,BonnieS. Fisher,
and BrandonK. Applegate
Public Opinion about

Punishment and Corrections
ABSTRACT
"Get tough" control policies in the United States are often portrayed as
the reflection of the public's will: Americans are punitive and want
offenders locked up. Research from the past decade both reinforces and
challenges this assessment. The public clearly accepts, if not prefers, a
range of punitive policies (e.g., capital punishment, three-strikes-and-
you're-out laws, imprisonment). But support for get-tough policies is
"mushy." Thus citizens may be willing to substitute a sentence of life
imprisonment without parole for the death penalty. Especially when
nonviolent offenders are involved, there is substantial support for
intermediate sanctions and for restorative justice. Despite three decades of
criticism, rehabilitation-particularly for the young-remains an integral
part of Americans' correctional philosophy. There is also widespread
support for early intervention programs. In the end, the public shows a
tendency to be punitive and progressive, wishing the correctional system
to achieve the diverse missions of doing justice, protecting public safety,
and reforming the wayward.
In the not-too-distant past, rates of imprisonment were stable and

showed no hint of escalating (Blumstein and Cohen 1973), experi-
ments in decarcerating offenders were taking place (Scull 1977; Miller
1991), and talk of the "end of imprisonment" did not seem foolhardy
(Mitford 1971; Sommer 1976). Commentators wrote of the "crime of
punishment" (Menninger 1968), and criminologists characterized pun-
ishment as a "vestigial carryover of a barbaric past" that would "disap-
FrancisT. Cullen is DistinguishedResearchProfessorof CriminalJustice, and

BonnieS. Fisheris associateprofessorof criminaljustice,both at the Universityof Cin-
cinnati.BrandonK. Applegateis assistantprofessorof criminaljusticeat the University
of CentralFlorida.
@ 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0192-3234/2000/0027-0001$02.00
1
2 FrancisT. Cullen,Bonnie S. Fischer,and BrandonK. Applegate
pear as humanitarianism and rationality spread" (Toby 1964, p. 332).

Today, however, much has changed-so much so that the policy and
ideological landscape of that previous era is unrecognizable. "Get
tough" thinking and policies have replaced calls for more humanistic
correctional practices, and their dominance appears unassailable. Vir-
tually all contemporary commentaries on correctional policy begin, al-
most ritualistically, by chronicling-and most often decrying-the
seemingly endless roster of policies designed in recent years to inflict
increasing amounts of pain on offenders (Clear 1994): prison popula-
tions rising sixfold in a quarter century from 200,000 to over 1.2 mil-
lion; the spread of mandatory prison sentences; the implementation of
draconian drug laws that snare big and little "fishes" alike; the passage
of three-strikes-and-you're-out statutes; the renewed use of the death
penalty; attempts to reduce inmates' amenities, from weight lifting and
television to support for college education; the return of chain gangs;
and the invention of "scared straight" programs and boot camps.
We have moved, in short, from a time in which punishment and
prison were unfashionable to a time in which punishment dominates
policy discussions and the prison is embraced as the linchpin of the
nation's response to crime. But why has this striking shift occurred?
The sources of this transformation in thinking and policy are complex
(Beckett 1997), but a commonsense, parsimonious explanation for
harsher penalties is frequently offered: punitive policies simply reflect
what the public wants. Fed up with intractable crime rates-fed up
with coddled offenders victimizing them, people they know, and peo-
ple they hear about-citizens collectively have made the rational as-
sessment that more offenders should be locked up for longer periods
(cf. Beckett 1997; Dilulio 1997). In this scenario, then, the movement
to get tough on crime is an instance of "democracy at work"-of poli-
ticians implementing the harsh sanctions demanded by their constit-
uents (Scheingold 1984; Cullen, Clark, and Wozniak 1985; Beckett
1997). This view rests on the assumption that citizens do, in fact, desire
a correctional system that does little else than inflict as much punish-
ment as possible. It is noteworthy that commentators make this precise
claim; after all, do not public opinion polls demonstrate convincingly
that Americans wish to get tough with crime?
Thus, in an opinion editorial in the Wall StreetJournal, the noted,
if controversial, historian Paul Johnson (1994, p. A10) asserts that
"public opinion, in its attitude toward crime, is overwhelmingly re-
pressive." As crime increases, says Johnson, "ordinary people not sur-
PublicOpinionaboutPunishmentand Corrections 3
prisingly become more and more hostile toward criminals." They lose
their interest in "reforming" offenders and instead "want them pun-
ished, as severely and cheaply as possible.... They favor punishment
that is deterrent and retributive." Echoing these sentiments, Dilulio
(1997) contends that "with respect to crime control, all that Americans
have ever demanded from government, and all that they have been de-
manding since the mid-1960s, are commonsense policies that result in
the detection, arrest, conviction, and punishment of violent and repeat
criminals." In particular,citizens want "policies that do not return per-
sons who assault, rape, rob, burglarize, deal drugs, and murder to the
streets without regard to public safety" (p. 2). It is noteworthy that the
portrayal of harsh sentencing and correctional policies as the mere re-
flection of "what the public wants" is not unique to the United States
but also is found, for example, in Great Britain and Canada (Hough
and Roberts 1999; Roberts, Nuffield, and Hann 1999).
One immediate concern is whether public opinion should be the ar-
biter of sentencing and correctional policies. Public sentiments on pol-
icy issues must be accorded some weight in a democratic society, but
justifying policies on the basis of what citizens want confronts a dis-
maying reality: much of the public-in the United States and else-
where-is ignorant about many aspects of crime and its control. Pock-
ets of insight occasionally surface. Thus research by Warr (1980, 1982)
suggests that the public is generally aware of variations in the extent
of different types of crimes (cf. Roberts and Stalans 1997). But in most
other areas-including knowledge of trends in crime rates, of the prev-
alence of violent crimes, of recidivism rates, of specific criminal laws,
of legal reforms, of legal rights in the criminal justice process, and of
the extent to which the insanity plea is used successfully-the lack of
knowledge is widespread (for a summary of research, see Roberts 1992;
Roberts and Stalans 1997).
Most salient for our purposes, people's understanding of sentencing
severity and options is restricted and often distorted. For example, it
is not clear that citizens comprehend what sanctions, apart from im-
prisonment, can be given to offenders and, if alternatives to incarcera-
tion are handed out (e.g., probation, intensive supervision community
service), what these community-based penalties actually entail (Roberts
and Stalans 1997; Hough and Roberts 1999; Roberts, Nuffield, and
Hann 1999). It also appears that in the United States and in other
Western nations, the public underestimates the harshness of the sen-
tences that are imposed on offenders (Roberts and Stalans 1997). Thus
4 FrancisT. Cullen,BonnieS. Fischer,and BrandonK. Applegate
questions included in the 1996 British Crime Survey asked respon-

dents to estimate the percentage of male offenders aged twenty-one
and over who receive a prison term for rape, mugging, and burglary.
For these three offenses, 83 percent, 82 percent, and 70 percent of the
respondents, respectively, underestimated the actual rate at which im-
prisonment is used in England and Wales (Hough and Roberts 1998,
1999; in relation to Canada, see Doob et al. 1998).
The public's lack of knowledge about crime is not an isolated do-
main of ignorance. Citizens have large gaps in their knowledge about
the political process and about most policy issues; they are "awash in
ignorance" (Kinder 1998, p. 784) and have "fundamental public igno-
rance of the central facts of political life" (Neuman 1986, p. 14). When
polled about fictitious policy issues, for example, substantial minorities
express their views-obviously without any knowledge about these
matters (Bishop, Tuchfarber, and Oldendick 1986). An analysis of al-
most any list of political issues, moreover, will reveal a "depth of igno-
rance" that is "breathtaking" (Kinder 1998, p. 785). To name but a
few examples, large majorities of the American public in surveys did
not know the name of their representative to the U.S. House, did not
know the length of term served by U.S. Senators, did not know-de-
spite enormous publicity in 1994-that the U.S. House "passed a plan
to balance the federal budget," and did not know in 1987-despite
"seven years of debate" on the issue of "giving aid to the Contras"-
where Nicaragua was located (Kinder 1998, p. 785; see also Delli Car-
pini and Keeter 1996). Further, much of the information citizens are
able to convey is "surface" rather than "deep" knowledge. When
probed to relay more detailed, substantive information on political is-
sues, the proportion of the public able to do so plummets to low levels
(Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, pp. 91-92).
Findings such as these often do, but perhaps should not, prompt ex-
cessive lamentation about the quality of political socialization and civ-
ics education in the United States. A lack of knowledge is not to be
celebrated, but opinion researchers have long argued that public igno-
rance about political and policy issues is "rational" (Kinder 1998).
Given the exigencies of everyday life and the endless arrayof issues to
learn about-from crime to health care to welfare to the environment,
to name but a few-these commentators suggest that the opportunity
costs of being a "political junky" are unacceptably high for most citi-
zens. Being knowledgeable about public policy issues, including crime
and its control, simply is not cost-effective.
Public OpinionaboutPunishmentand Corrections 5
Yet, how can democracy, which depends on the will of an informed

citizenry to make good policies, be effective when the public's political
ignorance is rational? The solution, notes Kinder (1998, p. 797), is the
"miracle of aggregation." Although individual citizens lack knowledge,
when aggregated or taken as a whole, public opinion appears to "get
things right." Thus support for the U.S. president declines when the
country falls on hard or tumultuous times, and people favor shifts in
social policies when the nation tilts excessively in one ideological direc-
tion or the other. As Page and Shapiro (1992, p. 388) observe in The
RationalPublic,the "public generally reacts to new situations and new
information in sensible, reasonable ways."
The implications of the "miracle of aggregation" for crime-related
policies are clear: even if individual citizens are not exquisitely knowl-
edgeable about the punitiveness of current sentencing practices, their
support for "getting tough" is a collectively rational assessment of the
government's need to use stricter sanctions to afford greater societal
protection (Page and Shapiro 1992, pp. 90-94; Dilulio 1997). Particu-
lars aside, they have gotten the basic point right that the weakness of
the criminal justice system has imperiled their well-being. As Bennett,
Dilulio, and Walters (1996, pp. 34-37) put it, "the people know best."
This reasoning will not seem miraculous to all students of public
opinion about crime. Levels of knowledge aside, public punitiveness
does not seem to fluctuate-as one might expect of a rational public-
as crime rates have risen, steadied, and fallen over the past two decades
(cf. Page and Shapiro 1992). Instead, preferences for harsher penalties
have remained entrenched at high levels. Critics will also note that the
Pollyannaish view that the "people know best" ignores the role of poli-
ticians in manipulating public opinion and in ushering in a mean sea-
son in crime control. They have used rhetoric, too often racially
tinged, to incite concern about public safety and have portrayed the
crime problem as solvable only through measures that get tough with
predators who otherwise would be allowed to roam free on the streets
(Scheingold 1984; Beckett 1997).
A more fundamental problem, however, confronts those who claim
that punitive policies reflect the wishes of a punitive public, whether
in the United States or elsewhere: the empirical accuracy of this por-
trayal of the public as exclusively and unyieldingly punitive. Is it really
true that citizens want only to heap more punishment on offenders and
preferably to do so through imprisonment? Or is public opinion about
sanctioning offenders complex and judicious-more balanced and
moderate than authoritarian and harsh (Thomson and Ragona 1987)?

The chief purpose of this essay is to assess what the public thinks about
punishing offenders and about the use of varying correctional options.
Based on a growing body of research, we propose that public opinion,
while clearly punitive in important ways, nonetheless is progressive in
equally important ways.
Adequately addressing the empirical question of what the public
thinks quickly leads to the methodological issue of how public opinion
is to be measured (for a summary of methodological issues in the mea-
surement of crime-related opinions, see Roberts 1992; Roberts and
Stalans 1997; more generally, see Schuman and Presser 1981; Biemer
et al. 1991; Muircheartaigh 1997). Public views on crime have fre-
quently been investigated through telephone surveys that measure
opinions by asking respondents a limited number of questions-as few
as one or two-about a major policy issue (e.g., support for capital
punishment; what should be the main purpose of imprisonment). The
best of these opinion polls use nationally representative samples and
are conducted by reputable polling organizations (e.g., Louis Harris,
Gallup). These surveys are especially influential because they often are
reported in, if not commissioned and publicized by, the local and na-
tional news media.
These polls comprise an invaluable repository of data. Because poll-
ing organizations have asked a limited number of questions repeatedly
over the years (e.g., whether the courts are harsh enough), the surveys
are the main source of information on trends in public opinion about
punishing offenders. When a "hot" policy issue bursts on the political
scene (e.g., three-strikes-and-you're-out laws), they also are flexible
enough to be used, with little notice, to question people on their views
(i.e., quickly draw a sample and by telephone ask respondents one or
two questions about the initiative). And perhaps most important, due
to the representativeness of the samples employed in these surveys,
their results can be generalized to the nation's population as a whole.
Even so, these polls face an important limitation: Can public opinion
be adequately measured by asking one or two questions? The answer
depends on what "opinion" is being assessed.
If the interest is in a general or "global" view of an issue, then
broadly worded polls may provide considerable insight (e.g., whether,
in general, a person supports the practice of capital punishment). But
opinions can be complex, with support for a policy, such as capital pun-
ishment, varying under different conditions (e.g., depending on what
sentencing options respondents are given to choose from). Capturing

this attitudinal complexity, sometimes called "specific" opinions, re-
quires the use on surveys of a series of carefully designed questions or
scales of questions. These surveys can be conducted by telephone or
by mail. Most often, they are carried out by university researcherswith
a substantive interest in crime and not by major polling organizations.
Although exceptions exist (Flanagan and Longmire 1996; Rossi and
Berk 1997; Hough and Roberts 1998; Jacoby and Cullen 1998), re-
searchers generally do not give these highly detailed surveys to na-
tional samples but rely on representative, and at times nonrepresenta-
tive, samples drawn from individual states or local communities. The
results most often are published in scholarly journals and are not
highly publicized.
Importantly, the methodological approach used in a survey not only
constrains the type of opinion that can be assessed but also influences,
if not biases, the conclusions that are reached about what the public
thinks should be done with lawbreakers.Those arguing that the public
favors an increasingly punitive response to crime invariablycite the na-
tional telephone polls that ask respondents only one or two questions
about policy issues. Used by themselves, these polling data can result
in a distorted picture of public opinion about punishment and correc-
tions, for two reasons.
First, as noted above, complex opinions cannot be measured if com-
plex questions are not used in an opinion survey. In the area of crime-
related attitudes, public opinions often change not only quantitatively
but also qualitatively when multiple questions, as opposed to single
questions, are used on a survey to assess citizens' views. In particular,
respondents tend to express less punitive sentencing preferences when,
on surveys, they are given detailed information about the nature of the
offender and his or her criminal offense, are provided with a menu of
potential sentencing options that include community sanctions as well
as imprisonment, and are asked to assign concrete sanctions (e.g., a
particular prison term) to concrete offenders (e.g., a burglar) as op-
posed to answering broadly worded policy questions about punishing
unspecified criminals (e.g., using "harsher punishments against crimi-
nals"). Accordingly, the failure to attend to data drawn from these
more specific, if not sophisticated, surveys leads commentators to over-
estimate the public's punitiveness.
Second, progressive opinions cannot be discovered if they are not
measured by an opinion survey. Many of the single-question or two-
question national polls ask only about punishment-oriented issues,

such as support for capital punishment or for harsher penalties by the
courts. Taken alone, responses to these questions prompt the conclu-
sion that the public is punitive (i.e., people favor capital punishment
and harsher courts). These polls, however, do not simultaneously ques-
tion the respondents about their views on correctional policies that
might be considered more progressive, such as support for rehabilita-
tion or early intervention programs. When released to the media, these
polls thus publicize what they have measured-the citizenry's puni-
tiveness-but remain silent on what they have not measured-the
public's progressive, nonpunitive policy preferences. Notably, surveys
that include questions that assess diverse ideological views on correc-
tional policies find that public opinion is complex, progressive under
certain conditions, and not unyieldingly punitive.
In this essay, we attempt to draw on multiple data sources in pre-
senting what we believe is a textured portrait of public opinion about
punishment and corrections. In assessing these data, we revisit the
methodological issues touched on above and shape our interpretations
accordingly. Our review leads to seven primary conclusions.
First, consistent with the claims of commentators such as Johnson
and Dilulio, the public is punitive toward crime. Get-tough attitudes
are real and not simply a methodological artifact. Second, this puni-
tiveness is not fixed on a single point but is "mushy." Even when ex-
pressing punitive opinions, people tend to be flexible enough to con-
sider a range of sentencing options, including sanctions that are less
harsh than those they may have favored either at first thought or when
provided with only minimal information on which to base their views.
Third, members of the public must be given a good reason not to be
punitive. They moderate their punitiveness when less stringent in-
terventions have utility for victims, the community, and offenders.
Fourth, violent crime is the great divide between punitiveness and
nonpunitiveness. Citizens are reluctant to take chances with physically
dangerous offenders; they generally want them behind bars. For nonvi-
olent offenders, however, a range of correctional options will be enter-
tained. Fifth, despite the sustained attack leveled against the concept of
offender treatment, the public continues to believe that rehabilitation
should be an integral goal of the correctional system. Sixth, people
strongly support "child saving," encouraging both the rehabilitation of
youthful offenders and the use of early intervention programs that seek
to direct children at risk for future criminality into a conventional life
course. In fact, compared to imprisonment, early prevention is favored

by a wide margin as a solution to crime. Seventh, the central tendency
in public opinion is to be punitive and progressive-to endorse the use
of a balanced response to lawbreakers,which includes an effort to do
justice, protect society, and reform offenders. When the full body of
survey data are taken into account, it thus appears that with regard to
punishment and corrections, the public is more rational than irrational
in the policy agenda it embraces.
Before initiating our review, we must note that this essay has a spe-
cific assignment: to update, admittedly in a limited way, Roberts's
(1992) comprehensive and informative analysis of public opinion that
appeared earlier in Crime and Justice (see also Roberts and Stalans
1997, 1998). Our specific focus is on public opinion about policy pro-
posals that, as the 1990s progressed, either continued to earn attention
or freshly emerged as salient correctional issues. We are interested in
mapping how citizens, at the turn of century, answer the question,
What should be done with those who have broken the law?
Our effort to address this question comes in five parts. Section I as-
sesses the degree to which Americans support capital punishment. We
consider trends over time in death penalty attitudes. Most important,
we show how support for capital punishment varies by the survey
methods employed, especially by whether respondents are presented
with the option of sentencing offenders to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. We also review research on the controversial
topic of the juvenile death penalty and on the impact of religion on
support for executing offenders. Section II examines survey research
on citizens' support for punitive crime control policies, such as harsher
sentences and the use of imprisonment as a sanction. We focus as well
on the issue of public support for three-strikes-and-you're-out laws. In
contrast, Section III explores the degree to which the public endorses
the use of community-based alternatives to incarceration. Special at-
tention is given to whether intermediate sanctions and restorative jus-
tice are viewed favorably. Section IV reviews people's sentiments to-
ward rehabilitation as a correctional goal. Views about specific features
of correctional treatment and about juveniles' rehabilitation also are
assessed. Further, we present data on public attitudes toward early in-
tervention, especially with regard to whether citizens prefer to fight
crime through prevention or through imprisonment. Finally, Section
V, the essay's conclusion, sketches a portrait of "Americanpublic opin-
ion" about punishment and corrections as a way of demarcating the
10 FrancisT. Cullen,Bonnie S. Fischer,andBrandonK. Applegate
responses to crime that citizens will support. We also offer brief

thoughts on where future research on public opinion in this area might
proceed and on what broader policy implications might be suggested
by the substantive conclusions we distill from the extant body of survey
research.
I. Public Support for Capital Punishment

As the ultimate penalty imposed by the criminal justice system, it is
perhaps unsurprising that, compared with other crime-related matters,
Americans are most often polled on their attitudes on capital punish-
ment (Bohm 1991). The stakes in the battle to characterize the public's
views on this issue are high. After all, if most Americans are willing
to execute fellow citizens-and the proportion is especially high when
offenders have committed egregious crimes-then it would be difficult
to dispute that the use of severe punishments reflects the will of the
people.
The existing research, however, reaches complicated conclusions
about people's sentiments regarding the death penalty. When asked if
they support capital punishment for convicted murderers, approxi-
mately seven in ten respondents say they do. The public's endorsement
of executing murderers has been at or near this level since the early
1970s. However, support for capital punishment declines markedly
when respondents are asked not simply if they support the death pen-
alty (favor or oppose), but whether they would choose the death pen-
alty or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Similar results
are found when the public is questioned about capital punishment for
juveniles convicted of murder. Finally, we also explore recent research
on religion and the death penalty, again finding complex effects. Al-
though religious fundamentalism tends to be related to support for
capital punishment, a belief in religious forgiveness diminishes the em-
brace of punitive attitudes.
A. CurrentAttitudes
We examined eight national-level polls conducted by various or-
ganizations between 1995 and 1998. The respondents were asked a
single-item question that varied slightly from survey to survey but
typically focused on whether they supported capital punishment "for
persons convicted of murder." The response categories usually were
"favor," "oppose," and some amalgam of "don't know/not sure/no
opinion/it depends." Across the eight polls, the percentage of respon-
dents favoring capital punishment did not fall below two-thirds. Sup-
port for the death penalty ranged from a low of 66 percent to a high
of 79 percent; in six of the eight polls the level of support exceeded 70
percent. The average of those endorsing capital punishment for all
eight polls was 72 percent.'
These results suggest, then, that public support for capital punish-
ment is substantial; other polling data reinforce this view. Although
Americans generally oppose executing those who do not murder, this
opposition is not complete and is fairly strong for some kinds of non-
capital offenders. Thus, in a national poll, support for the death pen-
alty was only 17 percent for armed robbers and 8 percent for home
burglars. Nonetheless, respondents were evenly split on using the
death penalty for convicted rapists, and by more than a 2: 1 margin
supported its use for those who sexually molest a child (Time/CNN/
Yankelovich Partners Poll 1997).
Further, in a report titled "Americans Firmly Support Death Pen-
alty," Gallup polling data revealed that citizens may embrace capital
punishment even when innocent people are executed (Moore 1995).
To be sure, the prospect of the innocent being put to death gives the
public reason to reflect on the wisdom of capital punishment. One poll
showed that 73 percent of a national sample agreed that the possibility
that "innocent people may be wrongly convicted and executed is
among the best reasons to oppose the death penalty" (Princeton Sur-
vey Research Associates/Newsweek Poll 1997). Similarly, a 1995 sur-
vey found that among those who supported capital punishment, 77
percent stated that they would be "more likely to oppose the death
penalty" if they "learned that innocent people receive the death pen-
alty" (Longmire 1996). Nonetheless, the Gallup Poll found that 57
percent of respondents-including 74 percent of those who initially
said that they favored the death penalty--continued to support capital
punishment even under the condition that "one out of a hundred peo-
1For seven of the

surveys, we obtained the polling data over the Internet from a site
that provides access to POLL, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research's database
of public opinion questions and results (http://dialog.carl.org). Information on accessing
POLL may be obtained from the Roper Center (http://ropercenter.ucom.edu/in-
dex.htm). The seven polls, including the year each was collected and the percent of each
sample favoring the death penalty, were: Harris Poll, 1996, 75 percent; Gallup Poll,
1996, 79 percent; General Social Survey, 1996, 71 percent; CBS New Poll, 1997, 67
percent; Princeton Survey Research Associates/Newsweek Poll, 1997, 66 percent;
Time/CNN/Yankelovich Partners Poll, 1997, 74 percent; Fox News/Opinion Dynam-
ics Poll, 1998, 74 percent. The eighth poll was from Longmire (1996), which reported
data on a 1995 national survey, with 71 percent favoring the death penalty.
12 Francis T. Cullen, Bonnie S. Fischer, and Brandon K. Applegate
Gallup -*- GeneralSocial Survey
80
..
7575
70
. 65 - ." "
o 60
S
553
wo 45
0 40
35
30 '-..
19191919191919191919191919191919191919191919191919191919191919191919
36 37 53 56 57 60 65 66 67 69 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 93 94 95 96
Year
FIG. in public support for capital punishment, 1936-96. Sources: Gallup
1.•-Trends
Poll data for 1936 and 1937 from Zeisel and Gallup (1989, p. 286). Data for 1953-95
from Moore (1995, p. 25). Gallup Poll question: "Are you in favor of the death penalty
for a person convicted of murder?" The 1936 and 1937 polls used slightly different
wording, omitting the word "convicted" (Bohm 1991, p. 115). The General Social Sur-
vey data are from Smith (1998, p. 5). The question used in the 1972 and 1973 polls was:
"Are you in favor of the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?"The 1974-96
polls used the question, "Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted
of murder?"
pie who have been sentenced to death were actually innocent" (Moore
1995, p. 24). Note should be taken that the 57 percent figure repre-
sents a 20 percentage-point decline from the 77 percent who initially
favored executing convicted murderers. Moore (1995, p. 23) reminds
us, however, that although support lessened when the condition of in-
nocent people dying was introduced into the survey, the respondents
still embraced capital punishment "by a two-to-one margin (57 percent
to 28 percent)."
The public's support for the death penalty, moreover, has been sta-
ble for some time. Both the Gallup Poll and the General Social Survey
have tracked capital punishment attitudes over lengthy periods. As
figure 1 shows, since the mid-1970s, public support for the death pen-
alty has been high and has fluctuated only marginally. In the Gallup
Poll, between 1976 and 1995, the percentage favoring capital punish-
ment ranged from 66 percent to 80 percent; the comparable 1976-96
figures for the General Social Survey were 66.4 percent to 75.4 percent
(Moore 1995; Smith 1998). For two decades, therefore, a substantial
majority of the American public has consistently endorsed the execu-
tion of convicted murderers.
In the two decades preceding the 1970s, however, support for capital
punishment was markedly lower. The Gallup Poll has measured the
public's views on the death penalty since 1936 (see fig. 1). The percent-
age of the poll's respondents favoring capital punishment was 61 in
1936 and 65 in 1937; by 1953, the figure reached 68 percent. Thereaf-
ter, however, a steady decline in support for murderers' execution tran-
spired: 53 percent in 1956; 45 percent in 1965. In 1966, more Ameri-
cans opposed the death penalty, 47 percent, than favored it, 42 percent
(11 percent answered "no opinion" or "it depends"). By the next year,
this trend reversed itself. Still, in the early 1970s, those favoring capital
punishment held only a 9 percentage-point majority over opponents
of this sanction (e.g., in 1971, 49 percent vs. 40 percent). This gap be-
tween supporters and opponents, however, has widened remarkably
over time. By the mid-1970s, it had increased to 40 percentage points.
In a 1995 Gallup Poll, the difference was 64 percentage points: 77 per-
cent favoring and 13 percent opposing the execution of a convicted
murderer (Zeisel and Gallup 1989; Moore 1995).
Why has the public ostensibly grown more punitive since the
1960s-so much so that support for capital punishment is now a nor-
mative or socially appropriateattitude to express?Various plausible ex-
planations have been offered: the rising offense rates of the 1960s and
the fear of crime it generated; the politicization of crime and the link-
age of this issue to a broader concern for a breakdown of law and or-
der; the emergence of racial conflict and the use of getting tough on
crime as a means of appealing to people's underlying racism and antip-
athy toward minorities; the growing lack of confidence in the criminal
justice system; and the movement away from social welfare explana-
tions of crime, which stress social causes of offending and a lack of of-
fender responsibility, to individualistic explanations of crime, which
stress free choice and just deserts as a response to breaking the law
(see, e.g., Rankin 1979; Scheingold 1984, 1991; Bohm 1987; Warr
1995a; Beckett 1997). However plausible these speculations are, they
tend not to address the other half of the question: Why did support
for the death penalty begin a steady decline by the mid-1950s and con-
tinue well into the next decade? It is possible that lower levels of sup-
port during this historical period were culturally anomalous-that they
represented a departure from traditional American views toward capi-

tal punishment to which today's citizens have returned. If so, then the
stability of support for the death penalty over the past three decades
may not simply be a reaction to the turmoil and changes induced dur-
ing the sixties but reflect core, deeply rooted cultural values that make
Americans a punitive people.
B. Reconsidering Public OpinionPolls

Not all academic writings oppose capital punishment; in philosophy
and economics, for example, occasional attempts are made to show its
morality or utility (see, e.g., Ehrlich 1975; Berns 1979). However, al-
though exceptions exist (Friedrichs 1989), the vast majority of scholar-
ship published by other social scientists-especially by criminologists
and sociologists-attacks capital punishment (for summaries, see
Smith 1995; Hood 1998). Being against the death penalty is part of
these scholars' professional or disciplinary ideology, and thus they are
strongly motivated to produce knowledge that discredits its use. To-
ward this end, they have conducted studies showing that capital pun-
ishment does not deter and may actually increase crime (the "brutal-
ization effect"), is administered in a racially biased way, is prone to
mistake and to being wrongfully applied to innocent people, is im-
posed by juries who do not understand the sentencing instructions on
aggravating and mitigating circumstances given by judges during the
penalty phase of murder trials, is used against offenders who rarely re-
cidivate, and is more costly to carry out than a sentence of life impris-
onment.
Despite mounting evidence on the problematic nature of capital
punishment, these scholars are confronted with a stubborn reality: the
American public apparentlywants to execute convicted murderers. Re-
gardless of what knowledge they might produce, public opinion polls
seem unaffected. These polls thus present a formidable barrierto abol-
ishing capital punishment or decreasing its spread. With seven in ten
adults supporting the execution of convicted murderers, how would
the political will ever be summoned to restrict use of the death pen-
alty?
Not surprisingly, then, these scholars have scrutinized public opin-
ion research in hopes of discrediting it. If existing polling data or
methods can be shown to misconstrue the "true" view of the public on
capital punishment, then the seemingly sturdy foundation on which
the American death penalty rests will be commensurately weakened.
Their attack on public opinion polls has been waged in two general
ways (see Costanzo 1997).
First, in examining why people endorse the death penalty, these
scholars have often linked support to a range of "unattractive"factors:
racial prejudice, religious fundamentalismor biblical literalism, conser-
vatism, antiabortion views, unwarrantedfearfulness about crime, igno-
rance about the death penalty, and so on (see, e.g., Young 1991; Gras-
mick, Bursik, and Blackwell 1993; Barkanand Cohn 1994; Cook 1998;
more generally, see Roberts and Stalans 1997). This strategy is subtle
and, in this postmodern age, requires an exercise in deconstruction. To
be sure, research of this genre is useful in uncovering empirical sources
of death penalty attitudes, although the explained variation in these
studies is generally low to modest (Grasmick, Bursik, and Blackwell
1993, p. 74). But note that support for capital punishment is virtually
never traced to positive factors-or factors phrased in a positive way-
such as a deep respect for the life of the victim, a genuine concern for
the pain felt by the victim's family, and a reluctant but principled belief
that an egregious breach of the moral order requires the taking of
the offender's life. Instead, the underlying intellectual and ideological
project is to delegitimate the public's embrace of capital punishment.
Indeed, although the message is implicit, the research suggests that
those who are secular humanists, progressive politically, advocates of
racial justice, knowledgeable about crime, and supporters of a women's
"right to choose" would not favor the death penalty. Of course, this
account is a rough self-portrait of many of these scholars: if the public
were like us, they would not support executing offenders!
Second and more noteworthy, these anti-death penalty social scien-
tists have argued that the national polls, which measure capital punish-
ment attitudes with a single question such as "Are you in favor the
death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" make the mistake of
attempting to assess a complex set of opinions in a simplistic fashion.
These polls not only do not capture the nuances of people's views but,
more disturbingly, are biased in the direction of artificially inflating
support for capital punishment (Ellsworth and Ross 1983; Harris
1986). When surveys are more methodologically sophisticated, the
public's seemingly firm support for executing murderers weakens.
One research strategy has been to differentiate between polls that
ask about support for capital punishment in the abstract as opposed to
a situation in which the decision to impose this lethal sanction is more
personally salient or "real." In a 1984 survey of Texas residents, for
example, Williams, Longmire, and Gulick (1988) found that support

for the death penalty lessened when the respondents were asked if they
would recommend imposing the death penalty as a juror in a murder
trial as opposed to voting for a death penalty law or expressing general
support for this policy. The slippage in support, however, was only 4-
6 percentage points. Bohm, Clark, and Aveni (1991) used a similar ap-
proach to making the death penalty more concrete and personally sa-
lient: they asked whether people would actually perform the execution.
They found that while 28 percent of their sample were opposed to cap-
ital punishment "for some people convicted of first degree murder,"
47 percent of the respondents stated that they could not "pull the lever
that would result in the death of an individual convicted of first-degree
murder" (p. 368). More recently, Howells, Flanagan, and Hagan
(1995) divided 291 California voters into two groups: those who
watched a nature film and those who watched a film of two executions.
In a pretest/posttest design, they discovered that among those viewing
the executions videotape, 57 percent became less supportive of capital
punishment, while 27 percent became more supportive. Although
making executions more concrete tended to decrease endorsement of
the death penalty, the degree to which the participants changed their
views was small.
A second research strategy is to contrast the measurement of global
and specific attitudes. Global attitudes are general or overall views that
people possess about a policy issue; specific attitudes are the views they
express when the policy is applied to a case that has a certain set of
attributes. Specific attitudes are especially relevant to criminal justice
policy because decisions are made about cases that involve offenders,
victims, and acts, which may vary on many dimensions and interact in
unique ways. It is possible, therefore, that a majority of the public
might support capital punishment as a potential sanction but not sup-
port its application in most murder or death penalty-eligible cases.
Selected national surveys by the traditional polling organizations
have addressed this issue. A 1996 poll by Princeton Survey Research
Associates/Newsweek reported that 66 percent of the sample favored
the death penalty. The respondents were then asked if they endorsed
the death penalty "in each case of the following circumstances."When
these circumstances were introduced, support for capital punishment
declined markedly. Thus the pollsters found that those favoring the
death penalty dropped to 56 percent "if the convicted person was led
to violence because of political or ideological beliefs"; to 55 percent if

the "convicted person was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at
the time of the crime"; to 47 percent if the person "was severely
abused as a child"; to 26 percent if the person "was provoked to vio-
lence by the victim"; and to 25 percent if the person "was only an ac-
complice to the person who actually did the killing" (poll obtained
from http://dialog.carl.org).
Durham, Elrod, and Kinkade (1996) provide a judicious example of
this approach (see also Ellsworth and Ross 1983). In a mail survey of
366 residents of Hillsborough County (Tampa), Florida, they pre-
sented respondents with seventeen vignettes describing a homicide.
Two versions of the vignettes were used (thus making for thirty-four
scenarios), although each respondent received only one version. The
vignettes were constructed to vary aggravating and mitigating factors
that are found in capital sentencing statutes. In this way, the research-
ers could assess the willingness to impose the death penalty when the
respondents were judging cases that included specific information
about factors such as the offender's record, the offender's intent, gang
membership, victim characteristics and behavior, and the heinousness
of the crime.
Across all vignettes rated, the respondents chose to impose the death
penalty in 60.8 percent of the cases. This mean percentage, however,
masks the substantialvariation in support for capital punishment across
the scenarios. Those supporting the offender's execution ranged from
a low of 29.4 percent for one vignette to a high of 93.2 percent for
another. In nine of the thirty-four vignettes, it is instructive that a ma-
jority of the respondents did not believe that the death penalty was
"the appropriatepunishment." As Durham, Elrod, and Kinkade (1996,
p. 721) point out, the citizens were not indiscriminately vengeful or
bloodthirsty but, rather, were "selective in their use of the death pen-
alty." Only 13.1 percent of the respondents favored capital punishment
in all cases.
These results counteract the more publicized single-item polls,
which seem to suggest that two-thirds to three-fourths of the public
support the execution of all convicted murderers. There may very well
be a "hesitancy" among citizens to execute fellow Americans that these
polls do not capture (Ellsworth and Ross 1983). Even so, Durham, El-
rod, and Kinkade (1996) caution that their "data contain little evidence
suggesting that capital punishment statutes do not reflect the public
willingness to use the death penalty" (p. 728) and caution that "for
some kinds of murders," death penalty polls "may underrepresent public
enthusiasm for capital punishment" (p. 729).
Three findings bolster this conclusion. First, across the vignettes,
only 5.2 percent of the respondents did not choose the death penalty
for at least one case. Phrased differently, almost 95 percent of the sam-
ple's members were willing to support capital punishment for at least
some murderers. Second, for vignettes that described a first-degree
murder-as opposed to a felony murder or voluntary manslaughter-
74 percent of the respondents selected the death penalty as the appro-
priate punishment. Third, an experienced Tampa prosecutor was asked
to assess which vignettes would normally be charged as death penalty
cases; the prosecutor stated that in only 15 percent of the scenarios
would the state seek the death penalty. Again, a majority of the respon-
dents believed that the offender described in the vignette warranted
capital punishment in 73.5 percent of the cases. Although this compar-
ison is hardly definitive-after all, only one prosecutor was polled-it
does suggest that a sizable proportion of citizens, even when rating
specific cases, may be willing to endorse the death penalty's application
more often than it is currently imposed by state officials.
C. Life in PrisonwithoutParole
Durham, Elrod, and Kinkade's (1996) balanced interpretation of
their data reveals that the public's judgments about the death penalty
are selectively, but often strongly, punitive. A collateral question, how-
ever, is whether citizens are wed to capital punishment as the only way
to inflict punishment on the offender. To a degree, this question may
hinge on what the public wishes to accomplish through capital punish-
ment. Previous research indicates that people have both retributive and
utilitarian motives for embracing the death penalty (see, e.g., Warr and
Stafford 1984; Zeisel and Gallup 1989). A 1997 Princeton Survey Re-
search Associates/Newsweek Poll sheds further light on this issue (see
http://dialog.carl.org). The respondents were asked what they believed
"were among the best reasons to support the death penalty for persons
convicted of murder." In this poll, 53 percent answered "yes" to the
question of whether "one of the best reasons" was that "it is a deter-
rent, that is, fear of such punishment discourages potential murderers";
48 percent said "yes" to "'a life for a life,' that is, anyone who takes
another person's life deserves to be executed"; and 49 percent agreed
that "it's not fair to make taxpayers pay to keep convicted murderers
in prison for life." Note, however, that fully 74 percent chose as

"among the best reasons" for supporting the death penalty that "it re-
moves all possibility that the convicted person can kill again" (cf.
Zeisel and Gallup 1989, p. 289).
This pervasive concern with preventing murderers from "killing
again" raises the possibility that were this goal addressed in another
fashion, the public's embrace of the death penalty might be loosened.
Although not a fail-safe means of reaching this goal-inmates and cor-
rectional officers could still be victimized-the prevention of future
homicides could indeed be substantially accomplished through a sen-
tence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. It is noteworthy
that perhaps the most important line of research on death penalty atti-
tudes conducted by public opinion researchers in the 1990s is whether,
instead of an offender's execution, citizens would support sentencing a
convicted murderer to a life sentence without parole (see, e.g., Bohm,
Flanagan, and Harris 1990; Bowers, Vandiver, and Dugan 1994;
Sandys and McGarrell 1995; McGarrell and Sandys 1996; Moon et al.
1999; see also Whitehead 1998).
First, polling organizations have occasionally explored this issue.
Based on a 1986 Gallup Poll, Zeisel and Gallup (1989, p. 290) analyzed
how views toward the death penalty would be affected "if a life sen-
tence without parole were available." They reported that the percent
favoring capital punishment would decline by 19 percentage points,
from 71 percent to 52 percent. In a 1998 Gallup/CNN/USA Today
Poll, the respondents were asked, "What do you think should be the
penalty for murder committed by a man?";the same question was then
asked with the murderer being a woman. Compared to polls taken at
that time showing those favoring the death penalty averaging above 70
percent (see above), support for capital punishment in this survey was
noticeably lower. For the male offender, 54 percent chose the death
penalty while 36 percent chose "life imprisonment with absolutely
no possibility of parole." For the female offender, the comparable
numbers were, respectively, 50 percent and 38 percent (see http://
dialog.carl.org).
Second, recognizing the policy potential in this pattern of results,
scholarly opponents of the death penalty have systematically explored
the impact on attitudes of providing the alternative option of life im-
prisonment. Theoretically, they have made the distinction between
"acceptance" and "preference" (Bowers, Vandiver, and Dugan 1994;
Sandys and McGarrell 1995). Although standardpolling questions may
reveal that the public accepts the use of the death penalty, the possibil-
ity remains that they may not prefer it instead of other sentencing op-
tions. This conceptual distinction thus requires a different method-
ological approach: people should be asked if they support the death
penalty or other alternative sentences.
Analyzing survey data from twelve, geographically dispersed states,
Bowers, Vandiver, and Dugan (1994) provide the most sophisticated
analysis of this issue (see also Sandys and McGarrell 1995). Across
these surveys, it is clear that the public "accepts" the death penalty for
murderers: when asked a single-item standard polling question, those
favoring capital punishment ranged from 64 percent to 86 percent,
with a mean of 75.1 percent. Although not every option was asked in
every survey, Bowers, Vandiver, and Dugan (1994) were able to com-
pare whether this level of support changed when citizens were pre-
sented with four sentencing alternatives:life with parole possible after
twenty-five years (LWPP25); life without parole (LWOP); life with
parole after twenty-five years plus restitution (LWPP25 + R); and life
without parole plus restitution (LWOP + R). The sentencing contin-
gency of restitution usually involved having the convicted murderer
being required to "work in prison industries for money that would go
to the families of the victims."
The results of these survey data are striking. For the option of
LWPP2 5, an average of 38.2 percent of the respondents preferred this
option. Although 52.2 percent selected the death penalty, this support
was substantially lower than that found in traditional polls where,
again, support typically exceeds 70 percent of the respondents. When
the option was life without parole, more people on average selected
LWOP (47.7 percent) than the death penalty (43.1 percent). When the
option included the possibility of parole but added in restitution, again
more people selected LWWPP + 25 (49.9 percent) than the death
penalty (42.8 percent). Most noteworthy, support for the noncapital
punishment alternative was especially strong when the sentence was
life without parole plus restitution. In this instance, LWOP + R was,
on average, favored by 60.7 percent of the respondents compared to
31.6 percent who favored the death penalty-a decided gap in support
of nearly 30 percent. Indeed, in all of the states studied, a majority of
the citizens preferred LWOP + R. Further, in a more detailed analysis
of data from New York and Nebraska, Bowers, Vandiver, and Dugan
(1994) discovered that LWOP + R was chosen over the death penalty
by a clear majority of those who initially had stated that they "strongly
favored"capitalpunishment(55.7 percentto 32.5 percentin New

York;56.9percentvs. 33.0percentin Nebraska).
A similarresulthas
been reported by McGarrell and Sandys (1996; see also Brenner 1998).
Why are citizens so supportive of these sentencing alternatives in
murdercases?As suggestedabove,one possibilityis that these options
fromkillingagain.Bowers,Vandiver,
effectivelypreventmurderers
andDugan(1994),however,provideadditional
insights.In thesurveys
conductedin New York and Nebraska,citizens were asked,"Which
do you thinkdoesthe greatestgoodfor all concerned?"
punishment
In both surveys, a substantial majority selected the nondeath penalty
option. In particular, they favored penalties that involved restitution
to the families of murder victims. When asked, "Which punishment
comes closest to your own personal ideal of justice?" a similar pattern
of results emerged. These findings thus suggest that the public prefers
a sentencing option that helps to restore victims. Accordingly, in their
view, adding restitution to a lengthy or life sentence has more utility
and, in the end, is more just than executing offenders.
The salient feature of this line of research is its direct and powerful
policy implications. Studies that seek to show that support for the
death penalty is somehow illegitimate because it is rooted in "unattrac-
tive" factors or that seek to specify when citizens might not endorse
the death penalty suffer a decided disadvantage:other than suggesting
that citizens should not or, under certain circumstances, do not sup-
port capital punishment, they offer no concrete advice on what should
be done with convicted murderers. In contrast, the life in prison with-
out parole studies have a concrete quality in that they tell us precisely
what the public wants in place of executions. As Bowers, Vandiver, and
Dugan (1994, p. 149) recognize, "people will accept the death penalty
unless or until they have an alternative they want more."
At issue is whether legislators will endorse the life in prison without
parole alternative. In their analysis of data from a 1991 survey of New
York Legislators, Bowers, Vandiver, and Dugan (1994) provide un-
promising results. Unlike citizens, few legislators expressed a willing-
ness to shift their support from the death penalty to life in prison
without parole (with or without restitution). Even when the option in-
cluded restitution, 58 percent of the sample preferred the death pen-
alty. Since 65 percent initially favored capital punishment, this decline
of 7 percentage points is modest at best. Equally problematic, the leg-
islators misperceived the public's views. They reported that among
their constituents, 73 percent would support the death penalty over an
option that included life imprisonment. Other studies have reported

similar results. In a 1996 survey, 95 percent of Tennessee legislators
stated that they favored the death penalty. Although 33 percent said
that they preferred LWOP + R, a clear majority (53 percent) still en-
dorsed capital punishment (Whitehead 1998). And in Indiana, McGar-
rell and Sandys (1996, pp. 507-8) found that legislators misperceived
the public's support for LWOP alternatives: while only 26 percent of
the citizens favored the death penalty over these alternatives, legisla-
tors assumed that 50 percent of their constituents would prefer capital
punishment to an LWOP sentence.
Legislators, therefore, may prove to be a formidable barrier to sub-
stituting LWOP for the death penalty. It is plausible that a concerted
educational campaign informing politicians of the public's true be-
liefs-especially their constituents' concern for offenders making resti-
tution to the victims' family-could affect their personal views, the na-
ture of legislative debate, and ultimately policy. But another caution
should be added: there is a possibility that public opinion data could
be used to justify "net widening." Scholarly opponents of capital pun-
ishment have constructed a persuasive reality: the public wishes to sub-
stitute LWOP sentences for the death penalty for convicted murder-
ers. The risk, however, is that the public would feel comfortable using
LWOP not only for offenders who are now receiving capital punish-
ment but also for a range of murderers for whom the death penalty
would not be pursued and who would not receive life imprisonment.
That is, citizens' may prefer to execute fewer "convicted murderers"
but also wish to lock up more of them for the rest of their lives (see
Durham, Elrod, and Kinkade 1996).
D. Juvenile CapitalPunishment
Almost half the states have laws that permit the execution of juve-
niles (Streib 1998). Although still used sparingly, as of April 1999 sixty-
five offenders were on death row for capital crimes they committed
under the age of eighteen (NAACP Legal Defense and Educational
Fund 1999). The question remains, however, as to whether the public
embraces the execution of youths and, if so, whether that support
equals the level of support accorded adult capital punishment.
In a 1986 survey of six hundred residents in two Ohio cities, Sko-
vron, Scott, and Cullen (1989) found that support for the execution of
"juveniles over the age of fourteen convicted of murder" was only 25
percent in Cincinnati and 30 percent in Columbus. This survey was
limited in the issues it probed, and the capital punishment question

covered youths as young as fourteen. Further, much has changed in
the intervening years: rising rates of juvenile violence (Sickmund, Sny-
der, and Poe-Yamagata 1997); the portrayal of youthful offenders as
"superpredators"(Dilulio 1995); and persistent calls to abolish the ju-
venile court-a court based on the assumption that youths should be
treated differently and more leniently (Feld 1997; see also Stalans and
Henry 1994; Sprott 1998). In fact, more recent research shows greater
support for the juvenile death penalty, although the data are sparse and
complicated.
While less supportive of using the death penalty for youths than for
adults, the public now appears to favor the execution of juvenile mur-
derers-a finding that also appears to hold among legislators (Hamm
1989). In a 1991 Oklahoma City survey, Grasmick, Bursik, and Black-
well (1993, p. 66) found that 51.4 percent of the sample agreed that
"sixteen-year-olds who are convicted of first degree murder generally
deserve the death penalty." The comparable figure for adults, however,
was 75.1 percent. Moore (1994) reports a similar pattern of findings
based on a 1994 Gallup Poll. Although lower than the 80 percent fig-
ure for adults, 60 percent of the national sample of respondents fa-
vored the death penalty for a teenager convicted of murder (30 percent
were opposed; 10 percent expressed no opinion).
Interpreting these results, however, is made more difficult because
the few existing surveys have used different ages when referring to the
youthful offenders being sentenced (e.g., a sixteen-year-old vs. an eigh-
teen-year-old). Further, question wording might well affect the views
expressed by the public (more generally, see Schuman and Presser
1981). For example, instead of asking people whether capital punish-
ment should be imposed, Sandys and McGarrell (1995, p. 198) in-
structed their sample of Indiana residents to rate a statement express-
ing the view that this sanction should not be used. In response to the
item, "The death penalty should not be imposed on a person who was
younger than 18 at the time of the crime," over half the sample, 51
percent, agreed with this statement compared to 41 percent who dis-
agreed.
Further, similar to research on adults, the public appears to prefer
life imprisonment without parole to the execution of youthful offend-
ers. In a 1998 statewide mail survey in Tennessee, Moon et al. (1999)
found that 81.4 percent of the sample favored the death penalty for
adults, while 53.5 percent did so for juveniles. Compared to the re-
sponses for adult offenders, fewer respondents "strongly favored" the

capital punishment of juveniles while more respondents "strongly op-
posed" it. Over three-fifths of the sample also stated that capital pun-
ishment with youngsters should be used either not at all or in only a
"few" cases. Most noteworthy, 64 percent preferred sentencing juve-
nile murderers to a life sentence with no possibility of parole. This
figure climbed to 80 percent when the LWOP option included work
and restitution to the families of the victims. Even among those who
initially "strongly favored" the death penalty, a majority preferred the
LWOP + R alternative to capital punishment.
E. Religionand the Death Penalty

One other recent development in the study of death penalty atti-
tudes warrants consideration: the growing interest in the impact of re-
ligion on support for capital punishment. This research focus likely re-
flects two trends. First, in the 1990s, Christian conservatives came to
play an increasingly prominent role on a range of cultural and, in turn,
policy issues (Hunter 1991; Layman 1997). Second, it appears that
scholars interested in crime-policy issues belatedly recognized the cen-
trality of religion in the lives of Americans. Social scientists in general
had tended to embrace "secularization theory," which proposed that
modernization and economic development would lead inevitably to a
decline in the cultural importance of religious beliefs. Yet, even as the
nation ostensibly moves toward a postmodern and postindustrial phase,
citizens continue to report extensive involvement in religion (see Had-
den 1987; Wald 1992). Polls show, for example, that 96 percent of
Americans say that they believe in God; 67 percent report that they
are members of a church or synagogue; and 61 percent indicate that
religion is a "very important" part of their lives (Newport and Saad
1997; Shorto 1997).
Most often, research has explored the influence of fundamentalist
religious membership or beliefs, arguing that they increase support for
capital punishment. Specifying this influence, however, has proven a
daunting task. There is evidence that lends credence to the thesis that
fundamentalism, especially a literal interpretation of the Bible, fosters
endorsement of the death penalty (see, e.g., Young 1992; Grasmick,
Bursik, and Blackwell 1993; Grasmick et al. 1993; Young and Thomp-
son 1995; Borg 1997; Britt 1998). Even so, Britt (1998) finds that com-
pared to nonfundamentalists, white fundamentalists are the most
supportive of capital punishment but that African-American funda-
mentalists are less supportive. Some research, moreover, suggests that

religious fundamentalism leads to supportive death penalty attitudes in
the Bible Belt and southern states but not in other geographical areas,
although the research findings on this point are inconsistent (Young
1992; Young and Thompson 1995; Borg 1997; Sandys and McGarrell
1997; Applegate et al., forthcoming). More generally, the research sug-
gests that religious fundamentalism and biblical literalism are related
to a range of punitive attitudes, such as support for stiff criminal legis-
lation, for harsh sentencing, for treating juveniles more stringently,
and for retribution as a penal philosophy (Grasmick et al. 1992; Gras-
mick, Cochran, et al. 1993; Grasmick and McGill 1994; Young and
Thompson 1995; see also Leiber, Woodrick, and Roudebush 1995;
Leiber and Woodrick 1997).
Applegate et al. (forthcoming), however, argue that much of the ex-
isting research is informed by a stereotypical view of religion: the ten-
dency to see religion as a source of control and of politically conserva-
tive sentiments (for an exception, see Britt 1998). In embracing this
limited conception of religion, researchers have not explored how reli-
gious messages of compassion and redemption might foster progressive
criminal justice-related attitudes. Toward this end, in a 1996 statewide
survey of Ohio residents, Applegate et al. (forthcoming) examined
whether a belief in religious forgiveness was associated with a range of
attitudinal outcomes, including the death penalty. Notably, controlling
for other religious variables, forgiveness was negatively and strongly
related to support for capital punishment, harsher courts, and general
punitiveness and positively related to support for rehabilitation. This
study reveals the importance in attitudinal research of being informed
by a richer understanding of religion and of its potential role in shap-
ing the worldviews people hold, including their judgments about the
treatment of lawbreakers.
II. Public Support for Punishment

Because capital punishment is the ultimate penalty-a special issue
that is the focus of interminable and heated debate-generalizing from
studies of death penalty attitudes to what the public thinks about pun-
ishment in general is risky. Take, for example, the finding that the
American public is apparently willing to support life in prison without
parole over the death penalty. Does this result show that citizens are
more judicious, and not nearly as punitive, as they are commonly por-
trayed? Or does it reveal only that people, while open to interchanging
penalties, will only do so if these penalties are both quite harsh? Thus,
although capital punishment has often occupied a central place in the
study of public attitudes, a complete assessment of public opinion
about corrections needs to move beyond this issue.
In this section, we report one body of research that is relevant to an
assessment of the public's views on what should be done with law-
breakers:studies that investigate support for punishment. The research
reveals that the public harbors punitive attitudes toward offenders, fa-
vors the use of prison sentences as a response to crime, and is generally
supportive of get-tough initiatives such as three-strikes-and-you're-out
laws. This literature is important in showing that there is a large reser-
voir of punitive sentiments that are likely real and not easily dismissed
as the mere artifact of the methodological approaches used to study
public opinion. At the same time, citizens show a degree of flexibility
in their willingness to support, or at least tolerate, sanctions other than
imprisonment. Their support of three-strikes laws, moreover, dimin-
ishes substantially when specific, rather than global, opinions are mea-
sured. Finally, as we show in later sections, studies of punitiveness il-
luminate only one dimension of the public's thinking and, taken by
themselves, can result in a distorted portrait of citizens' correctional
ideology.
A. GeneralPunitive Attitudes
To measure whether the public is punitive, one common strategy
has been to present survey respondents with a statement-for example,
"The best way to stop crime is to get tough with offenders"-and then
to ask whether they endorse this view. The most commonly cited ex-
ample of this type of research is the General Social Survey, which since
1972 has asked this question: "In general, do you think the courts in
this area deal too harshly or not harshly enough with criminals?"The
1996 survey found that 78 percent answered "not harshly enough,"
while only 5 percent stated that the courts were too harsh (the re-
maining 11 percent answered "about right") (Maguire and Pastore
1998, pp. 134-35; Smith 1998). Figure 2 presents the trend data for
the last quarter of the century. In 1972, 65.5 percent of the sample
believed that the courts were "not harsh enough." Two years later, this
percentage had jumped 13 points to 78.5 percent. In subsequent years,
the percentage endorsing harsher courts fluctuated but remained above
this figure; it reached a high of 87 percent in 1982 and was 85.1 per-
cent in 1994. Although this figure dropped by 7 percentage points in
100
95
170
85 - 1985 0 15
Le
1975-0 1975 1980 1 1990 1995 2000
Year
Year
FIG. 2.-Trends in public punitiveness toward criminals, 1972-96. Data from the
General Social Survey (Smith 1998, p. 5). Responses to the question: "In general, do
you think the courts in this area deal too harshly or not harshly enough with criminals?"
1996, a stubborn reality remains: nearly four in five Americans believe

that the courts in their communities are not sufficiently punitive.
Recent national polls suggest that the General Social Survey results
are not idiosyncratic (all polls obtained from http://dialog.carl.org). A
1996 CBS News Poll, for example, asked whether respondents be-
lieved that "to solve the country's crime problem," it was more impor-
tant for the "next administration" to "impose stricter sentences on
criminals or increase the amount of police on the street." Notably, 54
percent selected "stricter sentences," more than twice the proportion
of the sample choosing "increase police" (26 percent). In a 1998 survey
conducted by Time/CNN/Yankelovich Partners, nearly three-fourths
of the respondents stated that the U.S. Congress should give a "high
priority" to "tougher crime enforcement legislation." Similarly, a 1997
survey by U.S. News & WorldReportand Bozell Worldwide reported
that 72 percent of adults "strongly favored" and another 17 percent
"favored" the policy of "tougher sentences for criminals." And a 1998
NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll found that 78 percent of the re-
spondents "strongly agreed" that "we should toughen and strengthen
penalties for convicted criminals."
Although the public harbors punitive sentiments, the question re-
mains as to what specific correctional policies they embrace. Because
studies have not been designed to explore the full complexity of public
opinion on the punishment of crime-in particular, how seemingly

contradictory beliefs are interrelated (Innes 1993)-addressing this is-
sue in a definitive way is not possible. Still, by weaving together various
strands of information gathered from diverse studies, three general
conclusions can be drawn (see Innes 1993). First, consistent with the
research showing that the public is punitive, citizens are accepting of
specific policies that inflict "penal harm" on offenders (Clear 1994).
Second, for many Americans, punitive views exist side by side with
progressive views, and thus they do not preclude support for policies
aimed at improving the lives of offenders. Third, individuals tend not
to hold punitive views rigidly; at least to a degree, they will moderate
these views if given a compelling reason to do so. These themes are
elaborated as this essay unfolds.
B. Supportfor Prisons
In light of the massive and seemingly unending growth in prison
populations and in light of the dramatic way in which incarceration
changes an offender's life, a key policy concern is whether citizens
want lawbreakersincarcerated. One strategy for measuring the public's
embrace of imprisonment is to present respondents with descriptions
of a diverse set of crimes and then to ask that they use a response scale
to select what sentence they would give the offender in each case. De-
pending on the study, the number of crimes rated, the amount of in-
formation used to describe the crimes, and the number and types of
sentencing options provided can differ. These variations can poten-
tially affect the results. Even so, this research generally shows wide-
spread support for "locking up" offenders. "Simply put," observes
Warr (1995b, p. 23), "Americans overwhelmingly regard imprison-
ment as the appropriateform of punishment for most crimes. Although
the proportion who prefer prison increases with the seriousness of the
crime, imprisonment is by far the most commonly chosen penalty
across crimes."
Two national public attitude studies-the 1987 National Punish-
ment Study reported in Jacoby and Cullen (1998; see also Jacoby and
Dunn 1987) and a 1994 survey by Rossi, Berk, and Campbell (1997;
see also Rossi and Berk 1997)-lend credence to Warr's assessment.
Both studies used the factorial survey approach to construct vignettes
that, in turn, respondents were asked to judge by assigning a sentence
(see Rossi and Nock 1982). In this approach, a researcher first selects
the information to be included in the vignettes, such as the types of
crime, characteristicsof the offender and victim, harm incurred by the

victim, and so on. The computer then randomly combines these di-
mensions or variables to create a pool of unique vignettes (i.e., every
vignette is different). In the survey, each respondent is given a unique
or different set of vignettes to rate-much as individual judges in
courtrooms across the nation impose sentences on a unique set of cases
that come before them. A sample vignette from the National Punish-
ment Study is as follows (Jacoby and Cullen 1998, p. 266): "The of-
fender, a 22-year-old male, used a knife to intentionally injure a victim.
The victim was treated by a doctor and was hospitalized. The victim
was a 60-year-old female. The offender had a mental condition. The
offender was drunk when he committed the crime. The offender was
never convicted before for a violent offense. The offender was con-
victed once before for stealing money or property. The offender has
served one previous sentence of one year in jail."
The factorial approach has the decided advantage of allowing re-
spondents to rate fairly detailed scenarios that mirror, albeit imper-
fectly, the features of real-life criminal cases-a key reason its use is
becoming common in scholarly research on public opinion. Previously,
researchers wishing to have people rate realistic-sounding cases had to
present all respondents with the same set of vignettes. The dimensions
used in these vignettes-including the number of different crimes-
had to be limited because of the permutations created by adding each
new dimension (e.g., race of the offender, age of the victim). Fairly
quickly, the number of vignettes feasible for respondents to rate would
be surpassed (e.g., see Frank et al. 1989). The alternative and more
frequently used approach was to present respondents with lengthy
lists of offenses that contained little information beyond the nature
of the crime itself (e.g., see Blumstein and Cohen 1980). A chief
criticism of using this latter method is that it inflates punishment
scores. Because the context or circumstances surrounding an offense
are not presented, respondents may assume that the crime listed-
for example, a murder-is the most egregious type (e.g., cold-blooded,
not victim-precipitated) (Doob and Roberts 1984, 1988; Roberts 1992,
pp. 126-27; Roberts and Stalans 1997, p. 208). Since the two national
studies discussed here used the factorial survey approach, they are
less susceptible to this potential methodological bias (cf. Durham
1993).
The National Punishment Survey included twenty-four offenses,
which, in their various forms, were spread across 9,997 vignettes. The
offenses were mainly traditional street crimes (e.g., arson, larceny, bur-
glary, robbery, assault, forcible rape, drug offenses, drunk driving). It
is noteworthy that the sample chose a prison or jail sentence as their
preferred sanction for 71 percent of the vignettes. Other sentencing
options included probation, fine, and/or restitution. With the excep-
tion of larceny of $10, a majority of the sample favored jail or prison
for every offense. Even for relatively minor crimes, harsh penalties
were preferred. For example, among respondents who selected impris-
onment for offenders committing a larceny of $10, the median sen-
tence given was one year while the mean exceeded two years. Similar
findings were reported for burglary of a building for $10 and drunk
driving with no accident. All other offenses were assigned more severe
prison sentences. The mean prison or jail sentence for all offenses was
over eleven years (135.7 months) (Jacoby and Dunn 1987; see also
Zimmerman, Van Alstyne, and Dunn 1988).
The 1994 Rossi, Berk, and Campbell (1997) survey assessed the ex-
tent to which public opinion about sentencing matched the punish-
ments outlined in the federal sentencing guidelines (for a discussion of
these guidelines, see Tonry, pp. 72-79). Their survey covered seventy-
three separate federal crimes that fell into twenty offense categories.
Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1,753 respondents age
eighteen and over, with each person providing their sentencing prefer-
ences for a unique set of forty vignettes. In all, over seventy thousand
different vignettes describing different crime scenarios were rated. The
sentencing options included probation, a prison sentence of a length
specified by the respondent, or the death penalty.
"Once convicted," conclude Rossi, Berk, and Campbell (1997, p.
277), "the public was quick to sentence the defendants to prison, but
rarely for more than several years." Overall, the median sentence
across all vignettes was 3.0 years; the mean sentence was 7.2 years,
which reflected extremely long sentences being favored by a minority
of the sample. Of the twenty crime types, only the category of "drug
=
possession" had a median of less than two years in prison (median
0.5 years). Of the seventy-three separate crimes, only six offenses had
a median of less than one year in prison. Although incarceration was
the preferred penalty, these scores seem less severe than the sentences
in the National Punishment Survey. This finding, however, is likely
the result of the crimes rated by the respondents. Because Rossi, Berk,
and Campbell were examining crimes violating federal law, their list of
offenses omitted many common street crimes (e.g., felony murder,
rape, assault, residential burglary) and included many white-collar,

fraud, civil rights, and drug crimes.
Four additional findings from this study warrant attention. First,
with the assistance of the staff of the U.S. Sentencing Commission,
Rossi, Berk, and Campbell (1997) used the federal sentencing guide-
lines to determine what the prescribed sentence would be for each vi-
gnette in their study. They then compared the sentences calculated
based on the guidelines with the sentences given the vignettes by the
public in their survey. The results were similar: a median sentence of
2.5 years computed from the guidelines versus 3.0-year median sen-
tence assigned by the public. Previous research has tended to find that
citizens assign harsher sentences than the time offenders actually serve
in prison, although these results are not uniform across all studies (cf.
Warr 1994, pp. 50-51; and Zimmerman, Van Alstyne, and Dunn 1988
with Robert and Stalans 1997, pp. 210-11). Relatedly, in a survey of
Chicago area residents, Rich and Sampson (1990, p. 115) found, across
offenses, a "sizable gap" in the number of years the public thought that
an offender does and should spend in prison. For the crime of rape,
for example, the respondents believed that offenders would be sen-
tenced to less than nine years in prison, but that the sentence should
be nearly thirty years.
Second, it should be realized that the Rossi, Berk, and Campbell
(1997) results refer to the aggregated sentencing preferences or "cen-
tral tendencies" of the public. Similar to past studies (see, e.g.,
Blumstein and Cohen 1980; Jacoby and Cullen 1998), individual re-
spondents tend to agree on which crimes should be assigned relatively
more or less punishment (e.g., robbery more than shoplifting), but
they often disagree substantially on the absolute level of punishment
(e.g., whether a robber should receive two years or four years). Fur-
ther, individuals' opinions are not always stable, fluctuating even when
given the same crime to rate in the same survey (a design feature incor-
porated for a subset of respondents in Rossi, Berk, and Campbell's
study). These results suggest that people's opinions may not be fixed
but "mushy" (Durham 1993) and that although sentencing guidelines
may reflect the opinion of "the public," many individuals may have
heated disagreements over particular sentences specified in the guide-
lines. Rossi, Berk, and Campbell (1997, p. 288) capture these issues:
"There is apparently no clear view of an absolute scale of sentencing
severity of punishment that corresponds directly to lengths of prison
sentences. One person's 2-year sentence may be the equivalent of an-
32 FrancisT. Cullen, BonnieS. Fischer,and BrandonK. Applegate
other's 4-year sentence. In addition, the differences between sentences

are not distinct; respondents who gave a 4-year sentence on one occa-
sion to a specific crime may give a different sentence on another occa-
sion to the same crime. In other words, the punishment norms of our
society are only dimly apprehended by respondents."
Third, citizens wished drug trafficking to be severely punished, with
the median sentence being 10.0 years in prison. It is noteworthy, how-
ever, that the respondents gave virtually the same median and mean
punishment regardless of whether an offender sold crack cocaine, co-
caine, or heroin. The public's sentencing preferences were similar to
the presumptive sentences for the federal guidelines for cocaine and
heroin, but were less than half the guideline's severity for crack (ten
years vs. twenty-two years). This finding is relevant to the major policy
debate over whether crack and powder cocaine offenses should be dif-
ferentially sanctioned, as is now the case on the federal level. As Tonry
(1995, p. 188) notes, "the problem ... is that crack tends to be used
and sold by blacks and powder by whites, which means that the harsh-
est penalties are mostly experienced by blacks." The public, it appears,
does not embrace this distinction and, by implication, the racial dispar-
ity it produces.
Fourth, because Rossi, Berk, and Campbell (1997) examined federal
crimes, a domain which includes many white-collar illegalities, their
data set provides perhaps the best study of public views on the sentenc-
ing of upperworld offenders. Scholars from E. A. Ross (1907) to Edwin
Sutherland (1940) to James Q. Wilson (1975) had argued that the pub-
lic did not harbor punitive sentiments toward white-collar law-break-
ing. In the 1980s, however, a revisionist perspective emerged, which
claimed the "social movement" against the "crimes of the rich and
powerful" had changed public attitudes and increased public support
for using the criminal law to sanction white-collar offenders (for a
summary, see Evans, Cullen, and Dubeck 1993). Three surveys of
communities in Illinois between 1979 and 1982, for example, found
that more than eight in ten respondents agreed that "we should punish
white-collar criminals just as severely as we punish people who steal
money on the street" and that "white-collar criminals have gotten off
too easily for too many years; they deserve to be sent to jail for crimes
just like everyone else." Fewer than two in ten respondents agreed that
"since white-collar criminals usually don't harm anyone, they
shouldn't be punished as much as regular criminals" (Cullen, Mathers,
Clark, and Cullen 1983). A 1981 survey in Illinois also showed that
citizens were generally willing to assign criminal penalties-ranging

from lengthy probation and fines to prison sentences-for a range of
white-collar and corporate crimes. Prison sentences typically were fa-
vored by a clear majority of the respondents when physical harm oc-
curred or was possible, such as knowingly selling contaminated food
and manufacturing a defective automobile (Cullen, Clark, Link, et al.
1985; see also Frank et al. 1989).
Rossi and associates' national survey, which as noted was conducted
in 1994, reinforces these findings (Rossi and Berk 1997, pp. 124-40;
Rossi, Berk, and Campbell 1997). Consider the median sentences for
these "violent" white-collar crimes: selling defective helicopter parts
(ten years); marketing a drug after false testing (five years) or with side
effects (four years); and a factory discharging toxic waste water (two
years) or polluting the air (one year). Criminal sanctions, however,
were not reserved for physically harmful offenses. Thus the median
sentences for financial offenses were not inconsequential: fraudulently
causing a savings and loan failure (five years); doctor filing fraudulent
Medicare claims (five years); bank official embezzling bank funds (two
years); insider stock fraud (two years); tax fraud (two years); antitrust
bid rigging (four years) and price-fixing (one year); and illegal logging
on federal land (one year). In general, sentences for traditional street
crimes tended to be lengthier, but many exceptions to this rule oc-
curred (see also Cullen, Clark, Link, et al. 1985). In any case, these
results show that there is little public opposition to sending white-
collar offenders to prison.
C. Firmnessof Supportfor Prisons

Thus far, we have reviewed research suggesting that the public fa-
vors "harsher" sentences and prison terms, often lengthy ones, for
most offenders. Is this support for "getting tough" unshakable? If so,
it would present a formidable barrierto any attempt to implement pro-
gressive policies, such as community-based alternatives to prison.
One consideration suggesting that the public's punishment prefer-
ences are firm is that they rest, at least in part, on the normative con-
sensus that "the punishment should fit the crime"-that is, on the em-
brace of the principle of retribution or just deserts. Previous research
has found that measures of perceived crime seriousness are positively
and clearly related to sentencing severity (see, e.g., Blumstein and Co-
hen 1980; Hamilton and Rytina 1980; Warr, Meier, and Erickson
1983; Jacoby and Cullen 1998). The nature of the crime, in short, is
an important predictor of which offenders people believe should

receive more or less punishment (although the relationship of se-
riousness to the absolute level of punishment is less strong). To the
extent that sanctions violate this principle-such as when a violent of-
fender is placed on probation or receives a short prison sentence-calls
for tougher penalties are likely to occur. It is noteworthy that based on
a Canadian study, Doob and Roberts (1988, p. 119) report that the
main reason respondents gave for "why sentences should be made
more severe" was that "offenders deserve more punishment" (76 per-
cent rating this reason as "very important").
The connection between seriousness and severity ratings, however,
does not mean that just deserts is the only principle guiding views
about the use of imprisonment. Although norms of just deserts may
place limits on how little punishment people will find acceptable, re-
search indicates that the public also supports utilitarian goals for im-
prisonment and for punishment in general (see Sec. TV). In the Na-
tional Punishment Survey, for example, offense seriousness scores
explained the largest amount of variation in sentencing preferences
(Jacoby and Cullen 1998). Still, when respondents were asked in a sep-
arate question what was the purpose of the sentence they assigned to
the offender in the vignette, the goal of just deserts ranked fourth be-
hind special deterrence, boundary setting, and rehabilitation as a "very
important" reason for choosing the sentence (Jacoby and Dunn 1987;
see also Warr and Stafford 1984). As Warr (1994, p. 52) notes, "There
is no single dominant ideology of punishment among the U.S. public.
When asked, individuals commonly invoke or support more than one
theory of punishment, and no one theory appears to dominate public
thinking about punishment."
Two considerations complicate matters further. First, survey re-
search studies do not differentiate between what sentences people want
imposed by the courts-and why-and then what they wish done with
the offender while he or she is within the correctional system-and
why (see Innes 1993). For example, a respondent may favor a prison
sentence for reasons of just deserts but also believe that the offender
should be given a chance to participate in a "boot camp" program or
be given a chance to be released early by successfully completing a re-
habilitation program. Studies of sentencing preferences, however, tend
only to ask what sentence should be imposed and thus insufficiently
measure the full correctional response citizens might endorse. Second
and relatedly, rating what specific sentences should be assigned to indi-
vidual defendants described in vignettes is not the same as making

judgments about policies that affect the correctional system. Thus citi-
zens may favor prison sentences for burglars but, in the face of system
overcrowding and scarce tax revenues, also favor community alterna-
tives for property offenders. In short, support for prisons and for harsh
sentences may differ depending on which domain of attitudes is being
measured.
Research also indicates that the public is ambivalent about the pris-
on's effectiveness in preventing crime. This conclusion is supported by
surveys conducted in various states during the nineties by Doble Re-
search Associates (1994, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c, 1997, 1998). Most re-
spondents opposed releasing violent offenders early from prison and
favored longer prison sentences. Despite this fact, those surveyed gen-
erally agreed that "the vast majority of prison inmates sit around all
day, playing cards and watching TV instead of working at a job that
keeps them busy and helps them acquire skills to make them more em-
ployable when they get out." Citizens also do not believe that prisons
are doing a good job punishing or rehabilitating offenders. Finally and
most noteworthy, many Americans question whether prisons reduce
crime. In an Iowa survey, for example, 60 percent of the sample stated
that the "majority of inmates" would be "more dangerous" when they
were released from prison; only 9 percent answered "less dangerous,"
while the remaining 31 percent answered "don't know" (Doble Re-
search Associates 1997). Similarly, when asked if "jails and prisons are
really schools for criminals that turn new inmates into hardened crimi-
nals," 48 percent of a New Hampshire sample agreed, 39 percent dis-
agreed, and 14 percent did not choose an answer (Doble Research As-
sociates 1998). And when asked about the potential impact of longer
prison terms, 46 percent of Oregonians and 50 percent of Oklahomans
answered "little or no effect on crime" (Doble Research Associates
1995b, 1995c).
Interpreting these research results is difficult. One possibility is that,
regardless of what they believe prisons should accomplish, citizens are
coming to see these facilities as having little utility beyond incapaci-
tating offenders. In this scenario, prisons would be seen as offering a
trade-off: they make offenders more criminogenic when released, but
they prevent crime while these offenders are locked up. The trade-off
becomes more worthwhile the longer offenders-especially those who
inflict the most harm, violent criminals-stay behind bars. This calcu-
lus firms up support for incarcerating violent offenders but at the same
time makes imprisoning nonviolent offenders less attractive. A bifur-

cated public opinion thus emerges: more insistent on prison sentences
for violence and more open to alternativesfor property, drug, and simi-
lar offenses (see the research cited in Sec. III). Ironically, critics of pris-
ons-including criminologists and other social science scholars-may
help to cement this way of thinking. To the extent that they have per-
suaded the public that prisons are so inhumane that they are incapable
of inducing offenders to change, they may unwittingly provide a con-
vincing rationale for not releasing "dangerous" offenders into society.
Another possibility is that because a significant portion of the public
has doubts about the effectiveness of prisons, support for their use is
widespread but not as deep as is commonly portrayed. Except for the
most egregious offenses and intractable lawbreakers,citizens may pre-
sumptively favor prison terms but be open to alternatives, shorter sen-
tences, and/or parole release if given a convincing reason to do so. In
this scenario, the bulk of the public are rational decision makers who
are not wed to a strict "lock 'em up" mentality. The challenge, of
course, is to provide a justification for limiting the use of imprisonment
that is coherent enough to maintain its persuasiveness across diverse
sentencing situations.
Some backing for the view that support for prisons is somewhat
"mushy" can be drawn from Turner et al.'s (1997) survey of 287 Cin-
cinnati-area residents in 1995. They started with the assumption that
punishment attitudes are not rigidly fixed at a single point but rather
are best conceptualized as ranging from what sentence a respondent
might prefer to what the person might be willing to "tolerate" or ac-
cept (Durham 1993; Bowers, Vandiver, and Dugan 1994). Using the
factorial approach, vignettes were developed for two forms of robbery
(with and without injury) and for two forms of burglary ($250 and
$1,000 of stolen merchandise). In Ohio, these crimes carry a presump-
tive prison sentence of three to twenty-five years, depending on the
characteristics of the offense and offender; one-third of Ohio's prison
population is composed of people convicted of some form of robbery
or burglary. The respondents were given a list of sanctions that in-
cluded traditional probation, three intermediate sanctions, shock incar-
ceration, and imprisonment. Each of these sanctions was described in
detail. To measure "tolerance," the sample was first instructed to se-
lect the sanction that they would "most like" to give the offender; they
then were asked what other sentences they would find "acceptable."
The analysis suggested four main conclusions. First, only a limited

percentage of the sample selected "regular probation" as a preferred
or acceptable sentence. Second, the preference for imposing a prison
sentence or shock incarceration was fairly modest, ranging across the
four offenses from 51.7 percent to 57.9 percent. In part, the lack of
strong support for locking up offenders may be because the commu-
nity-based sentencing options included intermediate penalties and
were explained (e.g., "Strict Probation:John would live in the commu-
nity, but must meet with a probation officer five times a week for two
years"). Third, when "acceptable"sentences were analyzed, only 26.8-
35.2 percent of the sample still insisted on the offender spending time
incarcerated. Across all vignettes, about two-thirds of the respondents
thus were willing to tolerate a community-based sanction. Fourth,
even so, tolerance for sanctions was bidirectional, with many of those
initially favoring community sanctions also finding imprisonment ac-
ceptable.
Taken together, these results reveal that for traditional "street crim-
inals"-robbers and burglars-the public tends to prefer, and certainly
is not strongly opposed to, assigning a prison term. Citizens also ap-
pear wary of "regular probation," a sanction that involves minimal
contact with the offender. In contrast, they are willing to consider al-
ternatives to incarceration if it appears that the community sanctions
will involve some meaningful intervention (e.g., strict monitoring). We
return to this point in Section III.
Finally, research on attitudes toward parole further illuminates the
public's willingness to attenuate support for prison when furnished
with a rationale for doing so. In a 1995 national survey, respondents
were asked what measures they would favor or oppose as a means of
reducing prison overcrowding. Only 8 percent favored shortening sen-
tences and only 21 percent favored "giving the parole board more au-
thority to release offenders early." In contrast, 64 percent endorsed the
policy of "allowing prisoners to earn early release through good behav-
ior and participation in educational and work programs" (Flanagan
1996b, pp. 88, 192). These results are similar to the findings of a survey
conducted nearly a decade earlier in Ohio (Skovron, Scott, and Cullen
1988). This research suggests that while opposed to shortening prison
terms in a sweeping and potentially arbitraryway, citizens will do so
for offenders who have taken steps to improve themselves and whose
prospects for community reintegration thus appear promising.
D. Supportfor Three-Strikes-and-You're-Out Laws

"Sentencing," argues Tonry (1996, p. 3), "matters in the 1990s
more than ever before." Although battles over sentencing reform ex-
tend to the 1970s (Cullen and Gilbert 1982; Tonry 1992), the move-
ment to constrain judicial discretion and to ensure that offenders
would be "locked up" reached a feverish pitch in the nineties. From
the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the U.S. Congress and most states
enacted a host of statutes mandating prison terms for a variety of of-
fenses. By the end of the decade, virtually every state had a policy of
mandatory minimum imprisonment (Tonry 1998). Truth-in-sentenc-
ing laws, which stipulate that offenders serve a high proportion (e.g.,
85 percent) of the sentences imposed at trial, became commonplace
(Ditton and Wilson 1999). Most salient, however, was the renewed en-
thusiasm for habitual-offender laws, which were repackaged under the
label "three strikes and you're out." Between 1993 and 1995, twenty-
four states and the federal government passed statutes that, with some
variation, required life sentences-usually without the possibility of
parole-for offenders convicted of three violent or serious crimes
(Turner et al. 1995; Clark, Austin, and Henry 1997; see also Shichor
and Sechrest 1996).
Does the public support three-strikes laws? At least as a general ap-
proach to punishing habitual violent offenders, the answer appears to
be, yes. In a 1993 referendum, voters in Washington approved the first
three-strikes statute by a 3:1 margin (Clark, Austin, and Henry 1997,
p. 1); subsequently, the electorate in California ratified a three-strikes
law passed by the state's legislature in 1994 by a margin of 72 percent
for to 28 percent against (Shichor and Sechrest 1996, p. v). Opinion
polls suggest that these results were not idiosyncratic. A 1994 Time/
CNN Poll found that 81 percent of adults favored mandatory life im-
prisonment for anyone convicted of a third serious crime (cited in
Applegate et al. 1996b, p. 518). In a 1994 Wall Street Journal/NBC
News Poll, 76 percent stated that "life sentences without parole for
criminals with three violent crimes" would make a "major" difference
in reducing crime (Wall StreetJournal 1994, p. A14). A study of Ver-
mont residents in the same year reached similar results: 61 percent fa-
vored mandatory life sentences for three-time violent criminals, "even
if this means the prisons will eventually be filled with lots of very old
men who pose little danger to anyone" (Doble Research Associates
1994, p. 25).
It is questionable, however, whether citizens truly wish the three-
strikes law applied to every offender who would qualify for a life sen-
tence without parole (Finkel et al. 1996; Roberts 1996). Thus, in facto-
rial survey studies in which concrete cases are rated, the impact of prior
record on sentencing preferences varies across studies-although it
tends to explain some variation-and its effects are outweighed by the
seriousness of the current offense (see, e.g., Applegate et al. 1996a,
1996b; Rossi, Berk, and Campbell 1997; Jacoby and Cullen 1998).
Research by Applegate et al. (1996b) illuminates the gap between
"global" and "specific" attitudes toward three-strikes laws. In a 1995
study of Cincinnati-area residents, the respondents showed extensive
support for the general or global concept of "three strikes and you're
out." Over 88 percent of the sample stated that they either "strongly"
(52.1 percent) or "somewhat" (36.3 percent) supported passing a
three-strikes law in Ohio that would give a life prison sentence to
"anyone with two serious felony convictions on their record who is
convicted of a third serious crime" (1996b, p. 522). In a second stage
of the survey, however, Applegate and his associates had the respon-
dents rate a specific vignette that included a mixture of crimes that
would make the offender eligible for a mandatory life sentence. The
offenses included in the factorial vignette were derived from a three-
strikes statute then pending in the Ohio legislature. The respondents
were asked to select a sentence from a list that ranged from "no pun-
ishment" and "probation" to "life in prison" with and without a
chance of parole. Across the vignettes, only 16.9 percent assigned a life
sentence. In various multivariate models, moreover, past record gener-
ally had little, if any, effect on the sentencing decisions. Finally, in an-
other part of the survey, the respondents also were asked if there were
any circumstances under which they would make exceptions to impos-
ing a "three-strikes life sentence." These data showed at least a mea-
sure of flexibility in punishment attitudes. Thus a majority of the sam-
ple favored making exceptions when a third offense was relatively
minor, when the offender was mentally ill, when the inmate is rehabili-
tated while in prison, and when incarcerating the offender would mean
that a more dangerous inmate would have to be released.
These results suggest that members of the public can hold seemingly
incompatible views: favoring the general principle of three strikes and
you're out but not believing that this principle should be applied in-
variably to specific offenders under specific circumstances. Future re-
search should be designed to probe respondents to explain why they
voice discrepant views. Respondents may not be conscious of the gap
between their global and specific attitudes, or perhaps their attitudes

are a methodological artifact since distinct rating tasks are involved.
The other possibility, however, is that different norms weigh more
heavily in organizing public opinion in these two domains. Thus, in
supporting three-strikes legislation, considerations of societal protec-
tion may be more salient: it seems like a good idea to take repeat, seri-
ous offenders off the street. In judging a vignette, though, the question
of what is fair for the particular individual being sentenced becomes
prominent (see Finkel et al. 1996). There may be consensus that dan-
gerous people should be incarcerated for life but disagreement over
who specifically qualifies for this designation and to what degree.
Although not addressing this question directly, Tyler and Boeck-
mann's (1997) survey of 166 residents of the East Bay area of San Fran-
cisco complicates our understanding of why the public might support
three-strikes laws. Their analysis showed that support for California's
three-strike initiative was not chiefly "instrumental":respondents con-
cerned about crime and lacking faith in the courts were not more likely
to endorse the initiative. Since the respondents were not asked directly
why they supported the three-strikes proposal, this analysis cannot rule
out that even those not gripped with concern about crime might have
made the "rational" assessment that it was prudent to lock up repeat
serious or violent offenders. Still, Tyler and Boeckmann's analysis also
revealed that support for the three-strikes law was related to social val-
ues and concerns about the strength of social bonds in families. "Those
citizens who feel that the moral and social consensus that holds society
together is declining," they note, "are more supportive of punitive
public policies" (1997, p. 256). In short, three-strikes laws may have
struck a chord with the public not because they were a compelling
crime control strategy but because they offered a symbolic means of
affirming a shaky social order.
III. Public Support for Alternatives to Incarceration

In the 1990s, two issues-one occurring primarily at the front end of
the decade, one primarily at the back end of the decade-dominated
policy discussions about the nature of community-based corrections:
intermediate sanctions and restorative justice. Although the effective-
ness of these approaches in reducing offender recidivism is open to
question, both enjoyed the support of liberals and conservatives (Cul-
len, Wright, and Applegate 1996; Levrant et al. 1999). "Intermediate
sanctions"-penalties that exist "between prison and probation"
(Morris and Tonry 1990)-were favored by liberals as an alternative

to prisons and by conservatives as a cost-effective means of punishing
offenders. Restorative justice-the attempt to punish and reintegrate
offenders into the community-was endorsed by liberals as another
strategy for limiting the harm inflicted on offenders and by conserva-
tives as a way of assisting victims.
Although not without important qualifications, public support for
these initiatives appears to be fairly widespread. Thus research shows
that citizens endorse the use of virtually all types of intermediate sanc-
tions (e.g., community service, boot camps, intensive supervision pro-
grams). The public's backing of intermediate sanctions also appears to
increase when its members are presented with information on the costs
of prisons and on the nature of these community-based penalties.
However, people support the use of intermediate sanctions primarily
for nonviolent offenders as opposed to violent offenders and as an al-
ternative not only for imprisonment but also for regular probation (i.e.,
they are not against net widening). Similarly, there is beginning to be
evidence that restorative justice is favored by the public, in part, we
suspect, because it promises to accrue benefits for-that is, to re-
store-victims, offenders, and the community. Once again, the public
sees this type of sanction as mainly appropriate for nonviolent of-
fenders.
A. IntermediateSanctions
It is often stated that because traditional community correctional
interventions- especially probation-are not viewed by Americans as
punitive, a sentence other than imprisonment is seen as a sign of
leniency (Flanagan 1996b). There is, in fact, evidence that the pub-
lic views probation as a lenient punishment (Harlow, Darley, and
Robinson 1995; see also Turner et al. 1997). In a 1996 national poll,
53.3 percent of the sample "agreed" that "community corrections pro-
grams are evidence of leniency in the criminal justice system." Only
three in ten respondents disagreed, while the remainder (13.8 percent)
were undecided (Flanagan 1996a, p. 6). In contrast, intermediate sanc-
tions were intended to be sufficiently punitive to offer a "sensible" al-
ternative to locking up offenders (Anderson 1998). Importantly, re-
search indicates that in assessing the severity of punishments, the
public views these sanctions "as intermediate in severity between the
perceived harshness of prison and the perceived leniency of probation"
(Harlow, Darley, and Robinson 1995, p. 86). Further, it would seem
possible to structure intermediate sanctions in ways to have them

match or outweigh the severity of incarceration (e.g., three years on
intensive supervision as opposed to a six-month jail sentence), thus in-
creasing the potential to interchange community-based punishments
for a prison term. It is noteworthy that studies show that offenders also
rate certain intermediate penalties as more severe than limited stays in
prison (Petersilia and Deschenes 1994; Spelman 1995; see also Crouch
1993).
A fairly large body of research now shows that the U.S. public
strongly supports the use of some intermediate sanctions, such as resti-
tution programs, community service, boot camps, intensive probation
supervision, and home confinement/electronic monitoring (see, e.g.,
Reichel and Gauthier 1990; Senese 1992; Brown and Elrod 1995; El-
rod and Brown 1996; Flanagan 1996a; DiMascio et al. 1997, pp. 43-
45). The chief qualification to this conclusion, however, is that support
for intermediate sanctions is largely limited to nonviolent offenders
(see, e.g., Doble Research Associates 1994, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c, 1997,
1998; Brown and Elrod 1995). In a 1995 North Carolina survey, for
example, respondents were given a list of eight different intermediate
sanctions and asked their "views about using the alternative sentences
instead of prison for selected nonviolent offenders" (Doble Research
Associates 1995a, p. 40). Those favoring each option ranged from 80
percent for house arrest to 98 percent for restitution. When asked to
rate specific cases, they clearly favored prison over alternatives for vio-
lent offenders, drug traffickers,and recidivist burglars. They tended to
embrace alternatives for those committing minor property offenses
(e.g., shoplifting, joyride), drug addicts who sell minor amounts of co-
caine, drunk drivers, and first offenders. Interestingly, when asked to
assign alternatives, the respondents "individualized" their sentencing
preferences (e.g., treatment centers for offenders with drinking or drug
problems, boot camp for burglars) (Doble Research Associates 1995a,
pp. 46-52).
These findings suggest that public support for incarcerating violent
and repeat felony offenders is firm. Why the public favors locking up
these offenders rather than using alternatives, however, remains to be
systematically explored. If the constraint on using alternatives is "just
deserts"-serious offenders simply deserve to serve a prison sen-
tence-then it might be possible to "package"a group of intermediate
sanctions to match the level of severity of imprisonment desired (e.g.,
one year of home confinement, restitution to victim, and two hundred
PublicOpinionaboutPunishment
andCorrections 43
hours of communityserviceinsteadof a one-yearprisonsentence).If

the concernis dangerousnessand societalprotection,then persuading
the public that violent or repeatfelony offendersshould be "on the
street"may provemore difficult.In local communities,publicskepti-
cism mayhaveto be counteredby showingthatintermediatesanctions
are effective in curtailingsubsequentoffending.As Petersilia(1997,
p. 177) observes,studieshave "shownthat judgesare more willing to
place felons on probationwhen they perceivethat the probationde-
partmentcan monitor the offenderclosely and that the community
resourcesare sufficientto addresssome of the offender'sunderlying
problems"(see also Gendreau,Cullen, and Bonta 1994).
The appealof intermediatesanctionsis complicatedfurtherby an-
other consideration:citizensappearto be in favorof net widening.Al-
though they may endorseemployingintermediatesanctionsas an al-
ternativeto prisonfor some offenders,they alsowishthese penaltiesto
be used as an alternativeto probation(Farkas1993).In a 1995 survey,
Oregonianswere askedif the stateshould"makegreateruse of alterna-
tives, like boot camp, communityservice,restitution,a work center,
house arrestor strict probationeven if they are more expensivethan
havingan offendersee a probationofficeronce a month."Despite the
addedcost, 65 percentof the sample"stronglyfavored"and25 percent
"somewhatfavored"this proposal(Doble ResearchAssociates1995c).
There is some evidence,however,that supportfor prisontermswill
softenif respondentsarepresentedwith detailedinformationaboutthe
cost of prisonsand about the natureof alternativesentences.Experi-
mental studies conductedby the Public AgendaFoundationin Ala-
bama (Doble and Klein 1989), Delaware (Doble, Immerwahr,and
Richardson1991), and Pennsylvania(Farkas1993;Jacobs 1993) lend
credenceto this contentionandshow that exposureto knowledgemay
makeintermediatesentencesacceptablealternativesto imprisonment.
Citizensin these stateswere askedto assigna sentenceof eitherprison
or probationto a list of "hypotheticalcases"involvingstreet crimes
(e.g., burglary,robbery,rape,assault,petty theft, drugoffenses).They
were then shown a twenty-two-minutevideo "about prison over-
crowdingandfive alternativesentences-strict probation,strictproba-
tion plusrestitution,strictprobationpluscommunityservice,housear-
rest, and boot camp-along with the main argumentsfor and against
usingthe alternatives"(Farkas1993,p. 13).They subsequentlymet for
about ninety minutes in groups of fifteen citizens to discuss the issues
"under the guidance of a neutral moderator" (Farkas 1993, p. 13). Fi-
nally, they completed a second questionnaire that retested their sen-

tencing decisions-only this time they had the option of choosing one
of the five intermediate sanctions.
The experiment's results were striking across all states. To take one
example, in Pennsylvania, a majority of the respondents in the pretest
favored prison in fifteen cases and probation in nine cases. In the post-
test, however, a majority favored prison for only two crimes (forcible
rape, fifth offense for a drug dealer/addict). The changes for several
more serious crimes are especially revealing. Thus, for the offense of
"armed robbery, first offense, pointed a loaded gun at the victim," the
percentage of the participants favoring prison decreased from 76 per-
cent to 36 percent when the alternative intermediate sanctions were
available. A "burglary, second offense, armed, $5,000 stereo" stolen
decreased 40 percentage points from 87 percent favoring imprison-
ment to only 47 percent endorsing this sentence (Farkas 1993, p. 14;
Jacobs 1993).
These findings must be viewed with an appropriatemeasure of cau-
tion. The use of a different rating task in the pretest and posttest
(where more choices were available) may have produced a response
bias in favor of decreased support for prisons. Because the respondents
were not provided intermediate sanctions as punishment options in the
initial survey, the decline in the preference for prison sentences might
have been an artifact of the increased choices in the posttest question-
naire. In an experiment patterned after those of the Public Agenda
Foundation, however, Lane (1997) found that even with identical rat-
ing tasks, punitiveness among a sample of college students was reduced
for every vignette they judged following systematic efforts to provide
information about punishment. For example, when surveyed at the be-
ginning of the course, 72 percent of the participantsfavored probation
or an intermediate sanction for a second-offense car theft; a posttest at
the end of the course showed that fully 88 percent chose a sentence
that did not include incarceration. We should note that Lane's analysis
did not show a strong relationship between the amount of knowledge
students gained and their attitudinal change. The precise role of expo-
sure to information in fostering less punitive views thus remained un-
clear.
The Public Agenda Foundation's findings should also be interpreted
carefully in light of the particular information given to the respon-
dents. Even though an effort was made to create a video that was even-
handed, the respondents' might have been less enamored with alterna-
tives if they learned that intermediate sanctions have few, if any, effects
on recidivism(Petersiliaand Turner 1993; Cullen,Wright, and
Applegate 1996; Gendreau, Clark, and Gray 1996), that some scholars
believe that those under community supervision offend at high rates
(Piehl and Dilulio 1995), and that almost a third of death row inmates
committed their murders while under probation or parole supervision
(Petersilia 1997, p. 183)-and so on. It certainly is conceivable that a
different set of criminological "facts" might have resulted in increasing
public punitiveness. In short, exposure to "knowledge" is more prob-
lematic than advocates of sentencing alternatives suggest, and an "in-
formed public" is not necessarily a more lenient public.
Still, the results from the Public Agenda Foundation's studies are at
least suggestive that citizens may be more flexible in their views on
sentencing than other research indicates (see also Turner et al. 1997).
In the foundation's studies, the participants functioned more as mem-
bers of a town meeting than as survey respondents. They listened to
information and discussed what they learned with fellow citizens. This
process, replicated across three states, appeared to foster a willingness
to consider the benefits of intermediate sanctions. Citizens are not
necessarily opposed to imprisoning offenders-as we have noted-but
ideological space for alternatives might be created by policy makers
who take the time to provide their constituencies with a rationale for
expanding the use of community sanctions.
B. RestorativeJustice
Restorative justice has emerged as an influential development within
corrections (Braithwaite 1998; Hahn 1998; Levrant et al. 1999). This
approach rejects a strictly punitive, retributivist rationale for sentenc-
ing in which the state's main function is to inflict a just measure of
pain on offenders. Instead, in the face of harm caused by criminal acts,
its overriding goal is to restore-to make whole again-the victim, of-
fender, and community. Although not inherently inconsistent with im-
prisonment, restorative justice attempts to have offenders repair the
harm they have caused while keeping them in the community. In this
paradigm, however, a nonincarcerative sentence is not an entitlement
but earned. Offenders are expected to take responsibility and express
remorse for their harmful acts; they also are obligated to apologize to
and otherwise compensate their victims and the community (e.g.,
through restitution, community service). Ideally, the offender is for-
given by the victim and reintegrated into the community (Dickey
1998). From a religious perspective, this is a case of "hating the sin

and loving the sinner" (Van Ness and Heetderks Strong 1997); crimi-
nologically, restorative justice is a manifestation of what Braithwaite
(1989) calls "reintegrative shaming." This process is expected to make
offenders less criminal.
Will the public support restorative justice as an alternative to impris-
onment? Independent of its actual utility, which remains to be demon-
strated more convincingly (Levrant et al. 1999), this approach is en-
dowed with an attractive feature: it promises to "do justice" while at
the same time having utility-of improving the lives of all involved.
By contrast, a sentence of imprisonment-especially if it is purely pu-
nitive in content-fails to have the win-win quality of restorative jus-
tice; inmates might suffer but no one, in the end, is much the better
for it. It is noteworthy, therefore, that research shows that sanctions
with a restorative quality are strongly embraced by citizens. In a 1996
national poll, for example, respondents were asked what alternatives to
prisons they thought would protect citizens against crime. Notably, 84
percent of the sample stated that restitution-"requiring probationers
to work so that they can earn money to repay their victims"-would
be "very effective" or "somewhat effective" in protecting public safety.
The comparable figure for "requiring probationers to perform com-
munity service" was more than 77 percent (Flanagan 1996a, pp. 7-8).
A 1998 New Hampshire poll revealed similar findings (Doble Research
Associates 1998, pp. 29-30).
Even stronger evidence in favor of restorative justice can be drawn
from a 1994 survey of Vermont citizens-a state that subsequently im-
plemented a "reparative probation program" (Walther and Perry
1997). First, the respondents clearly supported the general concepts of
offenders making restitution to victims, doing community service, and
making apologies for wrongdoing. Second, when given a detailed ex-
planation of "Community Reparation Boards where citizen volunteers
would work with a judge to determine and oversee the sentence of se-
lected nonviolent offenders," over nine in ten of the respondents fa-
vored the proposal. Third, the respondents opposed using this type of
restorative justice for violent offenders (e.g., rapist, armed robber who
shoots victim, armed burglar). Fourth, nonetheless, members of the
sample did show a willingness to replace a prison sentence given to
nonviolent offenders with a community-based restorative justice sanc-
tion. Thus a majority of the Vermont respondents favored using a re-
storative sanction even for repeat nonviolent offenders, such as an un-
armed burglar, shoplifter, writer of bad checks, or drunk driver (Doble

Research Associates 1994, pp. 29-41).
Research on public support for restorative justice is only in its begin-
ning stages. Still, the existing data suggest that the principles underly-
ing restorative justice are appealing to citizens. An important next step
is to investigate under what conditions this approach might be ex-
tended to cover selected violent offenders. It also might be profitable
to examine whether restorative justice might be used in conjunction
with imprisonment and, potentially, to reduce the length of prison sen-
tences. Again, a key advantage of this community alternative is that it
gives people a persuasive reason to lessen their general punitiveness
and inclination to support imprisonment: victims, offenders, and the
community will be better off.
IV. Public Support for Correctional Rehabilitation

The rehabilitative ideal-the notion that the purpose of state sanctions
should be to treat and cure offenders individually-emerged in the
Progressive Era and served as the dominant correctional ideology into
the beginning part of the 1970s (Rothman 1980). In 1968, for example,
a Harris Poll revealed that over 70 percent of the American public be-
lieved that "rehabilitation should be the main goal of imprisonment"
(Harris 1968). In the past quarter century, however, the paradigm of
individualized treatment has been under sustained attack: by liberals
for giving criminal justice officials the discretion to impose unequal
and coercive punishments on harmless offenders; by conservatives for
giving officials the discretion to impose lenient and community-based
punishments on dangerous offenders; and by people of all political per-
suasions for being empirically bankrupt and ineffective in stopping re-
cidivism (Cullen and Gilbert 1982). A revisionist movement, which is
reaffirming rehabilitation and empirically challenging the doctrine that
"nothing works" to change offenders, has emerged and is gaining vital-
ity (see, e.g., Cullen and Applegate 1997; Currie 1998). Even so, the
question remains whether, after years of delegitimation by both politi-
cians and academic scholars, the American public still embraces reha-
bilitation as an integral goal of the correctional enterprise.
The research suggests four major conclusions. First, there is some
evidence that since the 1960s, support for rehabilitation has declined.
Second, even so, rehabilitation remains widely endorsed by citizens as
an important function of the correctional system. This support largely
holds regardless of the methodology (or question type) used in the
opinion survey. Third, support for offender treatment is especially

high for juveniles; "child saving" thus has not become unfashionable.
Fourth and relatedly, early intervention programs, which target at-risk
children and adolescents for help, are strongly advocated. In fact, when
asked which option to fund with tax monies, a large majority of citizens
favor early intervention programs over building more prisons.
A. DoesthePublicStill SupportRehabilitation?
There is now an extensive literature showing that the American pub-
lic holds a "hybrid" (Tonry 1998, p. 206) theory of corrections, mesh-
ing together restributivist and utilitarian rationales for state legal inter-
vention. Although those who are punitive tend not to favor offender
treatment-and vice versa-a distinctive feature of corrections-related
opinion is that citizens want offenders to be punished and rehabili-
tated. Scholars often discuss the philosophical and pragmatic conflicts
between these approaches, but the public is reluctant to see the goals
of punishment and treatment as mutually exclusive. While comfortable
with the prospect of sending many lawbreakers to prison, the public
also sees the wisdom of treatment programs that invest in offenders
and reduce the threat they pose to the community. There is, in short,
substantial evidence that the U.S. public does not endorse a purely pu-
nitive correctional system (see, e.g., Duffee and Ritti 1977; Gallup Re-
port 1982; Flanagan and Caulfield 1984; Warr and Stafford 1984;
Thomson and Ragona 1987; Cullen, Cullen, and Wozniak 1988; Cul-
len et al. 1990; Rich and Sampson 1990; McCorkle 1993; B. Johnson
1994; Flanagan and Fisher 1997; Sundt et
1996b,;Applegate, Cullen,
al. 1998).
Perhaps the most studied topic is the public's assessment of the
"goals of imprisonment." This research suggests that there has been a
decline in support for rehabilitation. As noted above, in 1968, the ap-
peal of the rehabilitative ideal was extensive, with seven in ten Ameri-
cans stating that offender treatment should be prison's chief purpose.
Since that time, however, support for rehabilitation as the main goal
of prisons has diminished (Pettinico 1994; Sundt et al. 1998). Table 1
shows the shifts in public opinion over a three-decade period. To an
extent, the responses appear to be influenced by the number and word-
ing of the response categories and by the wording of the questions
asked (e.g., whether the offender is described as an "individual con-
victed of a crime," as a "man in prison," or as a "criminalwho commits
violence"). We can note, however, that five surveys reported in table
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1 asked citizens virtually the same question and thus offer a basis for
comparison that is potentially less influenced by methodological issues:
the two Harris polls, the two Cincinnati polls, and the Ohio poll. Be-
tween 1968 and 1982, support for rehabilitation decreased in the Har-
ris polls 29 percentage points to 44 percent. In the decade from 1986
to 1995, the decline in support for rehabilitation in the Cincinnati
samples was 22.1 percentage points, with less than a third of Cincin-
natians favoring the offender treatment option in the mid-nineties.
The proportion of citizens endorsing rehabilitation was higher in a
1996 statewide Ohio sample-four in ten respondents chose treatment
as their main goal of prisons-but this level of support still was sub-
stantially lower (31.9 percentage points) than the Harris poll con-
ducted in 1968.
The data in table 1 suggest two related considerations. First, the
1995 national poll asked whether the government should place a
greater emphasis on rehabilitating or "punishing and putting away"vi-
olent criminals. Note that only about a quarter of the sample endorsed
treatment, although another 12.3 percent answered "both" (Maguire
and Pastore 1997, p. 154; see also Gerber and Engelhardt-Greer 1996,
p. 72). In contrast, the combined goal of punishment and incapacita-
tion was favored by nearly six in ten respondents. With dangerous of-
fenders, it appears that public protection trumps efforts to reform of-
fenders.
Research by Sundt et al. (1998) reinforces this conclusion that citi-
zens may be less supportive of treatment for violent as opposed to non-
violent offenders as the main goal of corrections (see also Cullen et al.
1990). In a 1995 survey of Cincinnati residents, Sundt et al. found that
66.1 percent of the respondents believed that rehabilitation would be
"very helpful" or "helpful" for nonviolent offenders. The comparable
figure for violent offenders was only 13.8 percent, although another
27.4 percent felt that treatment might be "slightly helpful" (1998,
p. 437). A national study in the same year found that only 14.4 percent
of the respondents believed that "most" violent criminals "can be re-
habilitated given early intervention with the right program";however,
44.8 percent did answer "some." The remainder of the sample an-
swered either "only a few" (28.7 percent) or "none" (9.1 percent).
Other research suggests that, in general, the public believes that only
a minority of prison inmates will be "successfully rehabilitated" (see,
e.g., Doble Research Associates 1995b, p. 40).
Second, it appears that once offenders are in prison, support for re-
habilitating them is high. In the 1996 national study cited in table 1,

almost half the sample members selected rehabilitation, rather than
punishment or crime prevention/deterrence, as their preferred correc-
tional goal "once people who commit crimes are in prison." There is
clear support for offender treatment, it seems, so long as it does not
place the public at risk (Flanagan 1996b). Scholars have argued that
Americans have become increasingly less tolerant of all types of risks,
including, presumably, of offenders who will potentially inflict physical
harm (Friedman 1985). The interesting question that remains is under
what conditions might citizens be willing, when dealing with violent
offenders, to exchange prison terms for community-based programs
that promise intensive rehabilitation and supervision. It seems likely
that obtaining public support for such alternatives will involve ad-
dressing legitimate concerns about community safety and demonstrat-
ing the effectiveness of the interventions being undertaken (in this lat-
ter regard, see Andrews and Bonta 1998; Lipsey and Wilson 1998).
In examining table 1, however, it is possible to focus on the "glass
being half empty" and to ignore the "glass being half full" (see, e.g.,
Pettinico 1994). Although Americans may place a priority on public
protection and worry about whether violent offenders can be changed,
it would be erroneous to conclude that they wish to eliminate rehabili-
tation from the correctional system. At the very least, it appears that a
substantial minority of the public defines rehabilitation as their pre-
ferred goal of corrections. The precise figure is in dispute and depends
on the methodology used, but it is likely that this proportion ranges
between one-third and two-fifths of the citizenry. Perhaps the best
current estimate we have is the 1996 survey in Ohio-a moderate state
politically-which, like the original Harris poll, gives multiple re-
sponse options and asks about "convicted criminals" in general. As ta-
ble 1 shows, over 40 percent of this statewide sample chose rehabilita-
tion as their main goal of imprisonment (see Applegate 1997;
Applegate, Cullen, and Fisher 1997).
Three additional types of data lend additional credence to the view
that rehabilitation retains support among the American public. First,
the polls summarized in table 1 used forced-choice questions to make
respondents select which correctional approach was their main goal.
Selecting one option, however, does not necessarily mean that other
goals are rejected. In fact, focusing on a single choice may distort the
key feature of public opinion about corrections: citizens want the
system to accomplish multiple goals (Warr 1994). In this regard,
Applegate, Cullen, and Fisher (1997, p. 246) showed this to be the

case. When asked to rate the importance of various goals of imprison-
ment, over 90 percent of their Ohio sample rated protection and pun-
ishment as "important" or "very important." Although support was
not as strong, more than eight in ten Ohioans defined rehabilitation as
"very important" (45.1 percent) or as "important" (37.7 percent).
Second, surveys have asked people about their support for various
correctional programs. Almost uniformly, the U.S. public has strongly
endorsed such interventions. In a 1997 U.S. News and World Report
and Bozell Worldwide Poll, more than three-fourths of the national
sample favored "prisoner rehabilitation programs" (see http://dia-
log.carl.org).2The nationwide 1996 Survey of American Political Cul-
ture reported that 85 percent of those surveyed stated that "more
treatment and education" was either "very important" or "important"
to "solving" the crime problem (from http://dialog.carl.org). Simi-
larly, a 1995 Oklahoma survey found that two-thirds of the sample fa-
vored "providing psychiatric treatment to every mentally ill inmate"
and making "sure every inmate has a chance to get a high school di-
ploma"-"even if this is more expensive than what we now do" (Doble
Research Associates 1995b, p. 40; see also Flanagan 1996b, p. 84). And
in Applegate, Cullen, and Fisher's (1997, p. 247) Ohio survey, more
than eight in ten respondents agreed that "it is important to try to re-
habilitate adults who have committed crimes and are now in the cor-
rectional system" (85.6 percent) and that "it is a good idea to provide
treatment" both "for offenders who are in prison" (85.9 percent) and
"for offenders who are supervised by the courts and live in the commu-
nity" (85.9 percent). A majority of the sample even supported treat-
ment for chronic offenders, with 54.2 percent agreeing that "rehabili-
tation programs should be available even for offenders who have been
involved in a lot of crime in their lives."
Third, a limited amount of research has focused on whether citizens
express support for rehabilitation after being asked to judge specific of-
fenses or vignettes. In a 1992 survey of 397 residents in the Las Vegas,
Nevada, area, McCorkle (1993) presented the respondents with brief
scenarios of six street crimes: robbery, rape, molestation of several
boys, burglary, selling drugs, and drug possession. They were then
2 These
public opinion data-and others in the text carrying the same reference-are
drawn from an Internet site that provides access to POLL. Information on accessing
POLL may be obtained from the Roper Center (http://ropercenter.ucom.edu/
index.htm).
asked to agree or disagree with eight statements about what do to with

the offender in each scenario; four statements assessed attitudes toward
punishment while the other four gauged attitudes toward rehabilita-
tion. There was clear support for dealing severely-including incapaci-
tating-these street criminals. Nonetheless, across the six offenses,
only a third of the sample agreed that "trying to rehabilitate this per-
son would probably be a waste of time," while about 70 percent be-
lieved that "the offender would probably benefit from the psychologi-
cal counseling programs offered in prison" and that "more effort needs
to be made to expand and improve programs that would give this of-
fender the chance to change his life." There was more ambivalence
about whether "educational and vocational programs" would make an
offender "not commit crimes in the future." Still, almost half the sam-
ple agreed with this statement (McCorkle 1993, p. 246).
Similar results were reached by Applegate, Cullen, and Fisher (1997;
see also Applegate 1997), using a factorial vignette method and having
the respondents evaluate whether they endorsed rehabilitating the of-
fender described in the vignette. In addition to a variety of offender
characteristics,each vignette focused on a street crime that was punish-
able by incarceration in the state of Ohio. The vignette also stated that
the offender was sentenced to prison, intensive supervision probation,
or regular probation and that the offender was involved in a psycholog-
ical, educational, or vocational rehabilitation program (Applegate
1997). Again, over eight in ten respondents agreed, in reference to the
offender portrayed in the vignette, that they supported "the use of re-
habilitation," that "it was right to put people like [the offender] in pro-
grams that try to cure the particularproblem that caused them to break
the law," that "this type of rehabilitation program should be ex-
panded," and that "trying to rehabilitate [the offender] will lessen the
chances that he/she will go back into crime." Although less supportive,
a clear majority--55.8 percent-also agreed that if the offender "suc-
cessfully completes his/her rehabilitation program, he/she should have
the opportunity to have his/her sentence reduced" (Applegate, Cullen,
and Fisher 1997, p. 248).
In short, whether respondents rate goals of imprisonment, global
statements about offender rehabilitation, or crime-specific vignettes,
they show consistent support for rehabilitation as an integral function
of corrections. The American people can be punitive and can be skep-
tical about any policy that does not incapacitate violent offenders, but
they also believe that the state should make a concerted effort to help
offenders change for the better. Future research might profit from ex-
ploring whether-despite three decades of attack-the rehabilitative
ideal retains its appeal because of its potential utility, because of its
moral message about the values that Americans, as a people, wish to
embrace, or both (see Anderson 1998, pp. 16-17).
B. Supportfor Juvenile Rehabilitation

A century ago, the juvenile court was created with the special mis-
sion to "save" children from wayward behavior and a life in crime
through individualized treatment (Platt 1969; Rothman 1980). Calls to
transform, if not abolish, the juvenile court come from both sides of
the political spectrum-from liberals skeptical about the efficacy of
treatment and dismayed by the "arbitrary"nature of judicial discretion
to conservatives who blame this overly "lenient" system for turning
superpredators loose on an unsuspecting community. As Feld (1998,
p. 189) notes, most legal reforms undertaken in the past decade have
been targeted at "serious, persistent, and violent youth" and either
have sought to increase the ease of transferringthese offenders to adult
court or have mandated that juvenile court judges sentence them to
determinate, lengthier terms of incarceration.
To an extent, public opinion is consistent with this policy trend to
"get tough" with youthful offenders (Triplett 1996; Roberts and Sta-
lans 1997, pp. 270-75). A 1994 survey, for example, asked a national
sample how "society should deal with juveniles under 18 who commit
crimes." Over half, 52 percent, chose "give the same punishment as
adults," while only 31 percent selected "less emphasis on punishment/
more on rehabilitation"; 13 percent volunteered that "it depends on
circumstances" and 3 percent said "other" (Maguire and Pastore 1995,
p. 178). A poll in the same year found that for "juveniles who commit
a violent crime," over two-thirds of the sample preferred that they be
"treated the same as adults" rather than "given more lenient treatment
in a juvenile court" (13 percent) (Maguire and Pastore 1995, p. 179).
And a 1995 national survey found that a high proportion of the respon-
dents favored trying a juvenile as an adult for a serious property crime
(62 percent), for selling illegal drugs (69 percent), and for a serious vio-
lent crime (87 percent) (Triplett 1996, p. 142; see also Schwartz 1992).
Interpreting these findings is difficult, however, because the ques-
tions used in the polls tend to focus on "serious" or "violent" offend-
ers and ask about "treating juvenile criminals the same as adults." The
public's responses may not be an unqualified endorsement either of ef-
forts to abolish the juvenile court or of waivers to adult court but,

rather, a reflection of the global view that serious youthful lawbreakers
should not be treated leniently. Indeed, when queried about more spe-
cific policies, the public's views are more tempered. Based on a na-
tional survey, for example, Schwartz (1992) found that little more than
a third of the sample agreed that a "juvenile convicted of a crime
should receive the same sentence as an adult, no matter what the
crime." The study also revealed that the respondents opposed to send-
ing juveniles to "adult prisons" strongly favored community-based
programs over training schools "for all but the most violent or serious
juvenile offenders," and reserved transfer to adult court for youths who
were seventeen and older (1992, see figs. 7, 9, 13, and 14; see also
Schiraldi and Soler 1998). Similarly, other research shows that citizens
reject giving prosecutors "total discretion . .. to try juveniles as adults
for all felonies" (Schiraldi and Soler 1998, p. 598) and that people are
reluctant to waive to adult court even juvenile murderers if they had
been abused by their father (Stalans and Henry 1994). Further research
is needed to untangle more carefully the factors that condition how
harshly Americans wish juveniles to be punished.
Regardless, the existing research is clear in showing that the public
not only embraces offender treatment as a core goal for juvenile cor-
rections but also is more supportive of juvenile than adult rehabilita-
tion (see, e.g., Cullen, Golden, and Cullen 1983; Steinhart 1988;
Gerber and Engelhardt-Greer 1996, p. 69; Moon et al. 2000). In their
1995 Cincinnati survey, Sundt et al. (1998, p. 437) found that over
eight in ten respondents felt that juvenile rehabilitation was either
"very helpful" (40.3 percent) or "helpful" (45.3 percent); for adults,
the combined figure was 60.3 percent. Applegate, Cullen, and Fisher's
(1997, p. 247) Ohio survey discovered that over 95 percent agreed that
"it is important to try to rehabilitate juveniles who have committed
crimes and are now in the correctional system"; the figure for adults
was 85.6 percent. Likewise, when asked where they would prefer to
spend money on correction, 92 percent of Oregonians selected "reha-
bilitate juvenile offenders" versus "rehabilitate adult offenders" (73
percent) and "punish juvenile offenders" (77 percent) (Doble Research
Associates 1995c, p. 65).
Research on the goals of corrections reinforces the conclusion that
Americans retain a strong belief in "child saving." Thus Schwartz's
(1992, see fig. 6) study found that when asked what should be the
"main purpose of the juvenile court," 78 percent chose "treat and re-
habilitate young offenders," while 11.9 percent chose "punish them"

and 9.7 percent selected "both equally." In a 1995 national poll, people
also were asked which correctional goal "should be the most important
in sentencing juveniles." Half the sample answered "rehabilitation,"
far outstripping "retribution" (31 percent), "deterrence" (15 percent),
and "incapacitation" (4 percent) (Gerber and Engelhardt-Greer 1996,
p. 69). Finally, in a 1998 statewide survey in Tennessee, nearly two-
thirds of the respondents stated that rehabilitation should be the "main
emphasis of juvenile prisons." Only 18.7 percent selected punishment
and 11.2 percent protecting society; the remaining members of the
sample were "not sure." Further, more citizens were likely to choose
rehabilitation as a "very important" goal than the other correctional
approaches (Moon et al. 2000).
C. Support
for EarlyIntervention
Programs
Over the past decade, the emergence of "life-course" or "develop-
mental" criminology has demonstrated that the roots of crime often
can be traced to early childhood experiences and that early antisocial
conduct is an important predictor for later criminality. These consid-
erations suggest that interventions targeting high-risk children and ad-
olescents might do much to prevent future offending (Farrington
1994). It is noteworthy, therefore, that a growing literature is emerging
demonstrating the effectiveness of early intervention programs in re-
ducing problem behavior and in increasing healthy, prosocial out-
comes (see, e.g., Farrington 1994; Howell and Hawkins 1998). But will
the American public support such efforts? Although the research is
limited and further studies are warranted, the answer appears to be de-
cidedly in the affirmative.
In a 1997 California survey of registered voters, over eight in ten
respondents said that their "biggest priority is to invest in ways to pre-
vent kids from taking wrong turns and ending up in gangs, violence or
prison"; only 13 percent preferred "to build more prisons and youth
facilities and enforce stricter sentences to guarantee that the most vio-
lent juvenile offenders are kept off the street" (Fairbank et al. 1997,
p. 2). A 1998 poll replicated these results (78 percent) and also found
that more than seven in ten Californians rated vocational training pro-
grams, youth center programs, afterschool programs, and full-service
programs as "effective" for preventing "youth violence" (Resources for
Youth 1998). A 1997 survey in Tennessee yielded similar results (Cul-
len et al. 1998). Thus "to stop crime," three-fourths of the sample fa-
vored spending tax dollars on the "early intervention option" as op-

posed to the "incarceration"option. Further, support was high-about
eight in ten citizens or higher-for a range of early intervention pro-
grams, including preschool programs, treatment services for neglected
or abused children, training in parenting skills, early identification by
teachers and treatment of at-risk youths, after-school programs, drug
education, school retention programs for delinquent youths, and treat-
ment programs for families when youths are first convicted of a crime
(1998, pp. 194-96).
V. Conclusions
In ending an essay it is customary to review what has been distilled
from the research, to identify what might next be investigated, and to
comment on what implications the findings might hold. We do not
depart from this convention. Thus we begin this section by summariz-
ing our main conclusions regarding the nature of public opinion about
punishment and corrections. In doing so, we reiterate that people's at-
titudes are complex and more ideologically diverse than they are com-
monly represented. We then discuss six avenues for future research
that might be profitably explored. We also make the point, however,
that the basic contours of what we know about public opinion are un-
likely to change even in the presence of additional studies. Finally, we
draw one broad policy implication from the existing survey research:
the lack of political will-not public opinion-is the main barrier to
developing a more balanced approach to sentencing and correctional
policy.
A. MappingPublic Opinion
In reviewing polling data and scholarly research from the past de-
cade, it appears that public opinion about punishment and corrections
is multifaceted and is easily misrepresented either by brief polls or by
pithy phrases like "the public wants to get tough on crime." Capturing
the complexity of citizens' views is challenging, although we close this
essay by trying to do so. Like cartographersseeking to map uncharted
territory, however, we are handicapped by incomplete information
about the landscape we are crossing (much more research needs to be
done) and by an incomplete idea of precisely where we should travel
(we need better theories to direct our research and interpretations). In
all, we offer seven central themes.
1. The American Public Is Punitive toward Crime. On a general or
"global" level, the public prefers or, at very least, accepts policies that
"get tough" with offenders. Thus, when asked, they endorse capital
punishment, harsher punishments, three-strikes-and-you're-out laws,
prison terms for most offenders, and lengthy incarceration for violent
criminals. These attitudes are not merely a methodological artifact but
likely are a general propensity that underlies many people's thinking.
The existence of these propensities does not mean that most Ameri-
cans are mindlessly or uniformly punitive, only that their first impulse
is often in this direction.
2. PublicPunitivenesstowardCrimeIs "Mushy,"Not Rigid. It is not
clear that most citizens are highly committed to one fixed view toward
the sanctioning of lawbreakers. This mushiness, as Durham (1993,
p. 8) calls it, is significant because it suggests that, in contrast to how
they may have answered simplistic polling questions, citizens may be
willing to accept less punitive interventions. Most noteworthy, when
given more information about offenders and more sentencing op-
tions-that is, when placed in a position comparable to that of a "real"
judge or policy maker-people tend to modify their harshness. Atti-
tudinal mushiness, however, does not extend in only one direction.
Opinions about crime fluctuate and are likely to become more harsh if
citizens are told disturbing stories about offenders and the nation's
crime problem by the media or bully-pulpit politicians (see Beckett
1997).
3. UtilityMatters:PeopleMust Be Given a GoodReasonNot to Be Puni-
tive. The public appears to want the "punishment to fit the crime."
Retribution or just deserts thus plays a role in how much punishment,
more or less, people want individual offenders to receive. Even so,
most Americans hold "hybrid" theories of corrections and believe that
societal safety is a legitimate concern of state legal intervention. While
inclined to give harsh punishments, they are potentially open to tem-
pering their punitiveness if given a good reason for doing so. A good
reason typically is rooted in notions of utility: it "makes sense." Thus
people will favor correctional approaches that keep offenders in the
community if they are persuaded that offenders will do service for the
community, pay restitution, and improve themselves; they will support
early release from prison or shorter sentences if inmates have been re-
formed and thus no longer need to reside behind bars at a cost of
$25,000 a year; and they will relinquish support for the death penalty
if persuaded that the offender will never kill again and will work to
make the lives of the victim's family less burdensome. We offer this
simple thesis: the more a proposed sentence or correctional policy has

utility for the community, victims, and offenders, the more Americans
will support it. This thesis offers a lesson for progressives: less punitive
interventions generally will not be endorsed-regardless of appeals to
the values of justice and humanity-if they do not also have demon-
strable utility.
4. ViolentCrimeIs the Great Divide betweenPunitivenessand Nonpuni-
tiveness. The American public is risk averse. It sees no reason to "take
chances" with offenders who have shown that they will physically hurt
others. Although not enamored with the effectiveness of prisons-and
sophisticated criminological debate aside (cf. Clear 1994 with Bennett,
Dilulio, and Walters 1996)-it is "common sense" to people that of-
fenders not on the street will not hurt them. Placing dangerous people
in the community is not understandable. However, almost any op-
tion-except pro forma, unsupervised probation-is open for discus-
sion when weighing what to do with the so-called nonviolent offender,
even those who have been habitually criminal. Imprisonment is an ac-
ceptable option, but so, too, are intermediate sanctions. Deciding who
does or does not qualify as a "violent" offender is a key issue in de-
termining which lawbreakers fall on which side of this policy divide.
Further, although an uphill struggle, all this does not mean that citi-
zens will always reject community-based alternatives for violent of-
fenders. The argument for doing so, however, will have to be awfully
good.
5. The PublicContinuesto BelieveThat RehabilitationShouldBe a Goal
of the CorrectionalSystem. The enormous criticism of correctional
treatment, sustained now for three decades, has not succeeded in de-
bunking rehabilitation in the public's eyes. Americans are perhaps less
idealistic than they once were about the ability to change lawbreakers;
they realize that treatment programs in prison may only succeed with
a limited number of inmates. Still, they believe that corrections should,
at least in part, involve the process of "correcting" offenders. Possibly,
the belief that all but the most wicked can be saved is so deeply in-
grained in the American cultural heritage that we, as a people, are not
going to relinquish the correctional system to the darker philosophies
of vengeance and warehousing. Rehabilitation offers the rare combina-
tion of morality and utility: it is possible to invest in and seek the bet-
terment of offenders while simultaneously enhancing public safety ("I
would rather have them come out better than they went in"). Progres-
sives-especially those who have rejected offender treatment-may
wish to consider that the rehabilitative ideal remains one of the most
viable and culturally sensible rationales for not inflicting unnecessary
harm on lawbreakers.
6. The Public Strongly Supports"Child Saving." Support for "sav-
ing" children is not unconditional: for most citizens, youths who are
violent or seriously criminal forfeit their status as "children" and re-
quire the kind of control typically reserved for adults. Otherwise, most
Americans believe that "it is never too late" for wayward youngsters
to change and that the correctional system should be involved in redi-
recting the lives of these offenders. Efforts at preventing at-risk chil-
dren from ever "getting in trouble" are particularly appealing. Who,
after all, can be against programs that save children from a life in crime
and thereby make the community safer? Putting hardened criminals in
prison may be necessary, but to much of the public it makes more
sense to channel tax dollars into early intervention programs that derail
the "hardening" process in the first place.
7. The Central Tendencyin Public OpinionIs to Be Punitive and Pro-
gressive. When people break the law, most Americans want some-
thing sensible done. The public most rejects the idea that anyone can
simply flaunt the law and then be given a meaningless penalty that is
both lenient and ineffective. Citizens want some sign, some assurances,
that an intervention of consequence follows a crime. In the end, they
would like the correctional system to act responsibly: egregious crimes
deserve egregiously harsh punishment, but less serious crimes can be
assigned intermediate sanctions. Truly dangerous people need to be
locked up, but if supervised correctly and made to repair the harm they
have caused, perhaps many other offenders could be placed in the com-
munity. All the while, efforts should be made to rehabilitate lawbreak-
ers, especially juveniles, while they are within the system. In short, do
justice, protect society, and reform offenders. This admonition may
contain conflicting philosophies and policy prescriptions, but it is the
multifaceted or hybrid mission that most Americans believe the correc-
tional system should work vigorously to realize.
B. Future Research
The study of public opinion about crime-related policies offers
ample research opportunities. First, there is a desperate need for more
sophisticated studies of correctional policies that use national samples.
Take, for example, the philosophy of offender rehabilitation, which has
long shaped policy and practice within corrections. Despite the cen-
trality of the treatment ideal, to our knowledge there has never been
a systematic study of public support for rehabilitation that has used a
national sample. Instead, data from national samples are limited to oc-
casional one-question polls or, even in the best studies, to several ques-
tions (e.g., Flanagan and Longmire 1996). More detailed local studies
do furnish valuable information (e.g., Applegate 1997; Applegate, Cul-
len, and Fisher 1997); in fact, it is not clear that the results from com-
munity and state samples would differ dramatically from those drawn
from surveys of national samples. Even so, the credibility of such re-
search is diminished, since the generalizability of the findings to other
contexts is open to question. In short, conveying persuasive conclu-
sions on public opinion about rehabilitation or other correctional is-
sues will require national data that cannot be dismissed by potential
critics.
Second, we need to learn more about the relationship between
"global" and "specific" attitudes. As discussed, research now reliably
shows that when asked broad questions about sanctioning offenders,
respondents are more punitive than when asked to use a detailed scale
of penalties to punish specific offenders (see Roberts and Stalans 1997,
pp. 218-22). We have hints as to why this is the case (e.g., broad ques-
tions elicit images of violent criminals-the very subset of offenders
who people want most severely penalized). Even so, our understanding
of why punitiveness tends to be people's initial response to questions
measuring global attitudes remains in its beginning stages. We also
know only a little about whether the sources of global and specific pub-
lic opinion are the same or different, although some research suggests
they may be fairly similar (Applegate et al. 1996b; see Applegate 1997).
Similarly, few studies have explored how closely these two types of
opinions are related to one another. Sprott's (1998) research, based on
a 1997 survey of Ontario, Canada, respondents, reports that a global
belief in the abolition of the juvenile court was related, but only in a
complicated way (i.e., through other beliefs), to a preference for
harsher sanctions in specific criminal cases. Perhaps more important,
we have yet to learn which type of opinion-global or specific-is
more salient to citizens. For example, when people enter the voting
booth, do their global or specific attitudes play more of a role in shap-
ing which lever they pull or box they punch?
Third, it is well documented that the public's knowledge of punish-
ment and correctional issues is limited (Roberts and Stalans 1997).
There is evidence that citizens underestimate the punitiveness of the
sentencing process and, in turn, that this perception may foster their
desire for the imposition of harsher sanctions (Hough and Roberts
1999). Findings such as these prompt the suggestion that efforts be
made to "educate the public," presumably with the effect of making
people less punitive, more open to progressive policies, and perhaps
more confident in the performance of the correctional system (Roberts
and Stalans 1997, pp. 291-93). Creating an informed citizenry, how-
ever, promises to be a daunting task. Even if knowledge is dissemi-
nated-likely a financially expensive proposition-it is possible that
many people will simply dismiss the criminological "facts" being pre-
sented as mere rhetoric and, given the "rationality of ignorance,"
choose not to invest the time and energy to gain access to this knowl-
edge (Kinder 1998). For these and other reasons, political scientists
have long struggled with the question of whether "an informed public
is possible" (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, p. 288). In this context,
research is needed that explores how it is possible effectively to impart
knowledge about crime policies.
These considerations lead to the broader issue of whether it matters
that many individual citizens are ignorant about correctional policies.
Recall the concept of the "miracle of aggregation"--the idea that
when the ill-informed views of individual citizens are combined, the
public's collective opinion is "rational" (Page and Shapiro 1992;
Kinder 1998). In the area of crime, researchers might explore more
fully whether a case can be made for a "rationalpublic" (Page and Sha-
piro 1992). To a degree, this has been an implicit theme of this essay:
overall and despite how citizens are often characterized, the public is
fairly rational in its support of a crime-policy agenda that is balanced
ideologically and committed to sensible correctional interventions.
These observations suggest a fourth area for future research. Is the
public sufficiently rational that public opinion fluctuates, at least
broadly, in response to real events in the wider environment? Page and
Shapiro (1992) embrace this position, presenting data from the 1960s
and 1970s linking urban turmoil and escalating crime rates to jumps
in the public's punitiveness and to drops in the public's support for
rehabilitation. Although "the trend toward punitiveness was not me-
chanical or inexorable," argue Page and Shapiro (1992, p. 92), "opin-
ions reacted to information and events, moving in different directions
at different times and distinguishing among different types of criminal
justice policies." The alternativeview is that public opinion reflects not
the events of the day but manipulation by politicians and the media.
Thus Beckett (1997) tests this possibility by investigating the timing of
shifts in public opinion vis-ha-visthe timing of when politicians under-
take "initiatives" (e.g., give speeches and call for a "war" on a "prob-
lem," introduce legislation) and when media attention coalesces
around an issue. Her data are favorable to the manipulation thesis,
showing that changes in public concern about crime and drugs most
often follow not rises in the incidence of the conduct in question but
increases in political initiatives and media coverage focused on these
issues (see also Scheingold 1984). "Popular attitudes about crime and
drugs have been shaped to an important extent by the definitional ac-
tivities of political elites," concludes Beckett (1997, p. 27). "These
actors have drawn attention to crime and drug use and framed them
as the consequence of insufficient punishment and control." Although
valuable contributions, these studies should be extended with more di-
verse measures and, when feasible, tested in state and local contexts
(see also Scheingold 1984).
Fifth, within the field of criminology, there has been increasing at-
tention paid to studying crime across the life course (see, e.g., Sampson
and Laub 1993). In contrast, to the best of our understanding, there is
no comparable agenda under way to use a life-course perspective to
organize knowledge and research on public opinion about crime-re-
lated issues. Nearly all public opinion polls on punishment and correc-
tions are "snapshots" of adult respondents at one particular moment
in time. These respondents are not followed over time-from child-
hood, into adolescence, and through the various stages of adulthood.
As a result, we do not have much knowledge about how, and to what
extent, beliefs about punishing offenders are formulated early in life.
Dunaway and Cullen (1991) touch on this issue, showing that conser-
vative parents are more effective than liberal parents in transmitting
their crime ideology to their children. But this research is only a begin-
ning effort. We also have little understanding of whether views about
crime-related policies remain largely stable across the life course or
whether intra-individual change is common. If people's views fluctuate
over time, moreover, a life-course perspective would urge us to exam-
ine the potential causal influence of the major life transitions that most
people experience, such as marriage, joining a church, changing peer
groups, and entry into the labor market. A life-course perspective thus
offers rich research possibilities by focusing attention on how develop-
mental continuities and changes-factors that affect so much else in

people's lives-may also play a role in shaping their views on punish-
ment and corrections.
Sixth, in a recent study using data from the 1996 British Crime Sur-
vey, Hough and Roberts (1998, 1999) found that respondents both had
limited awareness of sanctions other than imprisonment and underesti-
mated the punitiveness of the sentences actually imposed on offenders.
Almost four in five respondents believed that sentences were too le-
nient to "some degree," while one in two thought that the sanctions
were "much too lenient." Even so, when asked to rate a specific case
in which the offender-a burglar-was actually given a three-year
sentence, the respondents assigned a median prison term of twelve
months, a "result that might surprise those who believe that the British
public are highly punitive" (Hough and Roberts 1999, p. 20). Further,
when given a menu of possible sanctions, including noncustodial pen-
alties, almost half the sample favored a sentence that did not involve
imprisonment.
Notably, if the nationality of the sample had not been disclosed, one
might have thought that the study had been conducted in the United
States: the findings for the British sample are strikingly similar to the
views expressed on surveys by U.S. residents. There is a tendency in
cross-national research to emphasize how peoples diverge in their
views; and, to be sure, understanding how cultural factors differentially
shape views toward sanctioning is an important task (see, e.g., Sanders,
Hamilton, and Yuasa 1998). Still, the commonality in opinions among
citizens of different nations is equally important to investigate. Why
do shared views, as well as shared gaps in knowledge, exist? Is this phe-
nomenon a by-product of the broad social force of modernization that
constrains thinking into limited categories? Or, in the other extreme,
might sociobiology provide the answer, with certain qualities of the
brain and adaptive orientations rooted in evolution restricting how hu-
mans, regardless of location, think about conduct, like crime, that
threatens their safety (Wilson 1998, pp. 226-27)? Further, what does
all this say about the role of public opinion in shaping correctional
policy cross-nationally? If thinking about crime and punishment falls
within a limited range of variation, what then accounts for cross-
national differences in penal practices?
Many more topics could be listed that warrant detailed investigation:
gender differences in public opinion about punishment and how these
might be illuminated by theories emphasizing how men and women
hold distinctive views of justice; how broader theories of public opin-

ion might direct research on citizens' views on crime-related policies
(Kinder 1998); and how respondents' use of computers to complete
surveys might affect their willingness to disclose their opinions, espe-
cially on sensitive topics (Turner et al. 1998)-to name but a few is-
sues. But if the roster of topics to study seems virtually unending, in
another, albeit limited, way additional future research is unlikely to re-
vise what we now know.
Two decades ago, Sherman and Hawkins (1981, p. 46) commented
that "our knowledge of public opinion about breakfast food is far
deeper than our knowledge of public opinion about criminal justice."
This assessment still may be accurate, but only because marketing re-
searchers know a great deal about breakfast food, not because social
science insight into public opinion has not substantially advanced. We
hasten to reiterate the need for more research to firm up and flesh out
our understanding of what people want done with lawbreakers.None-
theless, we also want to counter any suspicions that knowledge about
public opinion remains shallow. We have now accumulated enough re-
search that the basic parameters of public opinion about punishment
and corrections outlined earlier in this section are unlikely to be sub-
stantially revised as further research appears (see Roberts 1992; Rob-
erts and Stalans 1997, 1998). In particular, we should have a measure
of confidence that members of the public, although punitive in impor-
tant ways, hold a complex vision of corrections that includes the capac-
ity to temper harsh sentiments and to endorse a range of policies that
seek the betterment of offenders. We end this essay with the policy
implications of this central finding.
C. PolicyImplications
By the mid-1970s, the United States had experienced a dramatic
shift in correctional paradigms (Cullen and Gilbert 1982). Prior to this
time, there was a notion-admittedly too infrequently realized in
practice (Rothman 1980)-that concerted efforts should be made to
reform the wayward. Consistent with the thrust of the welfare state,
there was a sense that the government should invest resources in
offenders with the intent of fixing the defects, psychological and social,
that had led them astray. Since this time, however, there has been a
steady effort to make punishments longer and life for offenders-
whether under community supervision or inside prisons-more pain-
ful. The major investment has been in prisons and in the technology
of supervision, not in people. Clear (1994) has used the term "penal
harm movement" to capture this paradigm shift and the array of poli-
cies enacted explicitly to discomfort offenders. Although later in devel-
oping and perhaps less strident in its embrace of harming offenders,
similar trends appear afoot in other nations, such as Canada (Roberts,
Nuffield, and Hann 1999) and Great Britain (Sparks 1996; Hough and
Roberts 1999).
Any meaningful policy discussion, at least in the United States, must
start by confronting the seeming intractability of this "get tough" or
"penal harm" movement. This obligation seems especially required in
the case of "public opinion." To be honest, we do not know what pre-
cise role public opinion has played in fueling the vitality of this punish-
ment movement, but it is clearly implicated in sustaining it. For much
of the past three decades, the idea of a "punitive public" has been used
to legitimate virtually every law that has ratcheted up the punishment
on offenders (Scheingold 1984; Cullen, Clark, and Wozniak 1985;
Beckett 1997). To cite but one of many recent examples, Ditton and
Wilson (1999, p. 2) argue that "over the past two decades, sentencing
requirements and release policies have become more restrictive, pri-
marily in response to widespread 'get tough on crime' attitudes in the
Nation."
These claims likely are not without some merit. Citizens do harbor
punitive sentiments and, conversely, do not use their vote to throw
get-tough legislators, prosecutors, and judges out of office. Still, claims
linking harsh policies to public opinion risk creating a distorted reality
that forecloses consideration of a wider range of policy options. The
very notion of a punitive public too often looms above policy discus-
sions, prompting the refrain that the "public will never support" a
given progressive initiative. It is instructive that surveys reveal that pol-
icy makers invariablyoverestimate rather than underestimate the puni-
tiveness of the public (Roberts 1992; Roberts and Stalans 1997).
Further, in a democratic nation, an underlying legitimacy attaches
to the claim that one's position reflects the public's collective will.
Those who challenge the public's views-who depict that average citi-
zen as ill-informed or as suffering false consciousness--run the risk of
being called an "elitist" or a "so-called expert" who is "out of touch"
with the "common man and woman." Advocates of the punishment
paradigm often revel in the polling numbers that ostensibly show that
the public wants to put offenders to death or behind bars. It is why
they argue that the "people know best."
The portrayal of public opinion as exclusively punitive thus serves

as a potentially powerful social reality that inhibits efforts to choose a
different correctional future. It makes policy makers wary of appearing
too liberal on crime-related issues; it places advocates of a progressive
correctional paradigm in the position of appearing antidemocratic. Re-
views of public opinion, such as ours, we hope, can serve to challenge
or "deconstruct" this reality. Our central message-based on a grow-
ing body of survey data-is that citizens want their correctional system
to be more than a machinery for inflicting harm. Lifetime imprison-
ment rather than capital punishment, alternatives to incarceration, re-
storative justice, investing in offenders through rehabilitation, and
early prevention programs-all these policies and more the public is
willing to consider if they are implemented in a responsible way.
In the end, public opinion is not an intractable barrierto developing
a balanced, rather than a punitive, agenda for responding to offenders.
We should not claim too much for citizens: there is no evidence that
they are clamoring for a reversal of current correctional policy. Yet
neither should we claim too little, as is most often the case in popular
commentaries about "what the public wants." The ideological space
exists for reforms that reflect both progressive sentiments and demon-
strable utility. Moving in this direction thus depends not on changing
the public will but on mustering the political will to do so.
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University of South Carolina

Faculty Publications Criminology and Criminal Justice

Public Opinion about Punishment and Corrections

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/crim_facpub

Part of the Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons

Public Opinion about

In the not-too-distant past, rates of imprisonment were stable and

FrancisT. Cullen is DistinguishedResearchProfessorof CriminalJustice, and

pear as humanitarianism and rationality spread" (Toby 1964, p. 332).

questions included in the 1996 British Crime Survey asked respon-

Yet, how can democracy, which depends on the will of an informed

moderate than authoritarian and harsh (Thomson and Ragona 1987)?

sentencing options respondents are given to choose from). Capturing

question national polls ask only about punishment-oriented issues,

course. In fact, compared to imprisonment, early prevention is favored

responses to crime that citizens will support. We also offer brief

I. Public Support for Capital Punishment

1For seven of the

Gallup -*- GeneralSocial Survey

represented a departure from traditional American views toward capi-

B. Reconsidering Public OpinionPolls

example, Williams, Longmire, and Gulick (1988) found that support

to violence because of political or ideological beliefs"; to 55 percent if

in prison for life." Note, however, that fully 74 percent chose as

favored"capitalpunishment(55.7 percentto 32.5 percentin New

option that included life imprisonment. Other studies have reported

limited in the issues it probed, and the capital punishment question

sponses for adult offenders, fewer respondents "strongly favored" the

E. Religionand the Death Penalty

mentalists are less supportive. Some research, moreover, suggests that

II. Public Support for Punishment

1996, a stubborn reality remains: nearly four in five Americans believe

opinion on the punishment of crime-in particular, how seemingly

crime, characteristicsof the offender and victim, harm incurred by the

rape, assault, residential burglary) and included many white-collar,

other's 4-year sentence. In addition, the differences between sentences

citizens were generally willing to assign criminal penalties-ranging

C. Firmnessof Supportfor Prisons

an important predictor of which offenders people believe should

vidual defendants described in vignettes is not the same as making

time makes imprisoning nonviolent offenders less attractive. A bifur-

The analysis suggested four main conclusions. First, only a limited

D. Supportfor Three-Strikes-and-You're-Out Laws

between their global and specific attitudes, or perhaps their attitudes

III. Public Support for Alternatives to Incarceration

(Morris and Tonry 1990)-were favored by liberals as an alternative

possible to structure intermediate sanctions in ways to have them

hours of communityserviceinsteadof a one-yearprisonsentence).If

nally, they completed a second questionnaire that retested their sen-

1998). From a religious perspective, this is a case of "hating the sin

armed burglar, shoplifter, writer of bad checks, or drunk driver (Doble

IV. Public Support for Correctional Rehabilitation

opinion survey. Third, support for offender treatment is especially

00 _C. r. ;-.4 4.)

habilitating them is high. In the 1996 national study cited in table 1,

Applegate, Cullen, and Fisher (1997, p. 246) showed this to be the

asked to agree or disagree with eight statements about what do to with

B. Supportfor Juvenile Rehabilitation

forts to abolish the juvenile court or of waivers to adult court but,