Summary
Contents
“This book should be made a part of any college level library that features holdings in social sciences. … Americans View Crime and Justice presents a national public opinion survey and its results on the issues. These edited results of a survey conducted in 1995 examine such issues as gun control, capital punishment, and juvenile crime, offering public opinion along with the analyses of a panel of criminologists.” –The Midwest Book Review Readable and carefully edited, Americans View Crime and Justice reports and analyzes results from the recent National Crime and Justice Survey (NCJS), the richest and most wide-ranging investigation of public opinion on crime and justice issues in more than a decade. Conducted in June 1995, the survey features responses from 1,000 adults in the United States on now-volatile issues such as fear of crime, gun control, capital punishment, juvenile crime, and additional related topics of national concern. A distinguished panel of criminologists analyzes the collected data in this volume to present a comprehensive report on the development and current status of public opinion on these timely issues. Divided into three sectionscontext and framework; findings; and opinion, policy, and science—this authoritative volume also analyzes the implications of the survey data. Providing interesting insights and timely quantification of Americans' view of crime and justice, this volume offers a unique view of public opinion particularly important to the work of researchers, law enforcement personnel, policy makers, public officials, and students of criminology and criminal justice, law, and political science.
Just and Painful: Attitudes Toward Sentencing Criminals
Just and Painful: Attitudes Toward Sentencing Criminals
Four reasons exist why a society punishes offenders: (a) to discourage the same individuals from offending again in the future, or others from engaging in the same crimes (deterrence); (b) to prevent offenders physically from engaging in more crimes by locking them up (incapacitation); (c) to train, educate, and counsel offenders to help them become law-abiding citizens (rehabilitation); and (d) to inflict deserved punishment on people who harm society (retribution). In this chapter, we analyze data from the National Opinion Survey on Crime and Justice—1995 (NOSCJ) that focus on Americans’ attitudes toward sentencing criminals.
Past Research on Attitudes toward Sentencing Criminals
Evaluating public attitudes concerning the sentencing of criminals is difficult because our measures ...