Public Attitudes Toward Punishment, Rehabilitation, and Reform: Lessons from the Marquette Law School Poll

Public support for tough sentencing policies rose sharply in the US in the 1970s and remained high until the late 1990s. Since then, public opinion surveys have pointed to the emergence of more nuanced and even less punitive attitudes. Not surprisingly, policymakers in dozens of states have responde...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Federal sentencing reporter 2016-10, Vol.29 (1), p.47-51
Main Authors: O’HEAR, MICHAEL M., WHEELOCK, DARREN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Criminal justice
Legal reform
Public opinion surveys
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Public support for tough sentencing policies rose sharply in the US in the 1970s and remained high until the late 1990s. Since then, public opinion surveys have pointed to the emergence of more nuanced and even less punitive attitudes. Not surprisingly, policymakers in dozens of states have responded by adopting a plethora of reforms purporting to take aim at over-incarceration. Yet, few of these reforms have had any appreciable impact in practice, and upon closer inspection, most seem by design quite limited in their reach. Two decades after opinion surveys began to indicate a softening of public attitudes, America's prison population remains only slightly below its all-time high. Here, O'Hear and Wheelock report results from their survey research on voter attitudes toward the criminal justice system in Wisconsin.
ISSN:1053-9867
1533-8363