Not everyone strongly supports the death penalty: Assessing weakly-held attitudes about capital punishment

Polls exploring attitudes toward the death penalty typically impose a simple, dichotomous response structure: respondents are asked whether or not they support or oppose capital punishment. This polling strategy deprives respondents of expressing an indication of the strength of their opinions. When asked whether they support (or oppose) the death penalty “strongly” or “not strongly,” significant proportions of respondents select the latter category. This suggests that many proponents and opponents of the death penalty have weakly-held views regarding the issue. These respondents are of great interest because they are the individuals most likely to change their views. This article analyzes responses to two national surveys in order to explore the variables that differentiate respondents with strongly-held and weakly-held views. A theoretical account is offered to explain why some people have weakly-held views on this critical social issue.     

Citizen assessment of local criminal courts: Does fairness matter?

Public opinion about local court systems is an important area of scholarly inquiry that has received little empirical attention. This study utilized a survey implemented by the National Center for State Courts to examine the effect of perceptions of fairness (egalitarian and discriminatory) on respondent satisfaction with local court handling of criminal cases (violent criminal, drug, and juvenile delinquency). Findings from OLS regression analyses indicated that perception of both egalitarian and discriminatory fairness had an impact on respondent reported satisfaction with local court handling of criminal cases. The results of the analyses also suggested that instrumental concerns, in the context of perceptions that courts resolve cases in a timely manner, had a significant impact on public assessment of local criminal courts. By contrast, prior experiences with local courts and respondent demographic factors had little direct influence on respondent satisfaction with local criminal court handling of cases. Direction for future research and implications of the findings are discussed.     

Can General Strain Theory Help Us Understand Violent Behaviors Among People with Mental Illnesses?

Recent work suggests that violence among people with mental illnesses is not simply due to the symptoms and comorbidities that define mental illness. We further this work by examining the extent to which strains or stressors explain the link between mental illness and violence. Specifically, we apply general strain theory (GST) to a longitudinal sample of adults with mental illnesses to investigate the lagged effects on violence of several strain measures, while controlling for mental illness symptoms, substance abuse, past violence, and other key variables. Parental drug abuse from childhood and stressful life events across the life course predict violence in adulthood. In a prospective model, relationship strain from an earlier time period significantly predicts changes in later self-reported violence. The results shed light on the ability of criminological frameworks to explain violence among people with mental illnesses.