RACIAL TYPIFICATION OF CRIME AND SUPPORT FOR PUNITIVE MEASURES |
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| Authors: | TED CHIRICOS KELLY WELCH MARC GERTZ |
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| Affiliation: | Ted Chiricos is professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. His current research examines the effects of economic insecurity on punitiveness toward criminals, immigrants and welfare recipients, as well as the relationship between environmental threat and punitive responses to environmental crime. He is also studying the effects of race on the withholding of adjudication, and with it, the legal label of felon for those actually convicted of felony crimes as well as the effect of this judicial decision on the subsequent life chances of criminal offenders.;Kelly Welch is joining the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Villanova University. Her research interests include race and crime, social justice, public opinion and policy, the sociology of punishment and victimology.;Marc Gertz is a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. His current research interests include comparative criminal justice systems, courts and social policy and the consequences of the fear of crime. His recent publications include the 9th edition of The Criminal Justice System: Politics and Policies (edited with George F. Cole and Amy Bunger. |
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| Abstract: | This paper assesses whether support for harsh punitive policies toward crime is related to the racial typification of crime for a national random sample of households (N=885), surveyed in 2002. Results from OLS regression show that the racial typification of crime is a significant predictor of punitiveness, independent of the influence of racial prejudice, conservatism, crime salience, southern residence and other factors. This relationship is shown to be concentrated among whites who are either less prejudiced, not southern, conservative and for whom crime salience is low. The results broaden our understanding of the links between racial threat and social control, beyond those typically associated with racial composition of place. They also resonate important themes in what some have termed modern racism and what others have described as the politics of exclusion. |
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| Keywords: | race racial threat social threat punitiveness |
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