Public Opinion on Criminal Records and Employment: A Test of Competing Theoretical Models

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 995-1022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Lehmann ◽  
Justin T. Pickett ◽  
Megan Denver
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Perceived Risk ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Criminal Records ◽  
Punitive Attitudes ◽  
Hiring Decision ◽  
Racial Resentment

Much prior research has examined the sources of individuals’ attitudes toward the application of punishment via the justice system. Some findings from this literature suggest that punitive attitudes are expressive, retributive, and closely connected to racial resentment. Other research, however, emphasizes that these sentiments are instrumental, utilitarian, and associated with the management of perceived risk. To date, little research has explored public attitudes regarding employment as a reentry barrier, and it is unclear which of these perspectives is more salient for understanding support for employers’ use of criminal records in hiring decision-making. Using survey data on a national sample of American adults ( N = 1,202), the current study finds stronger support for an instrumental model than an expressive model.

Public opinion and the politics of collateral consequence policies

2020 ◽  
pp. 146247452094194
Author(s):  
Travis Johnston ◽  
Kevin H Wozniak
Keyword(s):  
Training Programs ◽  
Public Support ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Food Stamps ◽  
Punitive Attitudes ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Former Offenders ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Collateral Consequence ◽  
Analyze Data

We analyze data from a national sample of the U.S. population to assess public support for policies that deny former offenders’ access to job training programs, food stamps, and public housing. We find that Americans generally oppose benefit restrictions, though support for these policies is higher among Republicans and people with higher levels of racial resentment. We also find that a legislator’s criminal justice reform positions generally do not significantly affect voters’ evaluation of him or her, and even voters with more punitive attitudes toward collateral consequence policies support legislators who advance particular kinds of reform proposals. These findings provide little evidence that any group of Americans would be mobilized to vote against a legislator who works to reform collateral consequence policies. We discuss the implications of these findings for American and comparative studies of the politics of punishment.

scholarly journals Subjective Knowledge, Perceived Risk, and Information Search when Purchasing a Franchise: A Comparative Exploration from Australia

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 338
Author(s):  
Peter Balsarini ◽  
Claire Lambert ◽  
Maria M. Ryan ◽  
Martin MacCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Search ◽  
Perceived Risk ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Growth Strategy ◽  
Local Market ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
Subjective Knowledge ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The Relationship

Franchising has long been a method by which organizations seek to expand and facilitate local market development. However, franchising as a growth strategy can often be hampered by lack of suitable franchisees. To mitigate this shortage, some franchisors have engaged in recruiting franchisees internally from the ranks of their employees in addition to the traditional approach of recruiting franchisees externally. Predominantly franchisees are individuals rather than corporations and thus purchasing a franchise should most commonly be characterized as a consumer acquisition. To explore the relationship between subjective knowledge, perceived risk, and information search behaviors when purchasing a franchise qualitative interviews were conducted with franchisees from the restaurant industry. Half of these respondents were externally recruited having never worked for the franchisor and half were internally recruited having previously been employees of the franchisor. The external recruits expressed a strong desire to own their own business and engaged in extensive decision-making processes with significant information search when purchasing their franchises. Contrastingly, the internal recruits expressed a strong desire to be their own boss and engaged in limited, bordering on habitual decision-making processes with negligible information search when acquiring their franchises. The results reveal that differences in subjective knowledge and perceived risk appear to significantly impact the extent of information search between these two groups. A model of the relationship between subjective knowledge, perceived risk and information search in the purchasing of a franchise is developed that reconciles these findings. The findings also have practical implications for franchisors’ franchisee recruiting efforts which are integral to their capacity to develop local markets.

Found Out and Opting Out

2016 ◽  
Vol 665 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Esther Lageson
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Criminal History ◽  
Criminal Records ◽  
Opting Out ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Criminal Histories ◽  
The Relationship

Online criminal histories document and publicize even minor brushes with the law and represent people who may not even be guilty of any crime. This has dramatically changed the relationship that millions of Americans have with the criminal justice system and may affect their social and private lives. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork with people attempting to expunge and legally seal their criminal records, I explore how online versions of these records impact family relationships. Many who appear on mug shot and criminal history websites are arrestees who are never formally charged or convicted of a crime. The indiscriminate posting of all types of justice contact on websites may impact those who, for the most part, desist from crime and are core contributors to their family and community. I find that many of those who are affected by the stigma of online records did not know that records existed until they “popped up” unexpectedly, and that this experience leads them to self-select out of family duties that contribute to child well-being.

The Individual and Administrative Justice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Creutzfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Perceptions Of Fairness ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Individual Justice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Service ◽  
Administrative Justice

This chapter discusses what individual justice means in the realm of administrative justice. The standards of justice and fairness that apply in administrative decision-making need consideration from the perspective of the service user. Should the administrative justice system serve the citizen or the state? What role do individual service users have in the design, use, and evaluation of more bureaucratic systems of redress? Different notions of justice, as they relate to primary decision-making processes, have been described through various models. This chapter provides a set of tools with which to study the subject and argues for the importance of user voice and perceptions of fairness in the provision of a more citizen-focussed justice.

Public Attitudes Toward New Prisons in New Zealand and Deficit Narratives: A Quantitative Survey

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adele N. Norris ◽  
Kalym Lipsey
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quantitative Survey

The imprisonment rate in New Zealand ranks seventh among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Yet the imprisonment of Indigenous people is on par with the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate. Almost 70% of the prison population in New Zealand is comprised of people racialized as non-White. In 2016, the National Government proposed to spend $2.5 billion over a 5-year period to build new prisons (1,500 prison beds) to accommodate a growing prison population. This study assessed public attitudes toward the need for more prisons and the equity of treatment of individuals within the criminal justice system. Findings from a 2016 and 2017 quantitative survey of 5,000 respondents each year revealed that roughly half of the respondents believed the proposed spending for new prisons to be extremely to somewhat necessary. A large proportion of respondents also believed Māori and Pākehā, if convicted of the same crime, are treated similarly within the criminal justice system. New Zealand scholars have critiqued news media coverage of contentious sociopolitical issues, such as crime and prisons, for employing tactics that have worked to construct a morally and culturally deficit “Other” while normalizing whiteness, rendering it invisible and raceless. This article concludes that this process masks racial disparities of individuals located within the criminal justice system and preserves the ideal that prisons are a normal function of the social landscape.

Paying Attention to Foreign Affairs: How Public Opinion Affects Presidential Decision Making by Thomas Knecht

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-146
Author(s):  
Terrence L. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Government Behavior ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship

Despite increased attention to the linkages between domestic politics and international relations in political science literature over the last 20 years, considerable debate remains about how well equipped citizens are to act as informed constraints on governments or how attentive and responsive government actors are to public opinion. Debates about citizens' ability to act as a check on government behavior are not new, of course, and have a long tradition in political philosophy and in public discourse. Yet the proliferation of theories of domestic–international linkages in contemporary IR scholarship has unfortunately been accompanied by incomplete dialogue between public opinion and IR scholars and often by claims of unidirectional or unconditional causality regarding domestic constraints, elite framing and opinion leadership, citizens' informational capacities, and the role of the media. The relationship among these factors in shaping foreign policy is quite complex, however, and fortunately Thomas Knecht acknowledges this complexity and advances a conditional argument about the relationship between public attitudes and presidential decision making.

scholarly journals The Impact of Characteristics of Immigrant Offenders on Attitudes Towards Immigrant Crime

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-71
Author(s):  
Mateja Vuk ◽  
Dalibor Doležal ◽  
Ena Jovanović
Keyword(s):  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Punitive Attitudes ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Minority Threat ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Threat Theory ◽  
Research Show

Minority threat theory and existing research show that public attitudes towards certain types of offenders (e.g. ethnic and racial minorities) are often more punitive. Research also reveals that a significant proportion of the public associates the increase of immigration with higher crime rates. Negative attitudes, as well as an overall anti-immigration sentiment, have been increasing internationally. Therefore, we hypothesise that the public will have more negative and punitive attitudes towards immigrant offenders than towards citizens. Using a sample of students from the University of Zagreb, this research tested the above-mentioned hypothesis and explored whether factors like immigration status, ethnic identity, type of offense, and the age of the hypothetical offender impact student attitude on immigrant crime. To test this proposition, we used online surveys with factorial vignettes. The results show that participants ask for harsher sentences for undocumented immigrants, but immigrant status and the national origin of the immigrant are not associated with the perception of recidivism, dangerousness, or criminal typicality of offender.

scholarly journals Multifunctionality of agriculture, public policies and scientific evidences: Some critical issues of contemporary controversies

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 53-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Laurent ◽  
Marielle Berriet-Solliec ◽  
Marc Kirsch ◽  
Pierre Labarthe ◽  
AurélieT AurélieTrouvé
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Evidence Based Practices ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Public Policy Analysis ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Situation

Various theoretical models of public policy analysis are used to treat situations of decision-making in which public deciders have to take into account the multifunctionality of agriculture. For some, science-society relations are not really problematical. Others acknowledge the current attempts of these policy-makers to find adequate scientific knowledge, and the difficulties they encounter. These difficulties stem partly from the very content of knowledge produced by research. Could other modes of production be more efficient? The status of the knowledge produced by these approaches is a subject of debate. Bridging the divide between science and policy more effectively is not only a question of knowledge brokerage.Accessibility and reliability of the existing evidences are also problems to be addressed. The debates around evidence-based practices may provide some landmarks in this new situation although they also emphasize the limits of the tools that can be built for this purpose.  

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