The impact of demographic characteristics, personality variables, beliefs about the causes of crime and fear of crime on attitudes toward sentencing goals

Understanding public attitudes to sentencing is important given the potential impact of public confidence in the criminal justice system on law reform and the potential influence of perceptions about community attitudes toward sentencing on judicial policy. The current study comprised a partial replication of research by Carroll, Perkowitz, Lurigio and Weaver (1987) which investigated the impact of attitudes and beliefs on sentencing goal preferences in an American sample. This Australian community sample comprised 306 participants, 128 males (M = 46.33 years, SD = 15.56) and 178 females (M = 44.27 years, SD = 13.53). The relative importance of demographic characteristics, personality variables, beliefs about the causes of crime and fear of crime was investigated as predictors of attitudes towards the contrasting sentencing goals of punishment versus rehabilitation. Regression analyses found that endorsement of punishment was predicted by decreased level of education, increased authoritarianism and the belief that crime is caused by the personal characteristics of the offender. Support for rehabilitation was predicted by a set of beliefs attributing the causes of crime to the economic conditions in society and by higher satisfaction with the criminal justice system. A more detailed analysis of sentencing attitudes was obtained by clustering scores on both the punishment and rehabilitation scales. Results identified four subgroups within the sample. These subgroups were categorised as: High Punishment / High Rehabilitation, High Punishment / Low Rehabilitation, Low Punishment / Low Rehabilitation and Low Punishment / High Rehabilitation. Significant differences were found between the subgroups on the major study variables. For example, while educational level did not predict rehabilitation when the predictors of rehabilitation and punishment were investigated separately, the Low Punishment / High Rehabilitation group had significantly higher levels of education. Overall, results suggested that within the group who highly valued rehabilitation, differences were related to whether or not they also emphasised punishment as a goal of sentencing. Although authoritarianism scores were higher in the subgroups that endorsed punishment as a goal of sentencing, irrespective of their views on rehabilitation, authoritarianism was lower amongst educated participants who believed that crime was caused by the economic and social conditions in society. While fear of crime was not a significant predictor of punitive sentencing preferences when the punishment dimension was considered separately, fear of crime was significantly higher in subgroups that placed a high value on punishment irrespective of their beliefs about rehabilitation. Results highlight the importance of moving beyond conceptualising punishment and rehabilitation as separate unrelated dimensions and to consider the manner in which these dimensions interact to produce separate community groups.