Punitive Attitudes on Crime: Economic Insecurity, Racial Prejudice, or Both?

Abstract In an era when many social attitudes have liberalized, attitudes toward crime appear staunchly conservative and quite punitive. Several accounts of the current level of punitiveness exist. Three hypotheses are tested using the General Social Survey: an economic anxiety model, which links personal economic insecurity to Whites' punitive attitudes; a prejudice model, which holds that Jim Crow and laissez-faire racism are correlated with Whites' punitive attitudes; and an economic insecurity-prejudice interaction model. The results indicate that Whites' punitive attitudes are not associated with personal economic insecurity or with the interaction of economic insecurity and prejudice. Both Jim Crow and laissez-faire racism are substantially correlated with Whites' punitive attitudes.