Public Opinion and the Governance of Punishment in Democratic Political Systems

It is unlikely that hostile attitudes about criminals or beliefs that punishments for crime were too lenient were the major causes of the explosive increase in punishments in the United States after 1970. Public hostility toward criminals has been a consistent theme in this country for a long time, but it did not cause big increases in imprisonment before 1970 in the United States or large expansions of incarceration elsewhere. In this article, the authors argue that growth in the salience of crime as a citizen concern and increasing public distrust of government competence and legitimacy were two of a number of changes that transformed ever-present hostile attitudes into a dynamic force in American politics. Negative attitudes toward offenders are a necessary condition for anticrime crusades, but they are always present. It was the addition of fear and distrust into the law and politics of punishment setting that produced the perfect storm of punitive expansion.