inmate and non-inmate attitudes toward punitiveness

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Inmate And Non-Inmate Attitudes Toward Punitiveness Christine G. Schultz Harry E. Allen One of the interesting aspects in American society is the widespread belief that the whole range of violations of law, from reprehensible acts (mala in se) to merely forbidden behaviors (nub prohibita), can equal- ly be controlled by punishment. The problem is that attempts at deter- rence by punishment of both these types of crime are probably less ef- fective than deterrence and control by other means. Punishment accom- panied by punitiveness is an ineffective vehicle of social control. Puni- tiveness is a complex of attitudes centered about social revenge, having as component parts strong sanctions and retributions through a severe sys- tem of penalties and punishment. Non-criminal members of society tend to view punitiveness and punishment as a necessary and desirable method of social control, whereas the societalIy adjudged “criminals” have strikingly different per- ceptions of the detemng and controlling effects of punishment. On the one hand the attitudes of criminals regarding the ineffective- ness of punishment and .punitiveness can be attributed in part to actual contact and evaluation which comes from experiencing the negative sanc- tions of social control. This is an experiential viewpoint. On the other hand, there is societal consensus that “punishment is a deterrent.” If differentials in punitiveness are the result of contact or lack of contact with the processes of justice and the legal system, then it could be expected that an “unincarcerated group will be more punitive than an “incarcerated” group. To test this theory a structured schedule was administered to 394 individuals. Information collected from these people included data on age, sex, formal education, total number of arrests and offenses for which incarcerated-the latter where applicable. The population studied was composed of availability samples of incarcerated and unincarcerated in- dividuals including: 118 girls detained at Scioto Village (an industrial school for girls in Delaware, Ohio); 114 women incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women at Marysville, Ohio; 74 lower level students; and 58 upper Ievel students enrolled at a midwestern university. Scioto Village is a cottage type juvenile institution housing girls who have violated the legal statutes regarding what constitutes a delinquent in the State of Ohio. Typically, the girls detained at the institution have been committed for one of the following vioIations: theft and shoplifting, 40

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Inmate And Non-Inmate Attitudes Toward Punitiveness

Christine G. Schultz Harry E. Allen

One of the interesting aspects in American society is the widespread belief that the whole range of violations of law, from reprehensible acts (mala in se) to merely forbidden behaviors ( n u b prohibita), can equal- ly be controlled by punishment. The problem is that attempts at deter- rence by punishment of both these types of crime are probably less ef- fective than deterrence and control by other means. Punishment accom- panied by punitiveness is an ineffective vehicle of social control. Puni- tiveness is a complex of attitudes centered about social revenge, having as component parts strong sanctions and retributions through a severe sys- tem of penalties and punishment.

Non-criminal members of society tend to view punitiveness and punishment as a necessary and desirable method of social control, whereas the societalIy adjudged “criminals” have strikingly different per- ceptions of the detemng and controlling effects of punishment.

On the one hand the attitudes of criminals regarding the ineffective- ness of punishment and .punitiveness can be attributed in part to actual contact and evaluation which comes from experiencing the negative sanc- tions of social control. This is an experiential viewpoint. On the other hand, there is societal consensus that “punishment is a deterrent.”

If differentials in punitiveness are the result of contact or lack of contact with the processes of justice and the legal system, then it could be expected that an “unincarcerated group will be more punitive than an “incarcerated” group.

To test this theory a structured schedule was administered to 394 individuals. Information collected from these people included data on age, sex, formal education, total number of arrests and offenses for which incarcerated-the latter where applicable. The population studied was composed of availability samples of incarcerated and unincarcerated in- dividuals including: 118 girls detained at Scioto Village (an industrial school for girls in Delaware, Ohio); 114 women incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women at Marysville, Ohio; 74 lower level students; and 58 upper Ievel students enrolled at a midwestern university.

Scioto Village is a cottage type juvenile institution housing girls who have violated the legal statutes regarding what constitutes a delinquent in the State of Ohio. Typically, the girls detained at the institution have been committed for one of the following vioIations: theft and shoplifting,

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sexual promiscuity, truancy from home and/or school, and incorrigibility and/or placement for foster care.

This study included all girls (118) between 14 and 18 years of age at the time of study; the majority had been detained at the institution Iess than eight months. The other part of the “incarcerates” sample were all female- felons (as well as a limited number of “contributing case^"- misdemeanants-serving a flat one year sentence) remanded to the Ohio Reformatory for Women at Marysville which is an open institutional facility (no fence), The Ohio Reformatory houses approximately 280 women; our sample contained 114 women whose ages ranged from 18 to well over 50. The median age category was 24-29. In descending order the most frequent offenses committed were assault (including murder), larceny, theft and forgery. Some 87 per cent of these women had two or fewer convictions (but numerous arrests) and had spent between 1-3 years at Marysville on their sentences. Although 24 per cent of the sample had completed high school, most of the other incarcerated women had less than a ninth grade formal education.

For comparative purposes data were also gathered on a “unincar- cerated sample” composed of two groups: 74 freshman and sophomore (lower level) students and 88 junior, senior and graduate (upper level) students at a midwestern university. These students ranged in age from 17 to 49 with the mean age for the lower level students at 19 and for the upper level at 23. None of these students had ever been incarcerated for a felony offense.

A 38-item Likert-type scale measuring punitiveness was adminis- tered.* The scale included such items as:

C.R. P< 1. Offenders need to be punished order to protect society. 8.03 .001 2. Treatment is better than punishment in preventing crime. 7.59 .001 3. Society should punish those who are harmful to it. 6.67 .001 4. Not enough punishment causes lawlessness in America. 6.79 .001 5. One way to prevent crime is to make the offender suffer. 8.08 .001 0. The “bad breaks” of an offender should be considered

by the judge in sentencing. 5.26 .001 ’7. It is not fair to punish an offender by taking him away

from his family. 6.06 .001 Each item in the total scale had a critical ratio above 5.0, significant beyond the .001 level. Respondents were dichotomized into punitive or non-punitive categories on the basis of their scale scores. Punitive per- sons were those scoring below the midpoint in the range of‘ possible scale

*Reliability was ascertained through split half correlation of .825 (corrected by the Spearman-Brown formula to 9 0 4 ) . Validity was assessed by correlation with independent criteria, correlating .a84 with a punitiveness sub-scale developed by T. G. Efion.1

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scores (95 and below} and non-punitive persons were those scoring above the midpoint.

Results. The basic assumption underlying this study was that dif- ferentials in punitiveness are the result of contact with the processes of justice and the penal system. Utilizing this theory of differential attitudes developed by differential contact, it was hypothesized that “incarcerates” would be less punitive than “non-incarcerates.” Results of t h i s compari- son are shown under “Contact” in Table I. The data strongly supports the hypothesis. The difference between the two samples on “punitiveness” is sigdicztnt, suggesting that contact with the legal processes and penal system reduces “punitiveness” among the incarcerated individuals. As Durkheim suggested, punishment is most useful in social control as a threat? Since this relationship might have been influenced by other factors, four sub-hypotheses were tested. These factors-age, education, offense, and incarceration-as discussed below presented some interesting findings.

A. Since knowledge is in part a function of age, the older the in- dividual the more likely he is to have experiential knowledge of the legal processes. Thus the hypothesis was that the older the individual the less punitive he would be. It was found (See “Age”-Table I ) that aging is definitely a factor in reducing punitive attitudes: the older the person, the lower the punitive- ness score. Significant differences which could have occurred by chance alone only once in a thousand were found between the younger and older group, pointing to the importance of age in the reduction of punitive attitudes.

B. Formal education exposes the individual to a wide range of dif- ferent viewpoints and tends to be a liberalizing process. Thus, in terms of formal education it was anticipated that punitiveness would vary with level of education. It was hypothesized that punitiveness would vary with level of education. It was hypo- thesized that the more educated the individual the less punitive he would be. The data (See “Students”-Table I ) verified the hypothesis. It should be noted that the mean score differential observed could have occurred by chance alone only once in a thousand, thus suggesting that education is negatively related to punitive attitudes. An interesting side finding to this is that lower level university students are the most punitive of the four groups compared. This may, on the surface, appear to contradict the age finding (i.e., Scioto Village juveniles vs. lower level stu- dents) ; however, evidence that negates this contradiction will be offered below.

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TA

BL

E I

C

ompa

riso

n of

Pun

itive

ness

-Non

-Pun

itive

ness

Bas

is o

f C

ompa

riso

n Pu

nitiv

enes

s %

M

ean

Non

-Pun

itive

ness

%

M

ean

Tot

als

Mea

n Z

p

<

Con

tact

N

on-in

carc

erat

es (N

=162

) 50

.6

Inca

rcer

ates

(N

=232

) 22

.0

85.1

3 89

.47

49.4

10

9.71

78

.0

110.

97

97.1

0 6.

29

.001

0 10

6.20

Age

You

nger

-und

er

21

Old

er-o

ver 21 (

N=

l86)

28

.0

(N=2

08)

39.9

86.6

1 87

.10

Stud

ents

Lo

wer

lev

el (

N=7

4)

70.3

U

pper

lev

el (

N=8

8)

34.1

83

.40

88.0

0

60.1

10

9.07

72

.0

112.

12

29.7

10

6.13

65

.9

110.

47

100.

10

3.50

.001 O

105.

10

90.1

7 5.

89

.001

0 10

2.95

Off

ense

s V

iole

nt (

N=2

9)

17.2

N

on;v

iole

nt

(N=2

03)

22.6

82.8

11

2.01

77

.4

110.

81

105.

86

1.52

.2

0 10

8.97

Inca

rcer

ates

Ju

veni

le (

N=1

18)

22.9

A

dult

(N=1

14)

21.1

89

.40

89.5

0 77

.1

109.

60

78.9

11

2.36

10

4.98

1.

59

20

10

7.55

'Thi

s di

ffer

ence

cou

ld h

ave

occu

rred

by

chan

ce a

lone

onl

y on

e tim

e in

a t

hous

and.

C.

D.

The more violent crimes “offend” the society to a greatcr c1egrc.c than the less violent (much Iike molu it) sc crimes which call forth the more punitive sanctions from the system). Those es- periencing morc severe punitiveness from society realize the in- effectiveness of social revenge; therefore. are less likely to hold punitive attitudes. It was hypothesized that individuals incar- cerated for the more violent crimes would be less punitive than those imprisoned for other crimes. The data (See “Offense”- Table I ) show that few incarcerates have high punitiveness scores. However among punitive persons significant differences between the mean scores of the violent and non-violent offense groups did occur (2x465). Among those having non-punitive scores, no significant differences were found. It would appear, therefore, that violent offenders are somewhat less punitive than non-violent offenders and that the hypothesis is supported, in general.

It is generally agreed that juveniles should be handled differ- ently than adult offenders and that they should be rehabilitated and disciplined rather than punished. Treated differentially, we would expect them to be more punitive as they have not experi- enced severe punishment nor learned its meaning. Therefore, it was hypothesized that juveniles would be more pmitive than incarcerated adults. The predicted relationship was found but the difference between the delinquent juveniles and the incarcerated adults was not significant. The “in- carcerates,” both juvenile and adult, were more alike and less punitive in their attitudes than the “unincarcerated” sample (See “Students” and “Incarcerates” in Table I for comparison). This lack of significant support for the above hypothesis sheds even more light on the suspected piocesses of punitive attitude development. It appears that the social forces of 1) the severity of negative sanctions, 2) the impact of contact and 3) experi- ential knowledge of the processes of justice and the legal system are interacting to create lesser punitiveness on the part of the incarcerated sample.

It is the thesis of this paper that the interaction of these three social forces produces a tolerance within the individual enabling him to develop a system of rationalizations for .dealing with society’s contempt. This sys- tem apparently manifests itself in less punitive attitudes toward others- both offenders and non-offenders.

Apart from the effect of social class differences in punitiveness, the factors examined in this research support the belief that institutionaliza-

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tion is a critical variable in punitiveness. It should also be noted that old- er age and maturation, in conjunction with incarceration, produces less punitive attitudes. These fwo findings, in particular, suggest that it may be the type and degree of legal treatment relative to the nzaln &a that calls forth the maximum‘efficacy in the alteration of attitudes.

Durkheim stated, when he wrote of the function of crime in society, that the group must victimize offenders in order that non-offenders may be reinforced in law-abiding behavi~r .~ This victimization with attendant punitiveness is intended to insure conformity to norms.

If the behavior of those whom society punishes is frequently un- altered by such treatment, perhaps it is time to seek more satisfactory and effective techniques of rehabilitation; this can and must be done within the framework of a system which punishes violations since the general public seems unwilling to forego its almost blind faith in puni- tiveness as the principal vehicle of social control.

0 0 0 0

NOTES 1. Thomas C. Eynon. “Revised Judges Attitudes Toward Problems Of Delinquency

2. Durkheim, Emile, Dioision of Lobor in Society (Clencoe, Ill.: The Free Press,

3. Zbid.

Scale.” Unpublished Research. The Ohio State University, 1965.

1947), ( Trans. by George Simpson. ) .

Christine G. Schultz and Harry E. Allen are both of the Department of Sociolog at The Ohio State University.

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