Race, Ethnicity, Threat, and Punitive Attitudes Toward Criminals

Revision with unchanged content. Punitive measures taken by the United States criminal justice and juvenile justice systems have expanded over the past thirty years. With punitive poli­cies and practices in place, many Americans continue to express strong support for the harsh treatment of adult and juvenile offenders. There also exists in this country a racialized image of crime. That is, popular and media discourse on crime and punishment commonly connects race and ethnicity with the threat of crime. The equation of race/ethnicity and criminal threat is so well established in American culture that some regard popular discourse about crime and punishment to be part of the rhetorical code of "modern racism." It has been suggested that the increasingly punitive attitudes of Americans toward crime is related to this association of blacks and, more recently, Hispanics with criminality. The relationship between race-related threat and punitiveness is the focus of this book. Specifically, this research examines associations between race/ ethnicity, racial and ethnic compositions of neighborhood, fear of black and Hispanic men and teenagers, and support for punitive measures to deal with adult criminals and juvenile offenders. This book is targeted to professionals and academicians in Criminal Justice and Criminology.