Información, ¿antídoto frente al “populismo punitivo”?. Estudio sobre las actitudes hacia el castigo de los menores infractores y el sistema de Justicia Juvenil

Abstract

El estudio de las actitudes públicas hacia el castigo de los menores infractores se ha instituido en uno de los ámbitos de investigación más destacados y prósperos de la Criminología. Sus principales hallazgos han constatado el desconocimiento que caracteriza a la población en lo referente al funcionamiento del sistema de justicia juvenil. Por ello, el presente trabajo tiene como objeto analizar el efecto de la información en las actitudes retributivas y las percepciones relativas a la jurisdicción de menores. Para ello, se ha implementado un diseño cuasi-experimental con grupo de tratamiento y grupo de control, en el municipio de Talavera de la Reina. Los resultados alcanzados, consistentes con la investigación comparada, evidencian que la opinión pública se encuentra supeditada a la cantidad y la calidad de la información de que dispone la comunidad, corroborando que cuanto mayor es el conocimiento ciudadano en esta materia, menores son las actitudes punitivas y los juicios desfavorables hacia el sistema judicial juvenil. Igualmente, los datos resultantes reafirman la naturaleza compleja y multifacética de las actitudes, mediadas por una multiplicidad de factores interdependientes, documentada, con profusión, en las aproximaciones empíricas internacionales.

Do or do not, there is no "try": An exploratory quasi-experimental study of intuitions of justice applied to attempt and completion of the crime of homicide

“…On the other hand, in relation to the perception of the justice of the sanctions imposed by the Criminal Code, it has been shown how those who scored less on this variable assigned a less severe penalty to the scenario evaluated. We may suggest that this result is an indication of our participants' attitudes towards punishment, which could be categorized as less punitive, in line with several of the most relevant national studies (Varona, 2008;Aizpurúa & Fernández Molina, 2011).…”

“…The tendency of legislatures in many countries to employ these social demands (Varona, 2008) has been defined and studied particularly in the international literature (Green, 2006;Hough & Roberts, 1998;Maruna & King, 2004;Roberts, Stalans, Indermaur, Hough, 2003;Roberts & Hough, 2005;Allen, 2002;Roberts, 1992;Haines, 2007;Cullen, Skovron, Scott & Button, 1990). Since the 1990s, multiple studies have examined citizens' attitudes towards the criminal justice system (Aizpurúa & Fernández Molina, 2011;Aizpurúa, 2014; by attempting to analyse the hypothesis offered by Garland's (2001) theory of the "culture of control," or, more clearly, by the thesis of punitive populism introduced by Bottoms (1995, cited in Dzur, 2012. In Spain, authors such as Varona ( 2008), Aizpurúa and Fernández Molina (2011), Fernández Revista Española de Investigación Criminológica Artículo 3, Número 17 (2019) https://doi.org/10.46381/reic.v17i0.227 www.criminologia.net ISSN: 1696-9219 Molina and Gómez Tarancón (2010), have carried out major studies whose main goal is to confirm, according to Anglo-Saxon literature, whether the "social demand" that legislators claim to justify revising the criminal code truly exists, and that evaluate social demands of the public with respect to the violation of norms (Fernández Molina & Tarancón Gómez, 2010;Varona, 2008;2009), as well as the effects of informed public opinion on their punitive demands (Aizpurúa & Fernández Molina, 2011;Varona, 2016).…”

“…Since the 1990s, multiple studies have examined citizens' attitudes towards the criminal justice system (Aizpurúa & Fernández Molina, 2011;Aizpurúa, 2014; by attempting to analyse the hypothesis offered by Garland's (2001) theory of the "culture of control," or, more clearly, by the thesis of punitive populism introduced by Bottoms (1995, cited in Dzur, 2012. In Spain, authors such as Varona ( 2008), Aizpurúa and Fernández Molina (2011), Fernández Revista Española de Investigación Criminológica Artículo 3, Número 17 (2019) https://doi.org/10.46381/reic.v17i0.227 www.criminologia.net ISSN: 1696-9219 Molina and Gómez Tarancón (2010), have carried out major studies whose main goal is to confirm, according to Anglo-Saxon literature, whether the "social demand" that legislators claim to justify revising the criminal code truly exists, and that evaluate social demands of the public with respect to the violation of norms (Fernández Molina & Tarancón Gómez, 2010;Varona, 2008;2009), as well as the effects of informed public opinion on their punitive demands (Aizpurúa & Fernández Molina, 2011;Varona, 2016). These studies, then, cast doubt on the common beliefs that "the sentences are not harsh enough" (Doob, 2000) and make it particularly clear that politicians generally and systematically misinterpret society's demands from the penal system (Larrauri, 2005).…”

“…c) Perception of the justice of the Criminal Code. The studies that have considered whether society in fact demands greater punishment (Varona, 2008, Aizpurúa & Fernández Molina, 2011) make clear that the public is not as punitive as legislators often assert when enacting penal reforms that generally increase sentences based on arguments about social demands. Thus, the hypothesis proposed here is twofold: (H3a) participants who assign the same criminal sanction as that of the Spanish Criminal Code will obtain higher scores on the perception of justice; and (H3b) participants who did not agree with the formal sanction in the Criminal Code will have chosen a less severe punishment.…”