Public Attitudes to Crime and the Penal System

Paying for the crimes of their children: Public support of parental responsibility

“…These findings corresponded with those by Blumstein and Cohen (1980) who reported greater punitiveness for those from higher income brackets. In contrast to Banks et al (1975), no age differences were found in this survey using age as a continuous variable. This difference might be attributed to the twenty-five-year time span between the Banks et al study and the current survey.…”

“…Age was predicted to have a negative linear relationship with agreeing that parents should be blamed and punished. In other words, it was expected that the results would be similar to those of Banks et al (1975) with older participants agreeing that parents were responsible and should be punished. It was also hypothesized that the current results would be complementary to those of Blumstein and Cohen (1980) and Tyler and Boeckmann (1997) who found that higher educational attainment was associated with less punitiveness.…”

“…Both sets of researchers found that less punitiveness was associated with higher educational attainment (Blumstein & Cohen; Tyler & Boeckmann). Banks, Maloney, and Willcock (1975) performed a large public opinion study (2,846 participants) concerning the causes of crime. The participants were presented with ten statements and asked which ones they thought were the causes of crime.…”

Crime and Punishment with Habit Formation

“…Factors such as culture or religion provide social incentives that may induce habits in illegal activeties. For example, surveys in Britain and the United States have indicated that at least a third of the citizens in both countries believe that religion provides a sociocultural and/or spiritual foundation for curtailing criminal behavior [3,4]. [5] finds that more religious countries have lower crime rates than less religious countries, at least regarding property crimes, using data from 13 industrial nations.…”

Crime and Punishment with Habit Formation

“…Factors such as culture or religion provide social incentives that may induce habits in illegal activities. For example, surveys in Britain and the United States have indicated that at least a third of the citizens in both countries believe that religion provides a sociocultural and/or spiritual foundation for curtailing criminal behavior (Banks, Maloney and Wittrock, 1975;Jensen, 1981). Ellis and Peterson (1996) find that more religious countries have lower crime rates than less religious countries, at least regarding property crimes, using data from 13 industrial nations.…”