Race, Racism, and Support for Capital Punishment

Unnever, James D.; Cullen, Francis T.; Jonson, Cheryl Lero

doi:10.1086/519823

Cited by 85 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Although attitudinal swings can be found, many key features of public views toward street crime and its punishment have remained relatively stable over the past few decades [13,14,66]. By contrast, we propose that public opinion about white-collar crime has been marked by important transformations.…”

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confidence: 83%

Bad guys: Why the public supports punishing white-collar offenders

Cullen

Hartman

Jonson

2008

Crime Law Soc Change

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Until the latter part of the 1960s, the American public was inattentive to the problem of crime in the upperworld. Due to a confluence of events (e.g., Watergate affair, Vietnam War, civil rights movement), concern about this lawlessness rose precipitously in the 1970s. Public attention toward and willingness to punish whitecollar crime has persisted into the twenty-first century. We argue, however, that due to a series of recent scandals (e.g., Enron, WorldCom), public opinion about upperworld offenders has been transformed qualitatively. High-profile offenders are now seen not as respected community citizens but as "bad guys" whose crimes reflect inordinate greed and a disturbing lack of concern for victims. This typification is conducive to the prosecution of white-collar offenders but may have the unanticipated consequence of deflecting attention away from structural sources of corporate illegal enterprises.As Igo [31] illuminates, the invention in the 1930s of the scientific national opinion poll-especially by Gallup and Roper-made it possible to capture how "the American public" felt about a

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confidence: 83%

Bad guys: Why the public supports punishing white-collar offenders

Cullen

Hartman

Jonson

2008

Crime Law Soc Change

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“…There is also an immense body of research that examines the factors that predict white public opinion (for a review of this literature see Unnever, Cullen, and Jonson 2008). In comparison, there is limited research that examines the intraracial variation in African-American opinion on perceptions of criminal injustices.…”

Section: Perceptions Of Criminal Justice Injusticesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Blacks Speak with one Voice? Immigrants, Public Opinions, and Perceptions of Criminal Injustices

Unnever¹,

Gabbidon

2013

Justice Quarterly

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This paper tests core tenets of the theory of African-American offending proposed by Unnever and Gabbidon. Their theory posits that African-Americans have a common worldview on matters of race that is related to their offending. However, Unnever and Gabbidon further hypothesize that immigrant blacks do not fully embrace the worldview shared by US-born blacks. Using a 2008 national Gallup poll, we examine whether US-born blacks share a common worldview and whether foreign-born blacks differ in their opinions on key issues including: criminal injustices, the state of American race relations, attitudes towards immigration and illegal immigrants, and the perception of mobility within American society. The results partially confirm their two key hypotheses; there are no entrenched differences in the public opinions of US-born blacks on race-related matters while immigrant blacks do not wholly endorse their worldview. We discuss the implications of these two findings in relation to how scholars conceptualize offending among blacks.Keywords African American offending; immigrant blacks; perceptions of criminal injustice; race and crime In their recent theoretical work, Unnever and Gabbidon (2011) assert that nearly all blacks share a distinctive worldview that is grounded and centered in James D. Unnever is professor of criminology at the University of South Florida-Sarasota Manatee. He has published extensively on race and crime, most notably in his recent A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime. His research areas also include public opinion about crime-related issues, the impact of religion on punitiveness, testing theories of crime, and school bullying. He was the 2009 recipient of the Donal A. J. MacNamara Award of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Shaun L. Gabbidon is distinguished professor of criminal justice at Penn State Harrisburg. He has served as a fellow at Harvard University's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and has taught at the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The author of more than 100 scholarly publications including 60 peer-reviewed articles and 11 books, his most recent books include Race and Crime (3rd edition; 2013, SAGE) and, A Theory of African American Offending (2011; Routledge). Professor Gabbidon is the Founding

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“…Many studies focus on the ways putatively general social issues or concerns are racialized. This is especially clear with respect to crime control policies which disproportionately target minorities and are more supported in the US by Whites who are anti-minority (Staples 1975;Tonry 1995;Tonry and Melewski 2008;Unnever, Cullen and Jonson 2008;Weaver 2007). Felon disenfranchisement was promoted as an explicit way to maintain ethnic dominance (Behrens, Uggen and Manza 2003).…”

Section: Ethnic Majority Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethnic Dimensions in Social Movements*

Oliver¹

2017

Mobilization: An International Quarterly

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This paper draws on work in the social construction of race and ethnicity to explain why race/ethnic divisions are so often axes of domination and why these divisions are central to social movements. Ethnic/racial groups are constructed in political processes that are intertwined with state formation and social movements. Processes of state formation create ethnic/racial groups, and define majorities and minorities, and create racial/ethnic structures of domination. Physical and social segregation in tandem with intergenerational inheritance creates network cliquing that reinforces group boundaries, group differences, and group interests. Movements by members of dominant racial/ethnic majorities differ from movements by members of subordinate racial/ethnic minorities in key ways including access to democratic processes for achieving group goals, experience of repression, need for allies, identity construction, processes of consciousness raising, and bases of mobilization. The "ethnic dimensions" matter for all social movements.

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Race, Racism, and Support for Capital Punishment

Cited by 85 publications

References 76 publications

Bad guys: Why the public supports punishing white-collar offenders

Bad guys: Why the public supports punishing white-collar offenders

Do Blacks Speak with one Voice? Immigrants, Public Opinions, and Perceptions of Criminal Injustices

The Ethnic Dimensions in Social Movements*

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