Sentencing and public confidence: Results from a national Australian survey on public opinions towards sentencing

Abstract

This paper examines the critical issue of public confidence in sentencing, and presents findings from Phase I of an Australia-wide sentencing and public confidence project. Phase I comprised a nationally representative telephone survey of 6005 participants. The majority of respondents expressed high levels of punitiveness and were dissatisfied with sentences imposed by the courts. Despite this, many were strongly supportive of the use of alternatives to imprisonment for a range of offences. These nuanced views raise questions regarding the efficacy of gauging public opinion using opinion poll style questions; indeed the expected outcome from this first phase of the four phase sentencing and public confidence project. The following phases of this project, reported on elsewhere, examined the effects of various interventions on the robustness and nature of these views initially expressed in a standard ‘top of the head’ opinion poll.

Predicting Punitive Attitudes: Racial-Animus towards New Immigrant and Aboriginal Minority Groups as a Mediating Agent upon Public Crime Concerns

“…The three items measured a participant's degree of confidence in the courts system as an institution (Mackenzie et al, 2012). The items used a five-point Likert scale (1 = not at all confident; 5 = very confident).…”

“…In the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia, for example, different survey studies indicate that approximately two thirds of respondents expressed the desire for harsher sentences for offenders (Mackenzie et al, 2012;Roberts & Indermaur, 2009;Spiranovic, Roberts, & Indermaur, 2009). The public demand for harsher sentencing outcomes, however, has been costly with an unsustainable explosion in the prison population in many Western countries including Australia (Cunneen et al, 2013;Johnson, 2008;Jones & Newburn, 2005).…”

Locating the Judge within Sentencing Research

“…This includes investigations of professional/occupational subcultures (Eisenstein et al 1988;Fielding 2011;Huck and Lee 2014;Hutton 2006;Ulmer 1997); the rules, policies, administrative and legal frameworks operating within courtrooms that constrain judges (Beyens and Scheirs 2010;Phoenix 2010); social interactions with other participants (Martyn and Levine 1998; Travers 2007); defendant-related factors (Bouhours and Daly 2007;Ulmer 1997); how other courtroom participants experience the judge in court (Jacobson et al 2015); how the judge experiences other participants (Rossmanith 2015); and the possible impact of public opinion, however identified or perceived (Mackenzie et al 2012;Roberts 2008 These studies contribute to a narrative about the complex social world of sentencing and its constituent parts. They specify the social role of the sentencing judge as a core (and human) actor, and map active engagement through social interactions that negotiate these conditions (Hutton 2006;see also Bourdieu 1987;Hawkins 2003).…”

Investigating the Impact of Jury Sentencing Recommendations Using Procedural Justice Theory

“…Public confidence is of central importance to the criminal justice system as low confidence may decrease the public's willingness to obey the law (Robinson & Darley, 1997), report known crimes to police (Jones & Weatherburn, 2010), or participate in trials as a witness or juror (Hough & Roberts, 2004;Mackenzie et al, 2012). Public confidence in the criminal justice system has become a prime concern to many governments, many of whom are seeking to understand the factors that may influence public confidence.…”