Book Review: Public Attitudes to Sentencing: Surveys from Five Countries
| Author | Arie Freiberg |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588902200105 |
| Date | 01 March 1989 |
| Published date | 01 March 1989 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS 61
Public Attitudes to Sentencing: Surveys from Five Countries, edited by Nigel Walker
and Mike Hough, Gower, Aldershot (1988) 232 pp, $98.50.
Fear of crime is a potent political tool. As the recent United States presidential
election showed, the ability to create a belief that one's opponent is unduly lenient
can signifcantly influence election outcomes. Any politician or criminal justice
administrator who today lacksan understandingof the public's perceptions of crime
and punishment will be ill-equipped in the fight for political supremacy.
In the context of an apparently increasing public concern with the efficacy of the
criminal justice system, Nigel Walker and Mike Hough's collection of nine studies
of public attitudes to sentencing from Britain, Holland, Canada, Australia and the
United States is a timely publication which provides some useful, if unsurprising,
insights into the mysteries of "public opinion" and some helpful tips on survey
methodology.
The studies in this book all employ the sample survey method. Some use the
straight-forward Gallup poll forms of questioning (are courts too lenient?), some
elicit responses by positing short factual summaries of crimes, while others require
respondents to sort cards to produce rankings of seriousness or severity of offences
and penalties. They explore such matters as the public's view of the aims of
punishment and of the general adequacy of sentences, public knowledge of
sentencing practice and, more importantly, the sources of such knowledge.
What clearly emerges in every jurisdiction surveyed is that ignorance of the
workings of the sentencing system is widespread. What knowledge there is is
gleaned from the mass media whose reporting tends in general to be superficial,
distorted and often hysterical. The general tendency of the media is to portray the
sentencing system as being dangerously lenient and indulgent to law breakers.
However, as Doob and Roberts' Canadian survey indicates, the more specific
information given to survey respondents about the offence and offender, the greater
is the congruence between their attitudes and the actual court outcome. The degree
of specificity in the surveys is a crucial determinant of the result, with those surveys
which simply ask whether respondents believe that the system as a whole is
"punitive" enough obtaining the predictable negative result. These findings lend
support to the recommendations of the Starke Committee into sentencing in
Victoria that a Media Liaison Officer be appointed by the courts to provide press
releases concerning the sentencing decisions of the court. The Committee saw this
as essential in ensuring public confidence in the sentencing system and for
increasing the effectiveness of the sentencing system as a deterrent.
The correlates of attitudes to sentencing are discussed by many of the
contributors to the book. Across jurisdiction, it appears, increasing age is associated
with severity as is lack ofeducation, although the reasons for these associations can
only be speculated upon. In their postcript to the book, the editors distil some
general propositions from the studies they have collected. They conclude that
generally, people are not necessarily punitive, in the sense of regarding retribution
as the major aim, but they do tend to favour greater severity of sentences. When
responding to questions about crime, people tend to have dangerous or violent
criminals in mind. They tend to underestimate the percentage of criminals sent to
prison and, when asked, tend to suggest longer sentence lengths than currently
served.
One unpredictable finding from a number of the studies was that the experience
of being a victim did not necessarily make one more punitive. Perhaps the most
interesting finding was that the most influential determinant of attitude was not
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