Inside experience: engagement empathy and prejudice towards prisoners
| Published date | 12 March 2014 |
| Date | 12 March 2014 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JCP-06-2013-0016 |
| Pages | 33-43 |
| Author | Elle Mae Boag,David Wilson |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Criminal psychology |
Inside experience: engagement empathy
and prejudice towards prisoners
Elle Mae Boag and David Wilson
Dr Elle Mae Boag is Lecturer in
Social Psychology, based at
School of Social Sciences,
Division of Psychology,
Birmingham City University,
Birmingham, UK.
David Wilson is a Professor of
Criminology, based at School
of Social Sciences, Centre for
Applied Criminology,
Birmingham City University,
Birmingham, UK.
Abstract
Purpose – Research examining attitudes towards offenders assesses the attitudes of professionals working
with offenders, rather than attitudes of those without any experience with offenders. The purpose of
this paper is to examine whether prejudice towards offenders would decrease after engagement
with incarcerated serious offenders, and whether any improvement would be explained by increased
empathic responding.
Design/methodology/approach – An experimental field study was conducted. A repeated measures
questionnaire assessed empathy and prejudice at two time points: before and after engagement with
serious offenders.
Findings – As predicted experiencing actual engagement with convicted sex offenders and murderers
within a prison environment did increase empathy and decrease prejudice towards ex-offenders.
Research limitations/implications – All participants were applied criminology students and (prison
visited) is not representative of prisons within HM Prison Service. It could be argued that responding was
influenced by previous knowledge of criminal justice and penal systems. Future research should consider
examining the impact of engagement on empathy and prejudice with a larger, naı¨ve sample and across
different prisons.
Originality/value – As the first (to the authors knowledge) to empirically examine attitude change of
individuals with no personal experience of offenders this research has value to any person considering how
social exclusion may be reduced at a societal level.
Keywords Prejudice, Carceral tour, Empathy, Tolerance
Paper type Research paper
Traditionally, targets of prejudice and discrimination have been minority groups (Allport, 1954).
As such, targeting occurs due to differences in race, culture, religious affiliation, sexual
orientation and/or gender. But importantly, targeting of specific groups appears to be based on
some physical, identifiable difference from the majority. Is this physical distinction necessary?
Essentially, the answer must be “no”, and research has begun to identify that social
or psychological distinctions are equally important in identification of who is a target of
discrimination and explicit prejudice. In a series of pilot studies undertaken as means of
identifying salient outgroups, Boag and Carnelley (2012) consistently identified that the most
frequent outgroup towards whom prejudice and discriminatory behaviour was openly
expressed by both community and student populations was serious offenders, and more
specifically, sex offenders and murderers. Moreover, on replicating these pilot studies allowing
participants to identify why criminals are negatively rated, the majority of participants’ verbal
responses included expletive and derogatory language about the moral values (86 per cent) and
psychological states (64 per cent) of these particular offenders. For example, participants used
phrases such as “[y] they have no normal morals, they just don’t care about what other people
think [y]”, and “[y] they are mentally sick” (Boag and Carnelley, 2012). Importantly, the
majority of participant responses included reference to discrimination towards these specific
offenders as socially acceptable, and fuelled by the likelihood that sex offenders and murderers
DOI 10.1108/JCP-06-2013-0016 VOL. 4 NO. 1 2014, pp. 33-43, CEmerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 2009-3829
j
JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY
j
PAGE 33
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