TY - JOUR
T1 - Distrust of Government, the Vigilante Tradition, and Support for Capital Punishment
AU - Messner, Steven F.
AU - Baumer, Eric P.
AU - Rosenfeld, Richard
N1 - Enter your email address below. If your address has been previously registered, you will receive an email with instructions on how to reset your password. If you don't receive an email, you should register as a new user
PY - 2006/9/1
Y1 - 2006/9/1
N2 - This study probes the interconnections among distrust of government, the historical context, and public support for the death penalty in the United States with survey data for area‐identified samples of white and black respondents. Multilevel statistical analyses indicate contrary effects of government distrust on support for the death penalty for blacks and whites, fostering death penalty support among whites and diminishing it among blacks. In addition, we find that the presence of a “vigilante tradition,” as indicated by a history of lynching, promotes death penalty support among whites but not blacks. Finally, contrary to Zimring's argument in The Contradictions of Capital Punishment, we find no evidence that vigilantism moderates the influence of government distrust on support for the death penalty, for either whites or blacks. Our analyses highlight the continuing influence of historical context as well as contemporary conditions in the formation of public attitudes toward criminal punishment, and they underscore the importance of attending to racial differences in the analysis of punitive attitudes.
AB - This study probes the interconnections among distrust of government, the historical context, and public support for the death penalty in the United States with survey data for area‐identified samples of white and black respondents. Multilevel statistical analyses indicate contrary effects of government distrust on support for the death penalty for blacks and whites, fostering death penalty support among whites and diminishing it among blacks. In addition, we find that the presence of a “vigilante tradition,” as indicated by a history of lynching, promotes death penalty support among whites but not blacks. Finally, contrary to Zimring's argument in The Contradictions of Capital Punishment, we find no evidence that vigilantism moderates the influence of government distrust on support for the death penalty, for either whites or blacks. Our analyses highlight the continuing influence of historical context as well as contemporary conditions in the formation of public attitudes toward criminal punishment, and they underscore the importance of attending to racial differences in the analysis of punitive attitudes.
UR - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2006.00273.x
U2 - 10.1111/j.1540-5893.2006.00273.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1540-5893.2006.00273.x
M3 - Article
VL - 40
JO - Law & Society Review
JF - Law & Society Review
ER -