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• W286285488 abstract "Our investigation of the antecedents and consequences of citizens’ beliefs about the fairness of the criminal justice system among blacks and whites is motivated by three related concerns: 1) research showing that beliefs about procedural fairness (even more than assessments of outcomes) play a crucial role in shaping political attitudes and behavior, 2) the apparent widespread lack of confidence in the justice system expressed by both races, and 3) the historically high levels of perceived injustice and unfairness among African Americans. We report the results of a specially-commissioned national survey of whites and blacks that focuses on the chasm that exists between the races in their assessments of the criminal justice system. Three principal findings emerge from our study of the perceived fairness of the CJS: 1) race is the dominant fault line in evaluations of the CJS, with African Americans being much less likely to view the justice system (i.e., the police, the courts and the system in general) as fair than whites; 2) blacks who report being treated unfairly by the police in traffic incidents are substantially more likely to rate the justice system as unfair; and 3) based on our analysis of survey experiments where we manipulated the race of the victim in a police brutality case and the race of the suspects in a police drug search, fairness judgments play a powerful role in shaping interpretations of police behavior, particularly when blacks are the possible target of discrimination. On April 29, 1992, a mainly white jury in Simi Valley, California voted to acquit four white police officers charged with the beating of Rodney King, an African-American. The response in nearby Los Angeles was both swift and intense, as massive rioting broke out in the north-central section of the city, resulting in hundreds of injuries and millions of dollars of property damage. One of the casualties was Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was pulled from his vehicle by angry rioters and severely beaten. On October 18, a mostly AfricanAmerican jury acquitted the two blacks accused of beating Denny on virtually all counts. Racial divisions over this verdict were stark: a Los Angeles Times poll found whites almost twice as likely to disagree with the verdict as blacks (67 to 38 percent), with whites more than twice as likely to express “anger” over the outcome (48 to 19 percent). These differential racial responses should have, but did not, adequately prepare the nation for the extraordinary responses to the 1995 O.J. Simpson jury decision, in which a jury composed predominantly of African-Americans acquitted the defendant of two counts of homicide. News coverage that evening inevitably consisted of contrasts between reactions of mainly joyous blacks and mainly appalled whites—the former believing the system to have (finally) served justice, with the latter perceiving a system unable to handle racial disputes in a fair fashion. These incidents served to expose an enormous inter-racial chasm in responses toward the U.S. criminal justice system (CJS)—a chasm that dwarfs the divisions typically uncovered in the analysis of public opinion data. The historical origins of this “race gap” are long-standing, clearly predating our ability to measure it. Undeniably, African-Americans have had fundamentally different experiences with the justice system during the entirety of their existence in the United States, having to submit to the brutalities of slavery and to witness the “blind eye of the law” to white-on-black vigilantism and lynchings (Kennedy 1997). In more recent years, discrimination against racial minorities has continued, with African-Americans being far more likely to be apprehended, incarcerated, subjected to vehicular stops, and more. At the heart of this “race gap” lays a profound distrust of the CJS among many AfricanAmericans, who far too often have been led to the conclusion that it is unfair. While rare in the political science literature, discussions and documentation of heightened levels of black cynicism toward the system are prevalent in the criminal justice and sociology literatures (e.g., Curran 1977; Hagen and Albonetti 1982; Hawkins 1986; McFate 1996; Peek, et al 1981). It is substantially more difficult, however, to find studies exploring the antecedents and consequences of this gap of distrust—the topics of the present analysis. This paper opens with a discussion of the importance of perceptions of legal fairness— not only why these perceptions matter theoretically, but also why they matter politically. Using data obtained from the 2000-2001 Race and Crime Survey, we subsequently focus on the antecedents of distrust, demonstrating that much of it stems from sources that are both predictable and, in a sense, quite logical. But most importantly, we then examine its consequences, arguing that a perception that the justice system is unfair exerts a considerable influence on the way that actors and actions associated with the system are interpreted. That is, those with the most cynical perspectives (largely, though not exclusively, from the AfricanAmerican community) are substantially more likely to believe that a given police officer is brutal or that a given judge is prejudicial. Because these beliefs then cycle back to reinforce the initial 1 In large measure, African American antipathy toward the CJS stems from contacts with the police, which are typically more common, less voluntary, and more adversarial than are contacts between whites and the police. See, for example, Scaglion and Condon 1980; Parker, et al 1995. sense of unfairness, cynicism toward the justice system doubtless becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. THE IMPORTANCE OF FAIRNESS We begin this discussion where most papers end—by addressing the “so what” question. Why, in other words, does it matter whether individuals believe the justice system to be fair, and, more specifically, what are the consequences of beliefs that are sharply divided across race? It is something of a mystery that political scientists have paid so little attention to attitudes about crime and the CJS. Carmines and Stimson (1980) would classify the attitudes as “easy” in the sense that the topic is easy to comprehend and constantly on the agenda. As such, these attitudes should be, and are, unusually crystallized and salient in the minds of the mass public (Roberts and Stalans 1997). In an August, 2000 Gallup survey, sixty percent of respondents described crime as either a “very” or “extremely” important problem—a finding that is fully typical of other years. Given that beliefs about crime and punishment are “real,” why have they been essentially ignored? On one level, these attitudes are inconsequential in that they are seldom determinants of the most overt form of political behavior—the vote choice. Almost by definition, crime is a valence issue (i.e., everyone opposes it), making it unlikely that candidates will diverge in their platforms. But this is an exceedingly narrow definition of “consequence,” if for no other reason than that candidates do differ in the emphasis that they place on law and order, as evidenced during the 1988 presidential campaign when Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was constantly criticized for a stance that some felt was insufficiently “tough” on crime. Since the late1960s, there seems to have been something approaching a crisis of confidence in the justice system, or at least policy makers have assumed this to be the case. As expressions of public fears began to escalate into the 1980s and 1990s, the federal government (along with many state governments) responded with enormous increases in prison construction expenditures and ever more punitive approaches to law violation—e.g., three strikes laws, the restoration of prison chain gangs, far more punitive sentencing guidelines, and more. The prison population, in consequence, has tripled over the past twenty years, even while actual crime rates were decreasing (Caplow and Simon 1999). While it is impossible to determine whether policy makers responded to public opinion or vice versa, it is highly suggestive that polls showed very strong support for the more punitive approaches that were being taken (Johnson 2001). And polls also charted widespread support for mandatory sentencing, as if the public were openly expressing its lack of faith in judges to mete out justice. In sum, even if crime-related attitudes cannot often be linked to the vote choice, it seems quite clear that public opinion in this domain “counts” as a major influence over public policy. But our concern with individuals’ judgments of the CJS extends beyond our assumption that such attitudes are salient and potentially consequential to the political process. More broadly, we argue that attitudes about the justice system, particularly whether it is fair, color citizens’ views of much of the rest of the political system. A good deal of research demonstrates that people who believe the justice system to be unfair tend to evaluate the government more harshly, are less likely to comply with the law, and are more likely to judge the entire system to be illegitimate (Lind and Tyler 1988). One need only recall the overtly political role played by the U.S. Supreme Court in helping to determine the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, and the resultant (for many) disgust with the broader electoral process, to appreciate the" @default.
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• W286285488 date "2001-01-01" @default.
• W286285488 modified "2023-09-26" @default.
• W286285488 title "RACIAL POLARIZATION ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE ISSUES: SOURCES AND POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF FAIRNESS JUDGMENTS" @default.
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