Article

Criminal Justice Review

2016, Vol. 41(3) 352-371
2016 Georgia State University
Perceptions of Prison and Reprints and permission:
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Punitive Attitudes: A Test of DOI: 10.1177/0734016816654739
cjr.sagepub.com
the Penal Escalation Hypothesis

Kevin H. Wozniak1

Abstract
The penal escalation hypothesis holds that peoples (mis)perception of prisons as being inadequately
harsh will influence their punitive attitudes toward other punishments and components of the
criminal justice system. In this study, I present the first test of the penal escalation hypothesis with
survey data from residents of the United States of America. I find that peoples perceptions of life
and conditions in prison are significantly related to their opinions about other punitive and pro-
gressive aspects of criminal justice policy and practice. I argue that these findings should lead scholars
to reevaluate the importance of instrumental versus symbolic factors when attempting to explain
variation in peoples opinions about punishment and justice.

Keywords
public opinion, prison, criminal justice, punitive, penal escalation

From the mid-1970s through the late 2000s, the rate of incarceration in the United States of America
grew exponentially and unceasingly. This growth culminated in the fact that the United States
presently has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world (Walmsley, 2013). Numerous
scholars find evidence that politics and policy choices played a major role in the growth of mass
incarceration (National Research Council, 2014). Public anxieties about crime and demands for
harsh punishment were one such political force that fueled mass incarceration, at least in part (Enns,
2014; Nicholson-Crotty, Peterson, & Ramirez, 2009). However, despite this evidence, very little
research has examined the causes and consequences of American opinions about prisons,
specifically.
In this study, I test Roberts and Houghs (2005) penal escalation hypothesis, which contends that
people who perceive prison environments to be insufficiently unpleasant or harsh will demand that
other components of the criminal justice compensate with tougher punishments and stricter treat-
ment of people under correctional supervision. This hypothesis was inspired by the fact that
politicians frequently decried country club conditions in prisons during the height of the

1
University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Kevin H. Wozniak, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125, USA.
Email: kevin.wozniak@umb.edu
Wozniak 353

tough-on-crime era (Bidinotto, 1994). Even controlling for several common attitudinal predictors
of public opinion about criminal justice, I find support for the penal escalation hypothesis. Peoples
perceptions of the prison environment are significantly related to their support for punishment,
police, crime prevention, and prisoner reentry programs, although the precise nature of that rela-
tionship varies somewhat across measures. I argue that these findings suggest that scholars have
underestimated the degree to which instrumental concerns about the functioning of the justice
system affect public opinion about punishment and criminal justice.

Perceptions of Prison and Penal Escalation

A decade ago, Roberts and Hough (2005) reviewed the empirical literature in order to assess public
opinion about prisons. They observed three common trends among survey respondents from several
different nations in Europe and North America. First, most citizens have little knowledge of the
environment or inner workings of prisons, and few have had direct contact with a correctional
institution. Second, in spite of the scarcity of personal experience, many citizens believe that prison
conditions are overly lenient or easy on inmates. Third, public opinion about prisons is not uniformly
punitive; many citizens support inmate access to amenities, rehabilitation, and educational programs.
These latter two points seem to be contradictory. How can people support the amenities and
programs that are part of the easy environment that they resent? Some evidence from qualitative
studies suggests that a key factor is respondents perceptions of inmates activities; interview and
focus group participants primarily objected to inmates ability to spend their days being lazy and
unproductive, and they were more supportive of amenities, programs, and work opportunities that
inmates used to rehabilitate themselves (e.g., Doble, 1987). Furthermore, public support varies from
amenity to amenity (e.g., Applegate, 2001; Lenz, 2002). However, the precise relationship between
the perception that life in prison is easy and support for amenities and programs is not terribly well
understood because the few studies that have measured these constructs have tended to measure one
or the other but not both within the same survey.
Beyond prison amenities, Roberts and Hough (2005) theorized that peoples perceptions of the
nature of life in prison affect their attitudes toward other criminal justice policies and programs. It
has been well documented that many Western, industrialized democracies expanded the scope of
their criminal justice systems to varying degrees over the past 40 years (e.g., Baker, 1996; Garland,
2001; Roberts, Stalans, Indermaur, & Hough, 2003). Roberts and Hough argued that peoples
(mis)perceptions of prisons may have partially fueled the politics and policies that harshened
criminal punishment and increased the size of prison populations in many nations, the United States
foremost among them. They stated,

A number of adverse consequences ensue from the public perception that prison life is not particularly
unpleasant. First, people will be less likely to see prison as the punishment that it clearly is . . . . This
perception (that prison is easy) depreciates the penal value of imprisonment and can only exert an
inflationary pressure on sentence lengths; it will fuel public calls for longer sentences. (Roberts &
Hough, 2005, p. 292)

They dub this relationship between perceptions of prison and punitive attitudes toward other
facets of criminal justice penal escalation.
Unfortunately, the penal escalation hypothesis has been subjected to extremely little empirical
testing. Indeed, the only published studies of which I am aware that test the relationship between
peoples perceptions of prison and their broader attitudes about criminal justice preceded and
informed Roberts and Houghs essay. Analyzing data from a sample of respondents drawn from
Montreal and Toronto, Brillon, Louis-Guerin, and Lamarche (1984) found that people who
354 Criminal Justice Review 41(3)

perceived prisons to be veritable hotels were also likely to believe that courts do not deliver
sufficiently severe sentences and were less supportive of granting parole and access to halfway
houses for all offenders. Analyzing data from a representative sample of the South African popu-
lation, Glanz (1994) found that Black respondents who perceived conditions in prison to be very
good, good, or fair were also likely to favor long prison sentences for all offenders; the relationship
was not statistically significant for respondents of other races. To my knowledge, no scholar has
tested the penal escalation hypothesis with data from the United States. This gap in our knowledge is
glaring in light of the fact that the vast size of the United States prison population makes it an
international outlier (Walmsley, 2013), and organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty
International, and the American Civil Liberties Union have criticized overcrowding and inhumane
conditions in American prisons. Furthermore, Simon (2014) argues that U.S. courts are beginning to
craft contemporary jurisprudence that acknowledges and confronts the (negative) implications of
prison conditions for inmates constitutional rights. In spite of these criticisms, (Wozniak, 2014)
found that a plurality of American respondents believe that the living environment in prisons is not
harsh enough. We do not yet know if this perception contributes to Americans punitive attitudes
about other facets of the justice system as well.

Implications for Theories of Public Opinion About Criminal Justice

I argue that scholars should pay more attention to Roberts and Houghs penal escalation hypothesis
because it challenges a commonly accepted belief in the public opinion literature. Starting with
Tyler and Boeckmanns (1997) seminal paper, scholars have tested the ability of instrumental versus
symbolic factors to explain variation in peoples opinions about criminal justice. Instrumental
factors are typically operationalized as peoples perceptions of the actual crime rate, their personal
victimization experience, and their fear of crime. The theory behind instrumental predictors of
attitudes is that the criminal justice system is designed to prevent and reduce crime, so the more
that people perceive that society is experiencing a crime problem and fear victimization, the more
supportive they will be of punitive justice policies. On the other hand, symbolic factors are typically
operationalized as peoples ideological beliefs and perceptions of abstract social forces or trends,
such as a decline in moral values. The theory behind symbolic predictors is that the criminal justice
system maintains social order, so the more that people perceive their desired social status quo to be
under threat by immoral, chaotic forces, the more they will support punitive justice policies to
reestablish the cultural status quo (e.g., Durkheim, 1893/1964; Garland, 2001).
Most scholars conclude that symbolic factors are stronger predictors of peoples opinions about
criminal justice than are instrumental factors (Frost, 2010; King & Maruna, 2009; Tyler & Boeck-
mann, 1997; Unnever & Cullen, 2010). This conclusion largely rests on the fact that the empirical
relationship between fear of crime and punitive attitudes is mixed across studies, and actual victi-
mization experience is rarely related to peoples opinions about criminal justice policy once you
control for their symbolic beliefs (Frost, 2010). However, by operationalizing instrumental concerns
almost exclusively through items related to perceptions of crime, previous studies largely fail to
examine whether or not peoples evaluation of one facet of the criminal justice system affects their
opinions about other facets of the system. This, too, would be an instrumental relationship; if people
perceive that prisons are not adequately doing their job of punishing offenders, they may want
other justice systems to compensate in order to fulfil the demands of retribution.

Contributions of the Present Study

In this study, I test the penal escalation hypothesis with data from an original public opinion survey
administered to a random sample of residents of the United States. As the first empirical test of the
Wozniak 355

penal escalation hypothesis using data from the United States, I test the generalizability of the
theory. I also contribute to this literature by employing a wide range of measures. My key inde-
pendent variables are three measures of peoples perceptions of the living environment in prisons.
My dependent variables measure peoples support for several different punitive and progressive
policy responses to crime. I include a variety of dependent variables in recognition of the growing
body of literature that finds that peoples opinions about criminal justice are multidimensional;
many people express support for both punitive punishments (like the death penalty and long prison
sentences) and progressive alternatives (like rehabilitation and crime prevention; e.g., Duffee &
Ritti, 1977; Green, Staerkle, & Sears, 2006; Maguire & Johnson, 2015; Mascini & Houtman, 2006;
Pickett, Chiricos, & Gertz, 2014; Ramirez, 2014; Unnever, Cochran, Cullen, & Applegate, 2010). I
control for a variety of symbolic, ideological predispositions that are frequently related to criminal
justice opinions, such as respondents attribution of blame for offending, racism, and political
ideology as well as the standard instrumental measures of fear of crime and victimization.
Controlling for ideological attitudes in the analyses allows me to test whether or not peoples
instrumental perceptions of prisons shape their punitive and progressive policy opinions above and
beyond their symbolic concerns about society.
I hypothesize that respondents who perceive inmates to be idle or life in prison to be easy or
insufficiently harsh will be more supportive of other harsh punishments and punitive policies and
less supportive of progressive, rehabilitative policies than respondents who do not perceive prisons
to be insufficiently harsh.

Method
Data
The data for this study come from an original public opinion survey conducted between September
2010 and March 2011. The sampling frame for the study was purchased from the marketing
research service InfoUSA, which maintains a regularly updated database of 230 million U.S.
households. The frame was comprised of 3,000 addresses randomly sampled from InfoUSAs
database. I contracted with the Center for Social Sciences and Public Policy Research at Missouri
State University to procure the sample and administer the survey. The study was funded with
research grants from American University.
Given the racialized nature of the crime debate in the United States (Chiricos, Welch, & Gertz,
2004; Hurwitz & Peffley, 2005), I chose a paper, mail-based delivery mode in order to minimize
race-related response biases; research indicates that in-person and phone surveys are more vulner-
able to these biases than mail surveys (Krysan, 1998). I followed the tailored design method
advocated by survey methodologists (Dillman, 1991; Dillman, Smyth, & Christian, 2009; Groves
et al., 2004). The survey utilized several elements that increase response rates, such as multiple
waves of mailings of reminder postcards and replacement questionnaires, envelopes with a univer-
sity seal and hand-printed addresses, and prepaid return envelopes.
The survey included a total of 42 questions. In addition to the survey items analyzed in this study,
the survey measured respondents opinions about a variety of different crime control policies and
punishments and their political awareness. For more information about the questionnaire and survey
design, see (Wozniak, 2012).
I received a total of 501 usable responses plus an additional 228 undeliverable packets. The
response rate was 16.7%, and the cooperation rate was 18.1%.1 The racial distribution of the
sample is 76.9% White, 9.8% Black, and 8.1% Other. Five percent of respondents identified their
ethnicity as Latino. The sample is 39.5% female and 60.5% male. The average age of respondents
is 57.2, with a standard deviation of 15.5 years. Just over 50% of respondents are 60 years of age or
356 Criminal Justice Review 41(3)

older. Twenty percent of respondents have a high school diploma or less formal education, 36.7%
have some college education or an associates degree, 22.7% have a bachelors degree, and 20.6%
have a graduate or professional degree. The sample includes residents of 48 different states plus
the District of Columbia.
While the response rate is low, survey methodologists note that response rates have been dra-
matically declining in recent years (Curtin, Presser, & Singer, 2005; de Leeuw & de Heer, 2002). For
example, in 2012, the Pew Center conducted a standard, 5-day-long phone survey with no incentives
and a high-effort phone survey that involved more than two dozen contacts over 2 months plus
financial incentives for participation. The standard method survey procured only a 9% response rate.
Even the high-effort survey procured only a 22% response rate, which is not much higher than the
response rate of this survey even though phone surveys typically yield higher response rates than
mail surveys, and this survey did not possess the benefit of a financial incentive (Pew Center, 2012).
However, methodologists demonstrate that response bias is not a direct function of the response
rate because a survey with few respondents could still theoretically possess sample statistics that
match the population parameters (Groves, 2006; Groves & Peytcheva, 2008; Keeter, Miller,
Kohut, Groves, & Presser, 2000). Indeed, the Pew Center found few significant differences
between its standard and high-effort survey data sets, and both data sets possessed sample statistics
that were comparable to benchmark estimates from the Census Bureaus Current Population
Survey (Pew Center, 2012). In light of these findings, survey methodologists recommend that
generalizability be assessed through direct examination of the sample statistics rather than eval-
uated on the response rate alone.
To assess the external validity of these data, I compare the demographic characteristics of my
sample to data from the 2010 census of the U.S. population in Table 1. This comparison shows that
my sample is disproportionately non-Latino White, male, educated, and older compared to the
national population; these response biases are relatively common in contemporary survey samples
(Pew Center, 2012). I comment on the implications of these response biases for the generalizability
of these data in the Discussion section.

Dependent Variables
Punishment preference. I adapted one question from the 2000 National Election Study (American
National Election Studies [ANES], 2015) to measure respondents preference for punishment
versus addressing social causes of crime. The question is, Some people say that the best way
to reduce crime is to address the social problems that cause crime, like bad schools, poverty, and
joblessness. Other people say the best way to reduce crime is to make sure that criminals are
caught, convicted, and punished. How about you? Which approach to fighting crime do you think
is better than the other? This question had six response options: 1/2/3 much/moderately/
slightly better to fix social problems (BTFSPs); and 4/5/6 slightly/moderately/much better to
punish criminals (BTPCs). Thus, higher scores indicate a stronger preference for punishment,
which I classify as the punitive response.

Government options for addressing crime. Four questions measured respondents support for crime
control policies, all of which were embedded under the same root umbrella: When it comes to
fighting crime, the government can choose from a variety of different tactics. How much do you
oppose or support . . . . (1) Building more prisons to house more offenders? (2) Funding programs to
help former prisoners find jobs and housing after they have completed their prison sentence in order
to reduce the chance that they will commit new crimes? (3) Funding programs to help prevent at-risk
youths from committing crimes? (4) Hiring more police officers? Each question had a 6-point
Likert-type response option ranging from 1 strongly oppose to 6 strongly support. I classify
Wozniak 357

Table 1. Sample Versus 2010 U.S. Census Demographic Comparison.

Characteristic Survey Data (%) Census Data (%)

White/Caucasian 76.9 72.4

Black/African American 9.8 12.6
Latino 5.0 16.3
Other race 8.1 12.1
Male 60.5 49.2
Age 1864 63.3 82.1a
Age 65 and older 36.7 17.9a
College, graduate, or advance professional degree 43.3 38.2
Note. aIn order to accurately compare the census data to the survey sample, which completely excludes respondents younger
than 18 years of age, I recalculated the age percentages of the census data to similarly exclude respondents younger than
18 years of age. The true percentages of Americans age 1864 and age 65 and older, when including people younger than
18 in the denominator, are 62.9% and 13.0%, respectively.

support for building more prisons or hiring more police as punitive in nature, while support for
funding reentry or crime prevention programs is progressive in nature.

Independent Variables
Perceptions of life in prison. Three questions measured respondents perceptions of life in prison.
They shared the same root format, which was Overall, do you think that life in prison is
_____, or is it _____? Respondents could choose between two contrasting adjectives, which
were (a) hard or easy, (b) depressing or enjoyable, and (c) dangerous or safe. The response
options were 6-point, bipolar scales. For example, the response option to the first question was
6 very hard, 5 moderately hard, 4 slightly hard, 3 slightly easy, 2 moderately easy,
and 1 very easy.
I reverse coded these questions, so that higher values indicate perceptions that are more consistent
with the image of plush prisons (i.e., higher values indicate perceptions of life as easy, enjoyable,
and/or safe), and I combined these 3 items into an additive scale. The correlations among these 3
items are moderate to strong (ranging from 0.46 to 0.64), and the Cronbachs a of the combined
scale is .80.

Perception of inmate idleness. A single question asked respondents, How do you think that most
prisoners actually spend their time? Do you think that most prisoners spend their time being idle and
lazy, or do you think that most prisoners spend their time being productively engaged in prison jobs
or educational classes? Similar to the previous items, this question had a 6-point, bipolar response
scale ranging from very idle to very productive, which I coded so that higher values indicate a
stronger belief that inmates are idle and lazy.

Prison punitiveness. One question measured respondents preferences for harsh prisons, which was
Overall, do you think that the living environment in prisons is too harsh, about right, or not harsh
enough for inmates? This question had a 3-point response scale, where 1 too harsh, 2 about
right; neither too harsh nor too lenient, and 3 not harsh enough. I recoded the measure so that 1
not harsh enough and 0 too harsh or about right. I collapsed the categories because only 11.8% of
respondents stated that the prison environment is too harsh (as opposed to 41.6% saying about
right and 46.6% saying not harsh enough).
358 Criminal Justice Review 41(3)

Control Variables
Attribution of blame. Following the work of Unnever, Cochran, Cullen, and Applegate (2010), I
construct separate scales for a respondents dispositional and situational attributions of blame.
These variables measure whether respondents believe that crime is predominantly caused by bad
choices and personal failings (dispositional) or societal/environmental pressures (situational). I
replicated the seven questionnaire items that operationalize these two variables directly from Unn-
ever et al. (2010). Higher values on these scales indicate stronger agreement with each type of
attribution. The Cronbachs a of the dispositional attribution scale is .47, and the Cronbachs a of the
situational attribution scale is .56.2

Symbolic racism. This variable is comprised of 6 items that I adapted from the ANES and the Los
Angeles County Social Survey (see Green et al., 2006; Unnever & Cullen, 2007). It includes
statements such as Its really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if Blacks would
only try harder, they would be just as well off as Whites and Generations of slavery and dis-
crimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the
lower class. Each of these items had a 6-point Likert-type scale to indicate strength of agreement or
disagreement. All items were coded in such a manner that higher values on the combined scale
indicate stronger agreement with the tenets of symbolic racism, which is the belief that higher rates
of disadvantage among African Americans compared to other racial groups are due to Blacks
inadequate work ethic and rejection of mainstream American values rather than systemic discrim-
ination (see Tarman & Sears, 2005). The Cronbachs a of the scale is .79.

Perception of fairness in the criminal justice system. This variable combines 3 items that measure a
respondents level of agreement or disagreement with statements that the criminal justice system
is fair regardless of race, the death penalty is applied fairly regardless of race, and a Black person
is likely to receive a harsher sentence than a White person who committed the same crime (the last
item is reverse coded). Higher values indicate a stronger belief that the justice system is fair and
unbiased, which scholars find to be a strong predictor of peoples opinions about punishment (e.g.,
Bobo & Johnson, 2004; D. Johnson, 2008; Peffley & Hurwitz, 2010). The Cronbachs a of the
additive scale is .78.

Political ideology. This construct was measured with a single question: Using this scale, how would
you describe your political ideology? This question had a 7-point response scale that ranged from
extremely liberal (value of 1) through moderate/middle-of-the-road (value of 4) to extremely con-
servative (value of 7).

News consumption. This variable is an additive scale that measures the number of days during a
typical week that the respondent consumes the news via TV, radio, Internet, and/or newspaper;
higher values on this scale indicate a greater volume of news consumed from a greater variety
of sources.

Fear of crime. A single-item variable measures this construct with a respondents answer to the
question, Within the past 6 months, have you ever felt afraid that you would become the victim
of a crime? The response options were yes (coded 1) or no (coded 0).

Victimization. Another single-item variable measures whether or not the respondent was the victim
of a crime with the question, Have you ever been the victim of a serious crime? This would
include such things as someone breaking into your home, having your car stolen, or being
Wozniak 359

physically assaulted or robbed. This item had the same dichotomous response options as the fear
of crime question.

Demographics. I control for a variety of demographic characteristics in order to partially address the
response biases in the data. Dummy variables contrast the opinions of Democrats and Independents
against those of Republicans (the omitted category). Dummy variables identify African Americans
(1 Black, 0 all other races) and women. Age is a continuous variable. Education and household
income are each ordinal variables coded so that higher scores indicate higher levels of educational
achievement and income. Finally, dummy variables identify respondents who live in states in the
Northeast, Central, and West regions of the country, contrasted to those who live in the South (the
omitted category); I use the U.S. Census categorization of regions.

Plan of Analysis and Regression Diagnostics

I conducted all analyses with Stata version 13 (Statacorp, 2013). In order to test for multicollinearity,
I first regressed each dependent variable on the independent and control variables using ordinary
least squares (OLS) regression and calculated variance inflation factor (VIF) scores. No variable in
any model generated a VIF score greater in magnitude than 2.70, which falls below the standard
thresholds of concern (Fisher & Mason, 1981; Fox, 1991). However, the ordinal nature of the
dependent variables violates the assumptions of OLS, so I ran preliminary analyses using ordinal
logistic maximum likelihood estimation (Long, 1997). Postestimation Brant tests revealed that a
small number of variables in each ordinal logistic model violated the parallel regression assumption,
which means that the coefficients of those variables were not consistent across categories of the
dependent variable. In order to overcome this violation, I reestimated the models as partial propor-
tional odds models using the gologit2 command in Stata (Williams, 2006). This model allows the
analyst to constrain variables that meet the parallel regression assumption so that their coefficients
are identical across categories of the dependent variable while simultaneously allowing the coeffi-
cients of variables that violate the assumption to vary across categories.
Constrained variable effects can be interpreted like normal ordinal logistic regression (i.e., how
a unit change in an independent variable affected the likelihood that a respondent would choose
the next highest category of the dependent variable). The partial proportional odds model
produces output for the unconstrained variables that is similar in nature to a multinomial logistic
regression. Essentially, the partial proportional odds model simultaneously estimates a series of
binary logistic regressions in which the categories of the dependent variable are iteratively com-
pared to each other. Since the dependent variables in this study are 6-point scales, the first panel of
results for the unconstrained variables contrasts category 1 (coded 0) of the dependent variable
against Categories 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (coded 1). The second panel contrasts Categories 1 and 2 (coded
0) against Categories 3, 4, 5, and 6 (coded 1). The third panel contrasts Categories 1, 2, and 3
(coded 0) against Categories 4, 5, and 6 (coded 1), and so on. Thus, to interpret the present results,
positive coefficients for unconstrained variables indicate that higher values on the explanatory
variable made a respondent more likely to choose a more punitive category of the punishment
preference question or more likely to express weaker opposition and/or stronger support for each
crime prevention policy. Negative coefficients indicate that higher values on the explanatory
variable decreased the likelihood of choosing a more punitive or more supportive answer
(Williams, 2006).
Cases with missing data were eliminated via listwise deletion, which means that the analysis
samples were lower than the total sample size, a tactic that Allison (2002) defends as no less robust
than most alternative means of addressing missing data.
360 Criminal Justice Review 41(3)

Table 2. Results of Generalized Ordered Logit Regressions of Punishment Preference on Prison Perceptions
and Control Variables.

Variables Punishment Preference

Constrained factors
Perception of inmate idleness 1.05 (.09)
Prison punitiveness 1.40 (.32)
Dispositional attribution of blame 1.13 (.04)***
Situational attribution of blame 0.92 (.03)**
Symbolic racism 1.06 (.03)*
Perceived fairness of criminal justice system 1.03 (.04)
Political ideology (conservative) 1.26 (.13)*
News consumption 1.01 (.02)
Fear of crime 1.06 (.30)
Victimization 0.85 (.20)
Democrat 0.78 (.24)
Independent 0.62 (.18)
African American 0.73 (.35)
Female 1.00 (.24)
Age 1.00 (.01)
Education 0.90 (.07)
Household income 0.95 (.07)
Northeast 0.67 (.21)
Central 0.67 (.17)
West 0.76 (.22)
Unconstrained factors
[Much BTFSP] versus [Mod. BTFSP, Slt. BTFSP, Slt. BTPC, Mod. BTPC, Much BTPC]
Perception of life in prison scale 1.27 (.08)***
[Much BTFSP, Mod. BTFSP] versus [Slt. BTFSP, Slt. BTPC, Mod. BTPC, Much BTPC]
Perception of life in prison scale 1.25 (.06)***
[Much BTFSP, Mod. BTFSP, Slt. BTFSP] versus [Slt. BTPC, Mod. BTPC, Much BTPC]
Perception of life in prison scale 1.22 (.05)***
[Much BTFSP, Mod. BTFSP, Slt. BTFSP, Slt. BTPC] versus [Mod. BTPC, Much BTPC]
Perception of life in prison scale 1.15 (.04)***
[Much BTFSP, Mod. BTFSP, Slt. BTFSP, Slt. BTPC Mod. BTPC] versus [Much BTPC]
Perception of life in prison scale 1.03 (.04)
Log pseudolikelihood 528.40
N 365
McFaddens pseudo R2 .17
Note. Odds ratios with robust standard errors are given in parentheses. Slt. slightly; Mod. moderately; BTFSP better to
fix social problems; BTPC better to punish criminals.
y
p  .10. *p  .05. **p  .01. ***p  .001.

Results
Table 2 presents the results of the generalized ordered logit regression of peoples preferences for
punishment versus fixing social problems as a way to reduce crime. Four of the constrained variables
significantly affected respondents punishment preference, all of which are symbolic, attitudinal
measures. Each scale unit increase toward stronger belief in a dispositional attribution of blame was
associated with a 13% increased likelihood that a respondent would choose a response more sup-
portive of punishment than fixing social problems. In contrast, each scale unit increase toward
stronger belief in a situational attribution of blame was associated with an 8% decreased likelihood
Wozniak 361

of choosing a more punitive response. Each scale unit increase toward stronger agreement with the
tenets of symbolic racism was associated with a 6% increased likelihood of choosing a more punitive
response. Lastly, each unit increase on the political ideology scale, moving from liberal to conser-
vative, was associated with a 26% increased likelihood of more strongly preferring punishment to
fixing social problems.
Only one measure related to the penal escalation hypothesis significantly affected respondents
preference for punishment versus fixing social problems, and this variable had to be unconstrained
because it violated the parallel regression assumption. Examining the unconstrained odds ratios, we
see that the more strongly that respondents perceived life in prison to be easy, enjoyable, and/or safe,
the more likely they were to support punishing offenders. This effect was most pronounced in
reducing the odds that a respondent would say that it is much BTFSPs versus all other response
options and least pronounced in increasing the odds that a respondent would say that it is moder-
ately or much BTPCs versus all other response options. In fact, peoples perceptions of life in
prison did not significantly affect their odds of choosing much BTPCs contrasted to all other
categories. Overall, then, these results suggest that perceptions of life in prison as easy, enjoyable,
and/or safe make people resistant to fixing social problems as a response to crime, but they do not
increase a preference for punishment to the same degree.
Examining the odds ratios, we see that peoples perceptions of life in prison and their political
ideology exerted the largest substantive effects on their preference for punishment versus fixing
social problems; depending upon the level of the dependent variable, the effects of these two
variables were comparable. Peoples attributions of blame and agreement with the tenets of sym-
bolic racism were associated with comparatively smaller shifts in their punishment preferences.
Table 3 presents the results of generalized ordered logit regressions of peoples support for
punitive and progressive policies to fight crime. I will first discuss the effects of respondents
perceptions of and attitudes toward prisons, then I will discuss the effects of their symbolic attitudes,
and lastly I will discuss the effects of demographic characteristics.
All three measures of prison opinions exerted significant effects, although these effects varied
from policy to policy. A one-unit increase on the perception of life in prison scale, indicating a
stronger perception that life in prison is easy, enjoyable, and/or safe, was associated with an 8%
greater likelihood of expressing stronger support for building more prisons but a 7% and a 19%
reduction in the likelihood of expressing stronger support for hiring more police or funding
prisoner reentry programs, respectively. These effects were consistent across categories of the
dependent variables. In contrast, the effect of respondents perceptions of life in prison on their
support for crime prevention programs violated the parallel regression assumption. Overall, per-
ceptions of life in prison as easy, enjoyable, and/or safe decreased respondents likelihood of
supporting crime prevention, but the effect was strongest in reducing the likelihood that respon-
dents would strongly support crime prevention programs (associated with a 30% reduced
likelihood). On the other end of the spectrum, perceptions of life in prison did not significantly
affect the likelihood that respondents would choose to strongly oppose crime prevention con-
trasted to all other response options. In between, perceptions of life in prison as easy, enjoyable,
and/or safe decreased respondents likelihood of expressing moderate support versus moderate
opposition by about 20%.
A one-unit increase in the degree to which respondents perceived inmates to spend their time idly
was associated with an 18% reduction in the likelihood that a person would express stronger support
for building more prisons but a 22% increase in the likelihood of expressing stronger support for
prisoner reentry programs. Respondents perceptions of inmates idleness were not significantly
related to their support for hiring police, and the effect on their support for crime prevention policies
violated the parallel regression assumption. The unconstrained odds ratios show that perceptions of
inmate idleness significantly increased the likelihood that the respondents would support crime
362 Criminal Justice Review 41(3)

Table 3. Results of Generalized Ordered Logit Regressions of Punitive and Progressive Crime Policy Opinions
on Prison Perceptions and Control Variables.

Variables More Prisons More Police Prisoner Reentry Crime Prevention

Constrained factors
Perception of life in prison scale 1.08 (.03)* 0.93 (.03)* 0.81 (.03)*** (unconstrained)
Perception of inmate idleness 0.82 (.06)* 0.95 (.08) 1.22 (.10)* (unconstrained)
Prison punitiveness (unconstrained) (unconstrained) 1.01 (.25) 2.06 (.52)**
Dispositional attribution of blame 1.15 (.04)*** 1.07 (.04)* 1.02 (.04) 1.04 (.04
Situational attribution of blame 1.01 (.03) 1.02 (.03) 1.11 (.03)*** 1.12 (.04)*
Symbolic racism 1.07 (.03)* 1.05 (.03)* 1.00 (.03) 0.97 (.02)
Perceived fairness of criminal 1.01 (.04) 0.98 (.03) 0.96 (.03) 0.97 (.04)
justice system
Political ideology (conservative) 1.10 (.12) 1.13 (.10) 0.98 (.10) 1.21 (.12)y
News consumption 0.97 (.02) 1.05 (.02) 1.03 (.02) 1.01 (.02)
Fear of crime 1.28 (.30) 1.18 (.27) 0.68 (.19) 0.74 (.20)
Victimization 0.93 (.20) 1.31 (.28) 1.28 (.30) 0.92 (.23)
Democrat 0.61 (.19) 1.22 (.39) (unconstrained) 1.81 (.58)y
Independent 0.52 (.14)* 0.90 (.25) 0.95 (.25) 1.48 (.39)
African American 0.88 (.34) 2.11 (.81)y 1.94 (1.02) 2.54 (1.44)y
Female 1.01 (.22) 1.83 (.43)** (unconstrained) 2.04 (.51)**
Age 1.00 (.01) 1.00 (.01) 1.02 (.01)* 1.02 (.01)*
Education 1.03 (.08) 1.08 (.08) 0.98 (.07) 1.09 (.08)
Household income 1.06 (.08) 1.02 (.07) 0.96 (.06) 1.00 (.07)
Northeast 1.37 (.38) (unconstrained) (unconstrained) 0.86 (.25)
Central 1.42 (.39) 1.26 (.32) 0.85 (.24) 1.03 (.29)
West 1.05 (.27) 0.78 (.24) 0.71 (.20) 1.47 (.46)
Unconstrained factors
[Str. Opp.] versus [Mod. Opp., Slt. Opp., Slt. Supp., Mod. Supp., Str. Supp.]
Perception of life in prison scale 0.91 (.08)
Perception of inmate idleness 0.85 (.22)
Prison punitiveness .65 (.22) 0.69 (.46)
Democrat 2.23 (1.65)
Female 3.07 (1.92)y
Northeast 1.19 (1.07) 0.19 (.14)*
[Str. Opp., Mod. Opp.] versus [Slt. Opp, Slt. Supp., Mod. Supp., Str. Supp.]
Perception of life in prison scale 0.79 (.05)***
Perception of inmate idleness 0.79 (.18)
Prison punitiveness .89 (.06) 0.61 (.26)
Democrat 3.02 (2.08)
Female 1.43 (.70)
Northeast 2.03 (1.29) 0.15 (.11)**
[Str. Opp., Mod. Opp., Slt. Opp.] versus [Slt. Supp., Mod. Supp., Str. Supp.]
Perception of life in prison scale 0.81 (.04)***
Perception of inmate idleness 1.48 (.17)***
Prison punitiveness 1.26 (.32) 1.09 (.33)
Democrat 0.79 (.29)
Female 0.83 (.26)
Northeast 0.66 (.22) 1.53 (.59)
[Str. Opp., Mod. Opp., Slt. Opp., Slt. Supp.] versus [Mod. Supp., Str. Supp.]
Perception of life in prison scale 0.80 (.03)***
Perception of inmate idleness 1.24 (.12)*
Prison punitiveness 1.48 (.39) 1.51 (.41)
(continued)
Wozniak 363

Table 3. (continued)

Variables More Prisons More Police Prisoner Reentry Crime Prevention

Democrat 0.92 (.32)

Female 1.20 (.31)
Northeast 1.01 (0.29) 1.42 (.45)
[Str. Opp., Mod. Opp., Slt. Opp., Slt. Supp., Mod. Supp.] versus [Str. Supp.]
Perception of life in prison scale 0.70 (.03)***
Perception of inmate idleness 1.12 (.11)
Prison punitiveness 1.80 (.61)y 1.88 (.54)*
Democrat 1.75 (.60)y
Female 2.12 (.56)**
Northeast 1.73 (.53)y 1.23 (.43)
Log pseudolikelihood 585.74 531.43 470.01 455.37
N 365 359 365 363
McFaddens pseudo R2 .09 .06 .16 .19

Note. Odds ratios with robust standard errors are given in parentheses. Slt. slightly; Mod. moderately; Str. strongly;
Opp. oppose; Supp. support.
y
p  .10. *p  .05. **p  .01. ***p  .001.

prevention, but this effect was restricted to the choice between overall support versus opposition
(increasing the likelihood of choosing any of the supportive responses by 48%) as well as the choice
between moderate or strong support and the other responses (increasing the likelihood of support by
24%); the variable did not significantly predict the likelihood of choosing either strong support or
opposition versus the more moderate choices.
Finally, respondents who judged that the living environment in prisons is not harsh enough were
106% more likely to express greater support for crime prevention policies than respondents who held
a less punitive attitude toward prison conditions, but this variable did not significantly affect support
for prisoner reentry programs. The effects of this independent variable on support for building more
prisons and hiring more police violated the parallel regression assumption. The unconstrained odds
ratios show that the perception that the living environment in prisons is not harsh enough only
significantly increased the likelihood that respondents would express strong support for more pris-
ons (by 80%) and more police (by 88%) compared to all other responses, which indicates that this
perception of prisons only affects the strongest of punitive criminal justice policy preferences, not
more weakly held attitudes.
Several measures of symbolic attitudes were also related to respondents support for punitive
and progressive criminal justice policies. Each scale unit increase toward stronger belief in a dis-
positional attribution of blame was associated with a 15% increased likelihood in expressing greater
support for building prisons and a 7% increased likelihood in expressing greater support for hiring
more police officers. Each scale unit increase toward stronger belief in a situational attribution of
blame was associated with an 11% increased likelihood of expressing greater support for prisoner
reentry programs and a 12% increased likelihood of expressing greater support for crime prevention
policies. Each scale unit increase toward stronger agreement with the tenets of symbolic racism was
associated with a 7% increased likelihood of expressing greater support for building more prisons
and a 5% increased likelihood of expressing greater support for hiring police. Lastly, each unit
increase on the political ideology scale, moving from liberal to conservative, was associated with a
21% increased likelihood of expressing greater support for crime prevention. The relationships
between all of the symbolic attitudinal variables and the dependent variables conformed to the
parallel regression assumption.
364 Criminal Justice Review 41(3)

Finally, several demographic factors were related to peoples crime policy opinions. Democrats
were 81% more likely to express stronger support for crime prevention than Republicans, and
Independents were 48% more likely to express stronger opposition to building more prisons than
Republicans. African Americans were 111% more likely to express stronger support for hiring more
police and 154% more likely to express stronger support for crime prevention programs than were
respondents of other races (predominantly Whites). Similarly, women were 83% more likely to
express stronger support for hiring more police and 104% more likely to express stronger support for
crime prevention programs than were men. The relationship between gender and support for prisoner
reentry programs is more complex because it did not conform to the parallel regression assumption.
The unconstrained odds ratios show that women were much more likely to express both strong
opposition (207% increased likelihood) and strong support (112% increased likelihood) for reentry
programs than men, but there was no significant difference across gender in regard to moderate or
weak attitudes toward reentry. Each additional year of age was associated with a 2% increased
likelihood of more strongly supporting both prisoner reentry and crime prevention policies. Lastly,
the relationships between region of residence and support for the police and prisoner reentry violated
the parallel regression assumption. Residents of northeastern states were 73% more likely to express
strong support for hiring more police than residents of the south, and there were no significant
regional differences across moderate support or opposition. Residents of the northeast were 81%
more likely to say that they strongly oppose and 85% more likely to say that they strongly or
moderately oppose prisoner reentry programs than residents of the south, but there were no
significant regional differences across levels of support.
Assessing the odds ratios of the variables in these models, we see that the substantive magni-
tude of the relationships between peoples perceptions of and attitudes toward prisons and their
support for punitive and progressive criminal justice policies was often comparable to or larger
than the substantive effects of their symbolic attitudes and ideologies, often causing 1020%
changes in respondents likelihood of choosing particular responses. Furthermore, the relation-
ships between peoples punitive preferences for the prison environment and their support for other
criminal justice policies were among the largest in magnitude in this study, changing the like-
lihood of respondents responses by 80% to about 100%. These findings suggest that peoples
instrumental attitudes toward prisons are just as influential as their symbolic attitudes when it
comes to shaping their broader opinions about criminal justice policy. However, it must be noted
that it was peoples demographic characteristics that exerted the substantively largest effects in
most of these models, which suggests that the influence of race and gender on peoples crime
policy attitudes may be quite significant. However, given the fact that this sample is not perfectly
representative of the population, I believe that these effects of race and gender should be inter-
preted with a degree of caution.

Discussion
It was my purpose in this study to empirically test Roberts and Houghs (2005) penal escalation
hypothesis. I find support for their theoretical argument that peoples global opinions about punish-
ment and criminal justice are significantly related to their judgments about whether or not prisons
deliver sufficiently harsh punishment, although the extent and nature of that relationship varied from
measure to measure. Some of the present findings are consistent with the directional predictions of
their hypothesis. Perceptions of life in prison as easy, enjoyable, and/or safe increased respondents
support for building more prisons (a punitive response) and decreased their support for prisoner
reentry and crime prevention programs (progressive responses). People who judged the living
environments in prison to be not harsh enough were also significantly more likely to support the
punitive options of building more prisons and hiring more police.
Wozniak 365

Other findings were opposite to those hypothesized at the beginning of this study. I categorized
support for hiring more police as a punitive response, but perceptions of life in prison as easy,
enjoyable, and/or safe decreased respondents support for hiring police. This effect suggests that it
may be reductive to classify support for police as a punitive response, which would make sense
given that police are capable of protective crime prevention and community building as well as
oppressive surveillance and rigid social control. The more that respondents perceived inmates to
spend their time idly, the less likely they were to support building more prisons and the more likely
they were to support prisoner reentry and crime prevention programs. I interpret these findings as
consistent with previous studies which found that people desire for prisons to give inmates the
means to rehabilitate themselves, yet largely perceive that prisons fail to accomplish that goal
(e.g., Doble, 1987). It seems as if these respondents see little reason to build more prisons if they
give inmates nothing to do but sit idly all day. In contrast, these results suggest that respondents
who perceive that prisons give inmates insufficient opportunities to rehabilitate themselves
instead place responsibility for that goal upon reentry programs or programs designed to keep
offenders out of prison in the first place.
Two points bear mentioning. First, in a related article (Wozniak, 2015), I find that all three
prison perception items are significantly related to peoples preferences for the death penalty over
life imprisonment without the possibility of parole; the more strongly that respondents perceived
life in prison to be easy, perceived inmates to be idle, and believed that life in prison is not harsh
enough, the more likely they were to prefer the death penalty. These findings are consistent with
the penal escalation hypothesis, which suggests Roberts and Hough were not incorrect, but rather
scholars need to further explore potential differential relationships between different facets/mea-
sures of peoples perceptions of prisons and their opinions about a variety of criminal justice
policies and practices.
Second, even though the present findings did not unvaryingly conform to the predictions of the
penal escalation hypothesis, it is important to recognize that measures of peoples perceptions of
prisons were significantly related to their opinions about other aspects of criminal justice even when
controlling for other instrumental, symbolic, and ideological measures that are common in this
empirical literature. Indeed, the magnitude of the relationships between the prison perception items
and the dependent variables was frequently comparable to or greater than the magnitude of the
effects of attribution of blame, symbolic racism, and political ideology. These findings suggest that
peoples instrumental evaluations of different parts of the justice system may play a more important
role in explaining their overall opinions about punishment and criminal justice than scholars have
typically acknowledged in this literature. If we have, indeed, underestimated the true importance of
instrumental concerns, I argue that we have done so because scholars have all too often relied upon
fear of crime and victimization as the sole operational definitions of the instrumentalism construct.
The present findings indicate that scholars should explore broader, more diverse ways of measuring
peoples instrumental judgments about the functioning of the justice system. Thus, these findings
should contribute to both the theory and measurement of public opinion about criminal justice.
In addition to the findings directly related to the penal escalation hypothesis, the pattern of
relationships between the symbolic and ideological measures and the dependent variables is notable.
Dispositional attribution and symbolic racism are hypothesized to increase punitiveness, and here
they affected public opinion about policies that are typically deemed to be punitive in nature
(building more prisons and hiring more police), but they were not significantly related to progressive
policies (funding reentry and prevention programs). We see the exact opposite pattern for situational
attribution. The only dependent variable that was significantly related to both dispositional and
situation attribution was the bipolar punishment preference item, which encompasses both puni-
tive and progressive sentiments. These results affirm other scholars recent arguments that valid
measures of the full scope of public opinion about criminal justice must be multidimensional
366 Criminal Justice Review 41(3)

(i.e., separately measure both punitive and progressive policy opinions; Maguire & Johnson, 2015;
Mascini & Houtman, 2006; Unnever et al., 2010; for a counter argument, see Pickett & Baker,
2014); here, we see that this advice applies not only to the measurement of dependent variables
but also to the attitudinal predictors that explain variation in those different types of variables.
The findings of this study have implications for the politics of crime and punishment. In the
heyday of tough on crime policy making during the 1980s and 1990s, politicians and pundits in
the United States frequently decried country club conditions in prisons (see Wozniak, 2014 for a
review). Even though that specific rhetoric has waned somewhat in recent years, politicians fear of
being labeled soft on crime has not entirely vanished, and political attack ads centered on criminal
justice issues are still fielded in contemporary elections (Litton, 2015; Schwartzapel & Keller,
2015). As Roberts and Hough (2005, p. 292) argued,

. . . this public view of a congenial prison environment may encourage politicians and correctional
officials to further restrict the amenities available to prisoners. It is critical, therefore, that members
of the public have a realistic idea of the nature of life in prison.

The present findings suggest that public (mis)perceptions of the nature of life in prison may lead
policy makers to intervene in justice policies well beyond the allowance and funding of prison
amenities if they perceive that doing so is the only way to convince their constituents that justice
system punishments are up to the task. As such, I echo Roberts and Houghs call for a public
education campaign to break down popular stereotypes about prisons that minimize the true pains of
imprisonment lest those stereotypes fuel broader punitive sentiment (R. Johnson, 2002). A good first
step in such a campaign would be for wardens and correctional officers to share their perspectives on
prisons with the public. Numerous surveys find that corrections professionals value amenities and
leisure time for inmates as tools to maintain order within prisons (DeWine, 1997; Finn, 1996; W. W.
Johnson, Bennett, & Flanagan, 1997; Tewksbury & Mustaine, 2005). One can hope that voters
anger toward plush conditions in prisons could be tempered if the professionals who run those
prisons explain that amenities are not perks; they are tools that can be used to help inmates
rehabilitate themselves, and most Americans say that rehabilitation should be the number one goal
of incarceration (e.g., Cullen, Pealer, Fisher, Applegate, & Santana, 2002).
In the absence of such counterframing by corrections professionals and other reform advo-
cates, these findings indicate that populist demagoguery attacking country club prisons could
negatively impact public support for contemporary criminal justice reforms. For the first time in
decades, numerous states and the federal government are seriously considering sentencing reform
bills designed to reduce the size of the nations incarcerated population (Beitsch, 2016; Horwitz,
2016). However, despite consistent survey evidence of strong public support for rehabilitation and
other progressive criminal justice policies, Wozniak (2016) cautions that limitations in extant
research preclude a full and proper understanding of the degree to which public support for criminal
justice reform would be vulnerable to new tough on crime attacks. This remains an important,
open question that needs to be empirically answered.

Limitations
As discussed in the Methods section, this sample overrepresents non-Latino Whites, men, people
with more formal education, and the elderly. As such, these data cannot be said to be perfectly
representative of the U.S. population. However, it is difficult to say whether or how these response
biases may affect the opinions and attitudes under study. Some studies indicate that African Amer-
icans oppose punitive punishment more frequently than Whites (Borg, 1998; Chiricos et al., 2004;
Unnever & Cullen, 2005), so the overrepresentation of Whites might make my sample more punitive
Wozniak 367

than the population. On the other hand, college-educated respondents are overrepresented, and
studies often reveal a negative relationship between education and punitiveness (Chiricos et al.,
2004; Green et al., 2006; Unnever & Cullen, 2010). The age and gender disparities in my sample
relative to the population are larger in magnitude than race, but past studies find inconsistent or null
relationships between these variables and punitiveness (Borg, 1998; Green et al., 2006; Jacoby &
Cullen, 1999; Tyler & Weber, 1982). Thus, it is difficult to theorize how these results would have
been different had the sample been more perfectly representative of the population, but I will note
that the relationships between gender, race, and punitive and progressive policy support observed in
these data should be interpreted with a degree of caution, given the overrepresentation of men and
the underrepresentation of African Americans in the sample.
Although these data do not possess perfect generalizability, I contend that they make a contri-
bution to our knowledge since no other previous survey measured both peoples perceptions of
prisons and their attitudes toward a variety of different punitive and progressive justice policies. I
hope that this article will merely be the first step in a broader line of inquiry that revisits Roberts and
Houghs (2005) penal escalation hypothesis by directly testing the relationships between peoples
perceptions of many different components of the criminal justice system. Only through replication
will we be able to judge the generalizability of the present findings with certainty. In particular, it
would be valuable to test the penal escalation hypothesis with new data from European countries.
Many European correctional systems are held up as paragons of human rights in comparison to U.S.
prisons (Benko, 2015; Chammah, 2015). The fact that the findings of Brillon et al. (1984) from
Canada and Glanz (1994) from South Africa mirror many of the relationships uncovered in these
data from the United States suggest that the penal escalation hypothesis is valid cross nationally, but
this proposition should be tested in countries with low incarceration rates that emphasize the civil
and human rights of inmates.
It is also important to note that this study measures global attitudes. The prison perception
questions did not ask respondents to distinguish between different types of prisons (i.e., minimum
vs. maximum security) or prisons in different areas of the country. It is quite plausible to imagine a
sophisticated respondent saying, Well, some prisons are dangerous, but others are safe. It
depends. As such, these measures are inherently reductive. It is perhaps more accurate to think
of these data more as peoples stereotypes of prisons rather than their perceptions. However, people
form opinions about politics and public policy off the cuff, using whatever impressions jump to
mind, all the time (Zaller, 1992). The fact that many of these opinions do not match empirical
reality hardly mitigates their influence when it comes to electoral politics (Beckett, 1997; Brown,
2011). Future research should test whether or not people meaningfully distinguish between different
types of prisons when forming their opinions, and if so, how those different perceptions relate to
their opinions about other facets of the justice system.
Because of the fact that these data are cross sectional, I cannot conclusively establish temporal
order between peoples perceptions of prisons and their opinions about other facets of criminal
justice policy and practice. As such, these findings are correlational, not causal, in nature. Future
research could use experimental methods to prime respondents with pictures of prison environments
that are more or less austere to determine whether or not perceptions of prisons as insufficiently
harsh cause peoples punitive attitudes about other facets of the justice system to change.

Conclusion
Analyzing data from an original public opinion survey administered to a randomly selected sample
of adults in the United States, I find that peoples perceptions of life and conditions in prison are
significantly related to their opinions about other, punitive and progressive aspects of criminal
justice policy and practice. These results partially support Roberts and Houghs (2005) penal
368 Criminal Justice Review 41(3)

escalation hypothesis and highlight the need for scholars to reevaluate the importance of instru-
mental versus symbolic factors when attempting to explain variation in peoples opinions about
punishment and justice. Future research should continue to explore the relationships between peo-
ples perceptions of numerous different parts of the criminal justice system rather than studying
them in isolation.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: The collection of the data analyzed in this study was funded by disserta-
tion research grants from American University and the Gill Family Foundation.

Notes
1. Calculated using the American Association for Public Opinion Researchs Response Rate 1:501 (# com-
pletes)/3,000 (# completes # noninterviews # unknown eligibility); and Cooperation Rate 1:501 (#
completes)/2,772 (# completes # noninterviews).
2. While these a scores are lower than the standard reliability thresholds, they are consistent with the a scores
of attribution variables in prior studies (see Pickett & Baker, 2014, for an overview of the literature). Given
the theoretical importance of the attribution constructs for the study of public opinion about punishment, I
retain these measures, although these mediocre reliability estimates indicate that work remains to be done to
refine the measurement of crime attribution.

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Author Biography
Kevin H. Wozniak is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He studies
the politics of punishment and criminal justice. He received his PhD in justice, law, and society and American
politics from American University in Washington, DC.