Judging Hardworking Robbers and Lazy Thieves: An Experimental Test of Act- vs. Person-Centered Punitiveness and Perceived Redeemability

Abstract

This study explores whether Americans’ punitiveness and perceptions of redeemability are shaped more by the type of crime committed or by judgements about an offender’s moral character. Guided by theories of neoliberalism, we focus on laziness as an indicator of flawed character that is independent of criminality. A sentencing vignette experiment administered to a national sample of the U.S. population tested the effects of crime type and a defendant’s employment status, work ethic, and race on respondents’ preferred punishment and perceptions of the defendant’s redeemability. Both crime type and work ethic significantly affect perceived (ir)redeemability and sentencing preferences, but the effects are not identical. Work ethic exerts the largest effect on perceived (ir)redeemability, whereas crime type most strongly influences sentencing preferences. We discuss the implications of our findings for act- vs. person-centered theories of punishment, as well as the role of laziness stigma in social responses to lawbreakers.

Keywords:

• Punitiveness
• redeemability
• neoliberalism
• laziness
• vignette

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Schutten et al. (2022) is the notable exception. They tested whether a cue about a hypothetical school shooter’s mental illness affected respondents’ perception of the shooter’s rehabilitation potential. This cue had no significant effect on perceived redeemability.

2 Kuettel (2022) is the only exception of which we are aware. In a factorial vignette experiment, he manipulated whether a person arrested for drug possession was “receiving welfare.” This factor did not significantly affect respondents’ chosen punishment for the arrested drug user. His study did not examine crimes of violence.

3 Though professionals obviously possess specialized training, and their decision-making occurs within the context of and is shaped by the institutions of the justice system, criminal justice professionals are socialized within the same cultural habitus as lay citizens before they entered their professions and, as such, are likely to be influenced by the same cultural norms and prejudices as civilians (Steffensmeier et al., 1998). It also bears repeating that civilians weigh very similar factors as professionals when judging offenders (Rossi & Berk, 1997).

4 Denver et al. (2017) found that survey respondents perceived people convicted of violent crimes to be the most likely to recidivate, and using crime-first, as opposed to person-first, language exacerbated this perception. In contrast, experimental manipulation of crime- vs. person-first language did not significantly affect respondents’ perceived recidivism risk of people convicted of nonviolent or drug crimes. This evidence somewhat contradicts the findings of Martin and Heiphetz (2021) and Van Cleve (2016).

5 The CES was previously named the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.

6 The variables used for matching included: age, race, ethnicity, gender, education, voter registration, and region. The variables used for weighting included: age, gender, education, race, “born again" status, voter registration status, and Presidential vote choice.

7 Specifically, a total of 100,485 matched panelists were contacted, of whom 98,879 were eligible or of unknown eligibility, and 60,466 provided completed interviews (60,466/98,879 = .612).

8 All numbers listed here are the average rating of each face on each characteristic. Full data about each face is available to download for free from the Chicago Face Database.

9 Using the Stata command “norm,” this was done per the following equation: ([Y ‒ Y_min] ÷ [Y_max ‒ Y_min]) × 100.

10 We report the regression model output in the online appendix.

11 Per an anonymous reviewer’s inquiry, we also tested whether the effect of the work ethic cue varied across respondents’ political ideology on the logic that political conservatives may have a more negative reaction to laziness than political liberals. There was no such interaction in our data, either for perceived immutability (b = 1.479, p = .416) or for the preferred sentence (b = .795, p = .596).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by College of Liberal Arts Dean's Research Fund Grant, University of Massachusetts Boston; Joseph P Healey Research Grant, University of Massachusetts Boston.

Notes on contributors

Kevin H. Wozniak

Kevin H. Wozniak was an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston when he completed this research. He is a former Congressional Fellow of the American Political Science Association and former W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow of the National Institute of Justice. He studies public opinion and the politics of criminal justice policy and practice. In January 2023, he will join the law and criminology faculty at the National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Justin T. Pickett

Justin T. Pickett is an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at SUNYAlbany. He is the 2015 recipient of the American Society of Criminology’s Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award. His research interests include survey research methods, public opinion, police-community relations, and theories of punishment.

Elizabeth K. Brown

Elizabeth K. Brown is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on public opinion, penal politics and policy, and state-level criminal justice issues. She received her PhD in Criminal Justice from the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, State University of New York in 2009.