5 - The Consequences of Fairness

Summary

The vignettes we focused on in the last chapter were designed to allow us to examine the impact of fairness judgments on respondents' perceptions of agents of the criminal justice system – namely the police, and how these perceptions differ across the race of the respondent and the race of the civilian in the vignette. We now turn to another potential consequence of generalized fairness beliefs: anticrime-policy attitudes. We take up the matter of the racial divide toward policies that have become, in the eyes of many individuals, highly racialized. Specifically, what accounts for the high degree of racial polarization in the anticrime-policy domain? How is differential support for policies such as the death penalty, three-strikes laws, and spending for prison construction influenced by the way the policy is framed by elites? Finally, to what degree is support for such punitive policies related to assessments of fairness toward the justice system? Are those who believe that Blacks are to blame for their harsh treatment more supportive of policies that are disproportionately used against African Americans?

THE MASS ELITE LINKAGE

On September 13, 1994, President Clinton signed into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The legislation appropriated more than $30 billion, mostly earmarked for state and federal law enforcement efforts, prisons, and crime-prevention programs. It also imposed a ten-year ban on new assault weapons, revived the death penalty as a federal sentencing option, and mandated a sentence of life imprisonment for violent three-time federal offenders.