American Public Opinion About Prisons

• Published date: 01 September 2014
• Author: Kevin H. Wozniak
• Date: 01 September 2014
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016814529968
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Public Opinion

About Prisons

Kevin H. Wozniak

1

Abstract

Politicians in the United States frequently cite public anger when they attack ‘‘country-club’’

conditions in prisons. Despite the ubiquity of this rhetoric, it is backed by limited empirical support.

Few studies measure American citizens’ attitudes toward prison conditions, and even fewer studies

do so with data from random samples of the population. To address this limitation in our knowledge,

I measure public perceptions of life in prison and opinions about the appropriate severity of pun-

ishment in prison with data from an original public opinion survey administered to a national sample

of the U.S. population. I find that a plurality of respondents both perceive life in prison to be

unpleasant and voice the opinion that life in prison should be harsher still. I contextualize these

findings within the broader study of public opinion about punishment.

Keywords

prison, corrections, crime policy, public opinion, survey methods, politics

Introduction

The Politics of Punishment

One of the most significant changes to American society over the past 40 years has been the rise of

the ‘‘penal harm movement’’ and ‘‘mass incarceration’’ (Clear, 1994; Garland, 2001; Gottschalk,

2006). Beginning in the 1970s, policy makers abandoned the rehabilitation-centric paradigm that

dominated corrections in the 1960s in favor of policies that lengthened prison sentences, abolished

parole, and curtailed judicial discretion. These policy changes sparked an exponential increase in the

nation’s incarceration rate, culminating in the present reality that the United States imprisons over

two million of its citizens and has an incarceration rate several times higher than that of any other

industrialized nation in the world (Blumstein & Beck, 1999; Warren, Gelb, Horowitz, & Riordan,

2008).

Beyond expanding the scope of punishment, advocates of ‘‘tough on crime’’ policies also worked

to increase the harshness of punishment. Politicians framed criminal justice as a ‘‘zero-sum game’’

in which any policy choice that was good for offenders was bad for victims of crime. Under this

1

Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

KevinH. Wozniak, Department of Sociology,University of MassachusettsBoston, 100 Morrissey Blvd.,Boston, MA 02125, USA.

Email: kevin.wozniak@umb.edu

Criminal Justice Review

2014, Vol. 39(3) 305-324

ª2014 Georgia State University

Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/0734016814529968

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logic, the only way to deliver justice to crime victims was to make offenders suffer (Simon, 2007;

Zimring, Hawkins, & Kamin, 2001). A notable manifestation of this principle was the ‘‘no-frills’’

movement of the early 1990s (Finn, 1996). One survey found that about 60%of state departments

of corrections raised the requirements for inmates to participate in programs or eliminated privileges

in prison, such as free weights, radios, and TVs. Even Congress enacted the ‘‘No-Frills Prison Act’’

in 1996, which was designed to eliminate ‘‘luxurious’’ conditions in federal prisons (Wunder, 1995).

Importantly, many wardens believed that ‘‘the single most powerful driving force behind [no-

frills bills was] legislators who believe the legislation helps them to get elected or reelected by offer-

ing the impression that they are tough on crime’’ (Finn, 1996, p. 36; see also Johnson, Bennett, &

Flanagan, 1997). Politicians and the media believed that the public angrily resented conditions in

prisons that they perceived to be like a resort or country club (Bidinotto, 1994; Welch, Weber, &

Edwards, 2000). As an illustrative example, Boulard (1995, p. 24) quotes a Colorado state senator

who said, ‘‘There is a concern that crime is out of control and that the people responsible for it come

to prison and live the good life. It is now up to us as lawmakers to address those concerns and see

what needs to be improved upon or taken away or just changed’’ (see also Crist, 1996; Gottschalk,

2006; Lynch, 2010, for other examples of politicians attacking prison amenities). Roberts and Hough

(2005) argue that the public perception of life in prison as ‘‘easy’’ fueled penal populism and pol-

iticians’ support for longer, harsher sentences. Beyond the ‘‘no-frills’’ movement, politicians fre-

quently cited punitive public opinion as their justification for supporting all the penal policies

that gave rise to mass incarceration (Beckett, 1997), and a growing body of research indicates that

a relationship does exist between mass public opinion and criminal justice system outcomes (Enns,

2014; Nicholson-Crotty, Peterson, & Ramirez, 2009).

In spite of the politicized debate over prison living conditions, the ongoing court battles about

overcrowding, and the simple fact that the United States imprisons more people than any other

industrialized country in the world, we possess surprisingly little data that actually measure citizens’

opinions about prisons. Furthermore, the few studies that measure these attitudes possess limited

generalizability. From a scientific point of view, we do not properly understand the extent to which

politicians’ claims of public antipathy toward country-club prisons are supported by empirical evi-

dence (if at all).

Public Opinion About Prisons: A Dearth of Research

Most of what criminologists know about public opinion is pertinent but tangential to the present

study. Several studies found that pluralities of citizens in countries around the world classify reha-

bilitation as a more important purpose for imprisonment than retribution (e.g., Cullen, Fisher, &

Applegate, 2000; Cullen, Pealer, Fisher, Applegate, & Santana, 2002; Flanagan & Caulfield,

1984; Roberts & Hough, 2005). Other surveys find that a majority of U.S. citizens support educa-

tional and vocational programs in prisons, as well as the ability to earn good time credit toward a

sentence reduction (Flanagan, 1996; Haghighi & Lopez, 1998). While these findings reveal what

people want prisons to do, these studies do not measure public perceptions of and attitudes about

the prison environment that formed the political core of the no-frills movement. As such, they shed

no light on the empirical question of whether or not people perceive and resent so-called country-

club conditions in prisons.

Our most in-depth information about American public perceptions of life in prison comes from

qualitative focus groups and/or interviews. Most of these studies do find that participants perceive

prison life to be too easy and comfortable for inmates, and many people resent inmates’ access to

amenities, like TV and exercise equipment (Cook & Powell, 2003; Doble, 1987; Doble, Immerwahr,

& Richardson, 1991; Doble & Klein, 1989; Sasson, 1995). This punitive view is the majority opinion

among participants in most, but not all, focus groups. For example, researchers in Massachusetts

306 Criminal Justice Review 39(3)