Convicting the Innocent or Freeing the Guilty? Public Attitudes Toward Criminal Justice Errors
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0306624X20944684 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2020
Article
International Journal of
Offender Therapy and
Convicting the Innocent or
Comparative Criminology
2021, Vol. 65(4) 458 –479
Freeing the Guilty? Public
© The Author(s) 2020
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Attitudes Toward Criminal
https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X20944684
DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20944684
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijo
Justice Errors
Yue Zhuo1
Abstract
Two types of judicial errors—convicting an innocent person or acquitting a guilty
person—challenge the integrity and legitimacy of criminal justice. How citizens view
these errors plays an important role in criminal justice policy. Utilizing data from a
national survey, this study applies the established Western theories to explore the
correlates of public attitudes regarding the relative acceptance of wrongful convictions
and erroneous acquittals in contemporary China. The findings lend support to both
constructionist/conflict and symbolic theories.
Keywords
public attitudes, criminal justice errors, China, instrumental, conflict, symbolic
Public attitudes toward crime and punishment have been an important area of inquiry
in criminology and criminal justice research. How people perceive issues related to
crime and punishment is a critical component of penal culture and social control,
though how and to what extent public opinions affect penal policies and practices is in
debate (Roberts, 2011; Roberts & Hough, 2005; Zalman et al., 2012). A wide range of
topics, such as public perceptions of crime trend, trust and confidence in the criminal
justice system, attitudes to the police, opinions about sentencing and the courts, etc.,
have been investigated in the literature. Public attitudes toward criminal justice errors,
in contrast, have been largely left out of the picture (de Keijser et al., 2014; Scurich,
2015; Zalman et al., 2012). Judicial errors—either wrongfully convicting the innocent
1Department of Sociology & Anthropology, St. John’s University, Queens, NY, USA
Corresponding Author:
Yue Zhuo, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, St. John’s University, 8000 Utopia Parkway,
Queens, NY 11439, USA.
Email: zhuoy@stjohns.edu
Zhuo
459
or erroneously acquitting the guilty—are harmful and costly. Perceptions of such
errors may be tied to both public punitiveness and public confidence in the criminal
justice system. Although wrongful convictions and acquittals have been the topics of
considerable media attention and public debate, there is little empirical research on
public attitudes toward these fundamental problems in criminal justice practice.
Meanwhile, most prior research in the field of criminal justice attitudes has focused
on American and other Western societies, while studies on non-Western societies are
still limited in number and scope. Conducting research in different societies, in par-
ticular those distinctive from European-American ones, plays an indispensable role in
the advancement of our understanding of penal culture and criminal justice practice.
Given its unique political and legal system, China, as the world’s largest non-Western
society, provides a truly interesting context to study public opinions related to crime,
law, and criminal justice. A growing body of literature has examined Chinese citizens’
attitudes toward law, crime control, capital punishment, the police, and so on (for
example, Bakken, 2011; Jiang et al., 2009; Liu & Liang, 2019; Sun et al., 2012; Wu
et al., 2011; Zhuo, 2012; Zhuo & Cao, 2016). In view of the firestorm of criticism
sparked by several high profile problematic criminal cases in China during recent
years (Belkin, 2018), it is time to explore Chinese attitudes toward errors in the criminal
justice system.
To fill the void in the literature, this study utilizes data from a national survey and
applies Western-rooted theories in the Chinese context to investigate public attitudes
toward criminal justice errors in contemporary China. The paper is structured as fol-
lows. First, I review three competing theoretical approaches informing the study of
criminal justice attitudes—instrumental perspective, constructionist/conflict perspec-
tive, and symbolic perspective. Second, I highlight China’s social changes and penal
culture. Next, the data and methods of the current study are described, and the analysis
results are reported. The last section discusses the findings critically and finishes with
some thoughts of possible directions of future research.
Western Theories and Literature
A large number of studies have examined public attitudes toward issues of crime and
criminal justice in Western societies. The research in this field is generally guided by
three major theoretical approaches—instrumental perspective, constructionist/conflict
perspective, and symbolic perspective (Gerber & Jackson, 2016; Unnever & Cullen,
2010a).
Instrumental Perspective
The instrumental/pragmatic perspective posits that the source of public concern lies in
judgments about the severity of the social problem (Applegate et al., 2002). People
look for enhanced crime control when crime rates go up, which sounds a commonsen-
sical explanation (Ellsworth & Gross, 1994). This approach suggests that persons
exposed to high or rising rates of crime are likely to be more concerned about the
460
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 65(4)
crime problem and to support harsh forms of social control. This approach links public
attitudes toward punishment with crime rates, victimization experience, and fear of
crime.
The empirical studies on Western societies addressing this approach have yielded
mixed findings. For example, Ellsworth and Gross (1994) find that American support
for the death penalty increased when the crime rate went up and declined when it went
down during the period of 1950s to 1990s. Rankin’s study (1979) reports a significant
positive association between support for death penalty and a three-year lagged mea-
sure of violent crime rates. Baumer and his colleagues (2003) find that residents of
areas with higher homicide rates are significantly more likely to support the death
penalty. Kornhauser’s study (2013) reveals positive associations between concerns
over crime and support for both stiffer sentences and death penalty in Australia.
Conversely, other studies cast doubt over the instrumental perspective. Jacobs and
Carmichael’s panel study (2002) shows that residents in states with the most violent
crime or murders are no more likely to retain the death penalty. Using data from the
U.S. General Social Survey, Taylor and his colleagues (1979) report that respondents
do not express a greater demand for harsher sanctions in high-risk areas. Unnever and
Cullen (2010a) find that the effect of the perceived crime rate on support of the death
penalty is rendered spurious when the racism and moral decline measures are intro-
duced into the equation. A more recent study by Kleck and Jackson (2017) examines
the effects of multiple crime-related variables on public support for longer prison sen-
tences and the death penalty. They find that punitiveness has no significant association
with crime rates, earlier victimization, vicarious victimization, higher perceived risk
of victimization, or fear of crime.
Constructionist/Conflict Perspective
The second prominent thesis informing criminal justice attitudes research echoes the
constructionist/conflict paradigm. Both Weberians and neo-Marxists claim that dis-
parities in economic and social resources create a potentially unstable social order that
must be sustained by repressive control. The more economically and socially stratified
a society becomes, “the more it becomes necessary for dominant groups to enforce
through coercion the norms of conduct that guarantee their supremacy” (Chambliss &
Seidman, 1982, p. 33). Dominant groups, in terms of race, class, etc., perceive disad-
vantaged groups as threatening and hence support extensive and repressive forms of
social control to protect their status quo (Chambliss, 1964). Based on the construction-
ist/conflict framework, scholars have tested the effects of individual socioeconomic
status and macro economic situation on public perceptions of criminal justice issues
(Unnever & Cullen, 2009). For example, Baumer et al. (2003) report that individuals
with higher family incomes are significantly more likely to favor the death penalty,
whereas the contextual effect of income inequality is not significant. The study by
King and Wheelock (2007) show that individuals residing in areas with higher unem-
ployment rates are more punitive. Using data from a Germany national survey,
Hanslmaier and Baier (2016) find that the regional unemployment rate has a direct
Zhuo
461
impact on the longing for harsher sanctioning, while individual economic situation
does not influence punitivity.
Rooted in conflict theories, the racial threat thesis has spawned a large volume of
literature in the field of criminology and criminal justice. At the individual-level, two
lines of research link race to public opinions of crime and criminal justice. One line of
studies, with a focus on individual racial and ethnic status, has widely observed racial
differences in penal attitudes (Browning & Cao, 1992; Hagan & Albonetti, 1982).
Another research line, which incorporates...
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