Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Reform

• Published date: 01 February 2016
• Date: 01 February 2016
• Author: Eileen M. Kirk,Kevin M. Drakulich
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12186

POLICY ESSAY

REHABILITATION IN A RED STATE

Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Reform

Framing Matters

Kevin M. Drakulich

Eileen M. Kirk

Northeastern University

Angela J. Thielo, Francis T. Cullen, Derek M. Cohen, and Cecilia Chouhy (2016,

this issue) provide compelling evidence of a public appetite for rehabilitation over

incarceration as a primary strategy for addressing crime. Notably, they find this to

be true even among those who live in a “red state” and among those presumed to be least

open to less punitive options: politically conservative White males.

The results of the Thielo et al. (2016) study speak not to the effectiveness or appro-

priateness of a specific policy but to the political feasibility of policy reform. The case for

change has already been made. We know the current system of mass incarceration is at

best questionably effective in its efforts to reduce crime (Mauer, 2006; National Research

Council, 2014; Roeder, Eisen, and Bowling, 2015); harmful in its effects on individuals,

families, and communities, including promoting conditions that may increase crime (Clear,

2007; Drakulich, Crutchfield, Matsueda, and Rose, 2012; Huebner,2005); disproportion-

ate and unjust in its application (Pettit and Western, 2004; Provine, 2007; Western,2006);

and wildly expensive at a time when local and state budgets are strained (Henrichson and

Delaney, 2012).

After decades of seeming reluctance to propose criminal justice reforms that could

be portrayed as anything other than “tough on crime,” anecdotal evidence abounds of a

potential shift, including bipartisan collaborations between fiscal conservatives and social

justice liberals at the state and federal level (Berman, 2015; Goetz, 2015). Indeed, it has been

widely argued that a shift is occurring in our approach to criminal justice policy (Clear and

Frost, 2014; Ramirez, 2013a). Thielo et al. (2016) provide some public opinion context for

this seeming shift. Most promisingly, their research and the public sentiment it represents

present an opportunity to reconstruct a public penal philosophy away from a simplistic and

Direct correspondence to Kevin M. Drakulich, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern

University, Boston, MA, 02130 (email: k.drakulich@neu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12186 C2016 American Society of Criminology 171

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 1