Public criminology: Its social construction and policy implications

The subject matter of this thesis is public criminology, that is, causal explanations of crime employed by the lay public. The thesis is that different styles of public criminology exist, that each is a product of a different social background and each produces a different set of lay attitudes toward crime control policies. Extant research on public crime control attitudes like punitiveness and rehabilitation lacks a theory which links these attitudes to social background. The study of public criminology addresses this need by first identifying public attributional styles regarding the causes of crime, then forming hypotheses about the social context from which they are likely to come and their implications for forming attitudes toward crime policy. The result is a two-step, attribution-based cognitive consistency model which explains public attitudes toward punishment and rehabilitation by social context via intervening attribution processes.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Patterson, Thomas Dean

Contributors dc:contributor

• Bordua, Daniel J.

• Psychology, Social
• Sociology, General
• Sociology, Criminology and Penology

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1991 Patterson, Thomas Dean

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9136698
(UMI)AAI9136698

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/21556