Perceived Group Threat and Punitive Attitudes in Russia and The United States

Abstract

Extant research has examined the link between the group threat thesis and different forms of social control including the public desire to punish criminals. The group threat thesis posits that crime control, and public support for it, stems from conflict and competition between groups over scarce social resources such as jobs and education. Groups in power utilize crime control to manage and suppress groups that pose a threat to these resources. This perspective has been important in shaping criminological understandings of punishment; however, much of it has focused solely on inter-group conflict in the United States and Western Europe. This study expands the group threat lens by testing whether dynamics of group conflict and threat fuel the desire to punish in Russia. We find that, similarly to the United States and Western Europe, perceived threat is an important predictor of the desire to punish for Russian respondents. The findings draw attention to the need for further investigation of group threat theory in a comparative context.

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