Keeping A Safe Distance: Individualism and the Less Punitive Public

Abstract

This article will address individual differences in punitiveness or ‘get tough’ attitudes towards lawbreakers, but will do so by looking in depth at the nature of worldviews that have been identified as decidedly forgiving. The aim is to generate new hypotheses through a grounded narrative analysis regarding a dimension of public sensibilities towards crime—leniency—about which we know very little. I conclude that social identity is an important aspect of merciful worldviews, and that a precondition of a forgiving orientation may be a focus on individual agency. This analysis is supported by quantitative tests of new hypotheses to emerge. This article contributes to the more complex picture of differentiated public opinion to crime and criminal justice that has emerged recently in the literature.

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