Public attitudes to rulebreakers hardening, says new book

A new book has outlined how public attitudes towards punishing rulebreakers from marginalized groups in society have hardened in recent years.

Dr. Vickie Barrett, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, has published "Politics, Punitiveness, and Problematic Populations" based on interviews and a survey of around 6,000 people as a study of the public desire to punish people who break rules more harshly.

Subtitled "Public Perceptions of 'Scroungers', 'Unruly' Children, and 'Good for Nothings'" and co-written with the University of Warwick's Dr. Emily Gray and Professor Stephen Farrall from the University of Nottingham, Dr. Barrett's work says that attitudes have gone beyond punishing criminals to punitive measures being applied to welfare claimants and school pupils.

"This book explores the increase in the use of punitive sanctions—prison, welfare sanctions, school exclusions—over the last 40 years and proposes that punitiveness is not exclusive to criminal justice but is also used extensively in other organisations to attempt to regulate 'problematic' populations," says Dr. Barrett.

"It argues that over the last four decades there has been an increase in the use of punitive sanctions towards other groups of people in addition to people who break the law, specifically here welfare claimants and school pupils."

Younger people now have similar punitive attitudes to older people

Dr. Barrett's research has also discovered that this hardening in attitudes is spread across all age groups.

"Traditionally, we expect that as people age their attitudes become less tolerant, but we found that younger people are now more punitive than traditionally expected," she adds.

"We argue that this relates to political socialisation—the 'trickle down' effect of growing up under governments over the past 40 years where punishing attitudes towards 'problematic' groups of people have taken prominence.

"You might expect that attitudes towards people who have broken the law to be stronger than towards other groups of people. However, we found that people desired harsh punishments towards all groups of people we looked at, most notably towards welfare claimants."

For Dr. Barrett, much of this toughening of attitudes stems from a more polarised political debate, where extreme attitudes at either end of the spectrum prevail.

Attitudes changing towards wider range of marginalized groups

"The general public appear to support the harsh sanctioning of rule-breakers and this is apparent not only to people who break the law but towards both rule-breaking welfare claimants and school pupils.

"Public punitiveness therefore is applicable to a range of rule-breakers, and not simply to those who break the law. The role of politics is important in understanding punitive attitudes towards different 'problematic' populations in terms of political values and political socialisation."

The hardening of public attitudes towards other groups, such as migrants, is an area that Dr. Barrett suggests needs further investigation to follow on from her book.

"We argue that political values like neo-conservativism, neo-liberalism, and political socialisation are integral to the formation of punitive public attitudes towards different groups of rulebreakers—criminal lawbreakers, welfare claimants and school pupils.

"Whilst we have focussed here on criminal justice, welfare and education, it is also important to highlight that punitiveness may also extend to other groups of people like migrants and refugees. Future work may also wish to explore public punitiveness in areas such as these and beyond."

Provided by University of Huddersfield