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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Public Support For The Death Penalty In A Red State: The Distrustful, The Angry, And The Unsure, Lisa Kort-Butler, Colleen M. Ray
Public Support For The Death Penalty In A Red State: The Distrustful, The Angry, And The Unsure, Lisa Kort-Butler, Colleen M. Ray
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
Set against the backdrop of Nebraska’s 2015 legislative repeal of the death penalty and the 2016 electoral reinstatement, we examined public support for capital punishment. Using two years of statewide survey data, we compared respondents who preferred the death penalty for murder, those who preferred other penalties, and those who were unsure, a respondent group often excluded from research. To understand what distinguishes among these groups, we examined media consumption, instrumental and expressive feelings about crime, and confidence and trust in the government regarding criminal justice. Results revealed that those who preferred the death penalty expressed more anger about crime …
Age, Period, And Cohort Effects On Death Penalty Attitudes In The United States, 1974–2014, Amy L. Anderson, Robert Lytle, Philip Schwadel
Age, Period, And Cohort Effects On Death Penalty Attitudes In The United States, 1974–2014, Amy L. Anderson, Robert Lytle, Philip Schwadel
Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications
In this article, we further the understanding of both changes in public opinion on capital punishment in the United States and changes in the factors associated with public opinion on the death penalty. Support for the death penalty may be motivated by events happening during specific time periods, and it can vary across birth cohorts as a result of cohort-specific socialization processes, demographic changes, and formative events that are specific to each generation. An explication of the sources of and variation in death penalty attitudes over time would benefit from the accounting for the age of the respondent, the year …