LFB Scholarly

"a welcome addition to the criminal justice literature on crime, media, and the public" -- Criminal Justice Review

Description

Callanan tests the link between individuals' media habits and punitive attitudes toward criminals, finding that the more crime-related television people watch, the more fearful they become, and the more supportive of three strikes sentencing. Although there are some differences between forms of crime-related media consumption across race/ethnicity, the link with punitiveness still holds. The test provides evidence for Gerbner's cultivation hypothesis of a "mean world" view. Heavy consumers of crime-related media are more fearful of crime, more likely to believe crime is increasing, more likely to rate crimes seriously, more likely to believe the world is "just," less likely to support rehabilitation, and much more likely to support three strikes sentencing.

About the Author

Valerie J. Callanan is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at California State University San Marcos. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Riverside, in 2001. She is currently conducting evaluation of parolee programs for the California Department of Corrections.