Factors Influencing Public Attitudes Toward Criminal Justice System Funding

• In Event: Variation in Support for the Criminal Legal System

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between various demographic factors and attitudes toward criminal justice funding in the United States. We seek to find out if these attitudes have changed among various demographic populations, most notably racial groups, in recent years based on widely- publicized incidents involving police and subsequent protests.
Data/Methods: Data come from two separate years of data from the U.S. General Social Survey: 2012 and 2021. These two years are used because they are from prior to the killing of Michael Brown in 2014 and following the George Floyd murder in 2020 and subsequent protests from these events. Descriptive statistics are reported before moving to multivariate regression analyses. These analyses are conducted separately on each year before comparisons are drawn between the two sets of results.
Results: Preliminary results indicate an increased perception that too much is being spent on law enforcement based on a change, with the percentage of respondents who believed that too much is being spent on law enforcement nearly doubling between 2012 and 2021.
Conclusion: Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Authors

• Matthew Caines, Sam Houston State University

• Wyatt Brown, Sam Houston State University