Analyzing public opinion data about crime and punishment in Latin America and its overarching consequences

• In Event: Roundtable: Latin American Criminology: Finding a Place Amid Global, Regional, and Local Challenges (Sponsored by Division of International Criminology)

Abstract

This presentation discusses a line of research aimed at exploring different facets about public opinion about crime and punishment and seeking to explore it broader social and political consequences. In doing so, I will first describe previous studies from a research group conformed by faculty and students (now former students) at the FSU College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. This group published comparative studies focusing on a wide array of topics related to crime and criminal justice related issues such as fear of crime, police practices, and punitiveness, and examined a broad set of social consequences of crime and public punitiveness on issues such as institutional trust or support for authoritarianism. This line of research provides insight into different topics presented in the sociology of punishment literature, taking advantage of an international perspective to better specify the contexts in which these mechanisms become more relevant and a broader set of oftentimes unexplored consequences.
Second, I will discuss potential new avenues for research. In doing so, it will describe the main public opinion datasets available and their advantages and disadvantages as well as the challenges involved in conducting (and publishing) research on public opinion in Latin America.

Author

• Cecilia Chouhy, Florida State University