Views of the punishment of youth, the dimensions of punitiveness

grantor: University of TorontoOver the past 25 years public opinion polls in Canada, the United States, England and Australia have posed various forms of the question: "In your view, do you think sentences are too harsh, about right, or not harsh enough?" At any given time roughly two thirds to four fifths of respondents will answer "too lenient". The public perception of leniency in sentencing appears to transcend areas of the justice system (youth and adult) and countries. Many have used the perception of leniency in sentencing as evidence of "punitiveness" and have devoted much time investigating why it is that people are "punitive". Interestingly absent from many studies is a discussion of what "punitiveness", as a concept, reflects. Clearly support for "harsher" sentences is a "punitive" policy choice, but is it accurate to say that people who endorse such a policy are punitive? That is, are people who endorse such a policy consistently punitive? How pervasive is "punitiveness"? Researchers have presented punitiveness as a one-dimensional, binary concept--people are either punitive or not punitive. The research presented here challenges the view that public punitiveness is a simple, one-dimensional binary concept by investigating views towards youth justice policies and youth court sentences. There appear to be at least two levels of punitiveness. There is a "broad" level (views of leniency in youth court) and a "specific" level (views of sentences in specific young offenders cases). While these two levels of views are related to one another, they are each shaped by different factors. It was hypothesized that people who are broadly punitive may hold a different image of young offenders from those who are not broadly punitive. The results reveal that those who hold broad punitive views do not have different images of young offenders. Instead, the majority of respondents believe that young offenders reject society's system of sanctioning inappropriate behaviour. That view is inaccurate. Young offenders, when presented with hypothetical cases, most often feel that a prison sentence would be appropriate and sentence cases using the societal norm of proportionality.Ph.D