{"id":23006,"date":"2014-07-23T13:28:27","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T18:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=23006"},"modified":"2014-07-23T13:30:43","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T18:30:43","slug":"wisconsinites-give-criminal-justice-system-low-marks-especially-for-offender-rehabilitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2014\/07\/wisconsinites-give-criminal-justice-system-low-marks-especially-for-offender-rehabilitation\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsinites Give Criminal-Justice System Low Marks, Especially for Offender Rehabilitation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We expect a lot from our criminal-justice system, and we don\u2019t seem very impressed with the results we are getting. \u00a0These are two of the notable lessons that emerge from the most recent Marquette Law School Poll of Wisconsin residents,\u00a0<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/poll\/\">the results of which were released earlier today<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In one part of the survey, respondents were asked to assess the importance of five competing priorities for the criminal-justice system. \u00a0As to each of the five, a majority indicated that the priority was either \u201cvery important\u201d or \u201cabsolutely essential.\u201d \u00a0The five priorities were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Making Wisconsin a safer place to live (91.6% said either very important or absolutely essential)<\/li>\n<li>Ensuring that people who commit crimes receive the punishment they deserve (88.1%)<\/li>\n<li>Keeping crime victims informed about their cases and helping them to understand how the system works (81.0%)<\/li>\n<li>Rehabilitating offenders and helping them to become contributing members of society (74.1%)<\/li>\n<li>Reducing the amount of money we spend on imprisoning criminals (51.2%)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more-->The especially high level of support for \u201cmaking Wisconsin a safer place to live\u201d was notable in light of the much smaller number of respondents (21.4%) who said that they or an immediate family member had ever been the victim of a serious crime. \u00a0This is line with results from<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/poll\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/MLSP17Methodology.pdf\">\u00a0last July\u2019s Poll<\/a>, which indicated that more than 85% of Wisconsinites feel safe walking alone in their neighborhoods at night. \u00a0Still, making the state safer apparently remains a high priority for more than 90% of Wisconsin residents.<\/p>\n<p>Respondents were separately asked how well the system was performing along five separate dimensions. \u00a0Here are the percentages for each dimension who said the system was doing a \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cexcellent\u201d job:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Rehabilitating offenders and helping them to become contributing members of society (21.5%)<\/li>\n<li>Keeping crime victims informed about their cases and helping them to understand how the system works (34.0%)<\/li>\n<li>Ensuring that people who commit crimes receive the punishment they deserve (34.0%)<\/li>\n<li>Identifying the most dangerous criminals and preventing them from committing new crimes (35.2%)<\/li>\n<li>Treating all people fairly, regardless of race (37.0%)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Put differently, for each of the five objectives, a majority of respondents said the system was only doing a \u201cfair\u201d or \u201cpoor\u201d job.<\/p>\n<p>The offender rehabilitation numbers were especially striking: almost nine times as many respondents said the system was doing a poor job (31.0%) as said the system was doing an excellent job (3.6%).<\/p>\n<p>The system got its best marks for \u201ctreating all people fairly, regardless of race,\u201d but even as to that, 27% of respondents said that the system was doing a poor job, while an additional 30% gave the system only a \u201cfair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Precise national benchmarks are not available for these questions, but skepticism of the criminal-justice system does seem widespread. \u00a0The Gallup Poll, for instance, recently\u00a0<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/1597\/confidence-institutions.aspx\">asked Americans about how much confidence they have in sixteen different institutions<\/a>. \u00a0The criminal-justice system came in tenth place, behind public schools and banks. \u00a0Only 23% of respondents said that they had \u201ca great deal\u201d or \u201cquite a lot\u201d of confidence in the criminal-justice system.<\/p>\n<p>Gallup asked separately about the police, who fared considerably better, placing third, with 53% expressing \u201ca great deal\u201d or \u201cquite a lot\u201d of confidence. \u00a0This reflects a longstanding, well-documented international phenomenon: citizens have much higher levels of confidence in the police than in the courts or the prisons. \u00a0<em>See, e.g.,<\/em>\u00a0Mike Hough &amp; Julian V. Roberts,\u00a0<em>Public Opinion, Crime, and Criminal Justice, in<\/em>\u00a0The Oxford Handbook of Criminology 278, 292-93 (Mike Maguire et al. eds., 5th ed. 2012).<\/p>\n<p>In the Law School Poll, the criminal-justice system was defined to include the police, as well as the court system and the prisons. \u00a0It is possible that the criminal-justice evaluations in Wisconsin would have been even poorer had the police been disaggregated.<\/p>\n<p>National surveys also echo the findings here on rehabilitation. \u00a0The\u00a0<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ncsc.org\/~\/media\/Microsites\/Files\/CSI\/The%20NCSC%20Sentencing%20Attitudes%20Survey.ashx\">most detailed national survey on sentencing and corrections policy in the past decade\u00a0<\/a>was sponsored by the National Center for State Courts. \u00a0Its findings included the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>79% agreed that \u201cgiven the right conditions, many offenders can turn their lives around and become law-abiding citizens\u201d<\/li>\n<li>22% said that rehabilitation should be the top priority for dealing with crime, which was ahead of longer sentences (19%) and more police (20%); prevention had the highest support at 36%<\/li>\n<li>Only 32% rated prisons as \u201cvery successful\u201d or even \u201csomewhat successful\u201d at rehabilitating offenders<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This was the third July in a row that the Law School Poll has included questions on criminal-justice policy. \u00a0In designing these questions and analyzing the results, I\u2019ve appreciated the collaboration of Poll Director Charles Franklin and Professor Darren Wheelock of Marquette\u2019s Social and Cultural Sciences Department. \u00a0Darren and I have a<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2418282\">\u00a0forthcoming article<\/a>\u00a0on the results the first two entries in this criminal-justice series.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m excited about this year\u2019s entry because we have for the first time asked about experience of criminal victimization, experience as a criminal defendant, and general racial attitudes. \u00a0After some number crunching, we will be able to say whether and to what extent these variables correlate with perceptions of the criminal-justice system and policy preferences. \u00a0It will be interesting, for instance, to get a sense of whether individuals who have personal experience with the system rate the system higher or lower than those whose knowledge of the system is mostly through the media. \u00a0Racial attitudes will also be an important focus of our analysis. \u00a0Much research (e.g.,<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lifesentencesblog.com\/?p=5969\">\u00a0here<\/a>) suggests that such attitudes play an important role in criminal-justice decisionmaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We expect a lot from our criminal-justice system, and we don\u2019t seem very impressed with the results we are getting. \u00a0These are two of the notable lessons that emerge from the most recent Marquette Law School Poll of Wisconsin residents,\u00a0the results of which were released earlier today. In one part of the survey, respondents were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,48,122,57,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-marquette-law-school","category-public","category-race-and-the-law","category-criminal-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}