Elsevier

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume 26, Issue 3, May–June 1998, Pages 227-236
Journal of Criminal Justice

Articles
Perceptions of crime seriousness in the african american community: exploring the presence of consensus

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0047-2352(97)00083-4Get rights and content

Abstract

One of the primary findings in the perception of crime seriousness literature is that widespread consensus exists regarding attitudes toward crime seriousness. This finding has been challenged as more sophisticated analyses have been used. Also, specific racial populations have not been examined to determine whether or not widespread agreement exists among attitudes toward crime. This study examines the responses of 621 African Americans residing in Atlanta, Georgia and Washington, D.C. to six hypothetical crime scenarios. A special case of a two-way analysis of variance was utilized to determine the extent of consensus within this sample. Results indicated that there was very little consensus within the sample regarding the seriousness of the crime scenarios. Further analyses describe the nature of the dissensus in terms of the harm done and the motive provided in each scenario.

Introduction

Research in the area of perceptions of crime seriousness has long indicated, unlike other areas of perceptual research (e.g., perceptions of discrimination, prejudice, and justice), that widespread consensus exists across groups regarding attitudes toward the seriousness of crime. In their landmark study, Sellin and Wolfgang (1964:268) concluded that “a pervasive social agreement about what is serious and what is not appears to emerge, and this agreement transcends simple qualitative concordance; it extends to the estimated numerical degree of seriousness of these offenses.” Since the publication of that work, a sizable body of literature has emerged that echoes Sellin and Wolfgang’s findings. For example, research indicates that widespread consensus exists regardless of age or gender (Rossi et al. 1974), educational and work experiences (McCleary et al. 1981; Pontell et al. 1985), and whether or not one is an offender or a non-offender (Figlio 1975; Sechrest 1969).

In addition, perceptions of crime seriousness remain fairly consistent across cultures (Evans and Scott 1984). Hsu 1973replicated Sellin and Wolfgang’s 1964work on a sample in Taiwan and found minor differences with regard to gender. Velez-Diaz and Megargee 1971replicated Rossi et al.’s (1974) work with a sample of juvenile offenders from the United States and Puerto Rico and found considerable similarities between the two samples.

Despite the results of the perceptions of crime seriousness literature, research focusing on perceptions of justice, discrimination, and the police indicate that substantial perceptual differences exist across and within racial groups regarding these issues (Sigelman and Welch 1991; Sarat 1976).

Such perceptual differences between African Americans and Caucasians are substantiated by the fact that the criminal justice system enters the lives of a disproportionate number of African Americans. As a group, they are over-represented in arrest and incarceration rates (Mann 1993). The police play a very visible role in African American neighborhoods, which increases the likelihood of contact and arrests. Similarly, while African Americans comprise approximately 12 percent of the U.S. population, they compose 51 percent of those incarcerated in state prisons (Walker, Spohn, and DeLone 1996). Such objective (and subjective) proximity to crime and the criminal justice system as Miller, Rossi, and Simpson 1986explain, can influence perceptions of crime and the justice system as a whole.

Hagan and Albonetti 1982used data from a national survey of 1,049 persons to assess public perceptions of injustice. They found that African Americans were “considerably more likely than Caucasian Americans to perceive criminal injustice” (Hagan and Albonetti, 1982:352). Sarat (1976:434) found that race is “the most significant source of cleavage” in attitudes toward the police. Overall, African Americans have less favorable attitudes toward the police than their Caucasian counterparts. It is suggested that race is more strongly associated with negative attitudes toward the police than such variables as socioeconomic status, sex, or age (Peek, Lowe, and Alston 1981). This division along racial lines is present for both adults (Smith and Hawkins 1973) as well as for children (Greenberg 1970).

In sum, there appears to be a fairly large perceptual gap that divides African Americans and Caucasians. “It is hardly an overstatement to say that blacks and whites inhabit two different perceptual worlds. Whites simply do not acknowledge the persisting prejudice and discrimination that are so obvious to blacks” (Sigelman and Welch, 1991:65).

The majority of the research that addresses the attitudes of African Americans is cross-racial (Sigelman and Welch 1991), although perceptual differences also exist within the African American community (Adams and Dressler 1988; Hagan and Albonetti 1982; Miller, Rossi, and Simpson 1986). The African American community, while disproportionately poor, is certainly not homogenous. Perceptual differences may be due in part to the increased polarization of the African American community. For example, over the last twenty years the percentage of African Americans earning over $50,000 a year has increased from 24 percent to 32.5 percent (Walker, Spohn, and DeLone 1996). On the other hand, the percentage of African Americans earning under $15,000 a year has increased from 34 percent to 36 percent (Walker, Spohn, and DeLone 1996).

In an extensive study of attitudes among African Americans, Adams and Dressler 1988found that age, economic standing, and neighborhood satisfaction were all related to how an individual perceived levels of injustice within American society. Similarly, Hagan and Albonetti (1982:352), in their analysis of perceptions of criminal injustice, found that “members of the surplus population [unemployed] are significantly more likely than members of other classes to perceive criminal injustice.” Sigelman and Welch 1991, who explored factors related to perceptions of discrimination in the African American community, also found that class (in this case, members of the working class) and gender were significantly related to perceptions of discrimination.

The presence of such cross-racial and within-race dissensus in other areas of attitudinal research has spawned questions about the existence of widespread consensus with regard to perceptions of crime seriousness (Miethe 1982; Cullen et al. 1985). Miethe 1982offered a possible explanation for the dominant view of widespread consensus. He suggested that in seriousness studies, the use of certain statistical techniques blur widespread subgroup dissidence.1 Miethe 1982asserted that techniques used by previous researchers, namely computing correlation coefficients with aggregate data, provide high correlations while masking individual variability within subgroups. In other words, “individual variation is statistically ignored since within-group variance for an item is eliminated” (Miethe, 1982:518) when correlations with group means are used.

In a study addressing the concerns of Miethe 1982, Cullen et al. 1985examined how data analysis influences the findings of the pervasiveness of attitudinal consensus. Cullen et al. (1985:102) addressed the failure of past research to “consider the variances of seriousness scores when concluding that there is consensus in the public’s evaluation of crime seriousness.” A two-way analysis of variance, as discussed by Shrout and Fleiss 1979, was applied to their sample of 200 randomly selected residents of Macomb, Illinois in order to examine within-crime variance. This method allowed the researchers to determine two alternative measures of consensus: “agreement,” when respondents give identical seriousness scores to the crime categories presented, and “consistency,” when respondents consistently rank the crime categories in the same order and with the same magnitude of difference between two (but not necessarily with the same score).

Cullen et al. 1985found little agreement and consistency in their sample, suggesting that consensus may not be as pronounced as originally reported. In addition, they found that there was a “difference of magnitude of almost 10 percent of the variance when agreement rather than consistency [was] used as the indicator of consensus” (Cullen et al., 1985:104).

In conclusion, the results of other areas of perceptual research, both cross-racial and within the African American community, as well as the methodological problems with the perceptions of crime seriousness literature, suggest that consensus may not be as pronounced as first demonstrated by earlier research. This research brings these factors together in an exploration of the level of consensus within a sample of African Americans.

Section snippets

Method

Data from a project funded by the National Institute of Justice and made available through Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) were utilized for this study. The original project titled “Research on Minorities, [1981]: Race and Crime in Atlanta and Washington, DC” was designed to explore the following research question: “How are individuals’ perceptions of crime, actual experiences with crime, and attitudes toward the police affected by characteristics of their

Analysis and results

To explore the presence of consensus within this sample, a technique first described by Shrout and Fleiss 1979and later applied to crime seriousness research by Cullen et al. 1985was utilized. This technique involved conducting a two-way analysis of variance with a matrix composed of respondents (603) by crime scenarios (6). The results of the analysis allowed for the computation of two alternative measures of consensus: an “agreement” and a “consistency” coefficient. Agreement, as defined by

Discussion

The results of this research speak to the methodological and conceptual issues raised in the literature review. In terms of agreement and consistency, this sample displays little consensus regarding crime seriousness. As discussed earlier, one of the more consistent findings in the literature was the presence of widespread consensus about perceptions of crime seriousness (Rossi et al. 1974; Velez-Diaz and Megargee 1971; Pontell et al. 1983). On the other hand, some research indicates little

Conclusions

The lack of consensus discussed above clearly indicates that differences of opinion exist with respect to crime seriousness. These findings have implications for both theory and policy formation. The theoretical implications are found in the tenets of the consensus model, which suggests that criminal behavior is repugnant to all members of society and that criminal law is a reflection of popular will. “The ubiquitous agreement on seriousness rankings is often cited in support of a consensus as

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express sincere appreciation to an anonymous reviewer for the thoughtful and extensive comments on earlier drafts of this article.

1. Miethe 1982also discussed two other factors that may work to inflate the presence of consensus. The over-representation of serious offenses in the lists of crimes provided to respondents and the nature of the instructions given to respondents are both factors that may inflate consensus. Only the use of inappropriate statistical techniques,

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