Punitive attitudes express a desire for social hierarchy rather than crime control

Evidence

The Sixth Law-of-Law posits that public support for harsh criminal sanctions will be positively associated with the desire for and support of groupbased social inequality, ceteris paribus. … While the empirical evidence supporting this Sixth Law-of-Law has not been voluminous, the evidence that does exist has been consistently supportive. For example, Sidanius and colleagues (2006) performed a series of manifest variable structural equation analyses in which support for harsh criminal sanctions (e.g., long prison sentences, the death penalty, and lethal torture) were all strongly and positively associated with SDO and thus the desire to see society hierarchically organized. In addition, and as expected, the relationships between various harsh criminal sanctions (e.g., support for torture) and SDO tended to be mediated by endorsement of criminal justice ideologies such as belief in retribution and deterrence (see also Peffley & Hurwitz, 2002). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 91

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Challenges the presumed rational basis of criminal justice preferences: punitiveness is mediated by ideological self-justification (retribution/deterrence) channeling status-threat, not objective crime concerns.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘On Sacrifice’ analysis — harsh sanctions as legitimacy-wrapped violence against lower-status groups in stratified societies.