Sustained media and political emphasis on crime keeps anticriminal punitiveness persistently high

Evidence

Signs of an enduring punitiveness toward criminals are an exception even to this generalization, however. Perhaps the appointments of more conservative federal judges is a legacy or ratchet of the conservative political victories of 1980, yet we must also account for the growth in support of capital punishment among the general public. This punitiveness toward a criminal outgroup may be maintained in part by prominent and graphic portrayals of crime in the news and entertainment media and the repeated emphasis on the threat of crime in the political appeals by candidates for public office. Whereas the lessening of economic and foreign policy threats may moderate the general authoritarian tendencies of the nation, the threat of crime seems to remain high, thereby eliciting high levels of specifically anticriminal authoritarian aggression in the American people. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 842

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects to the general theme of how sustained threats (here, crime narrative) keep authoritarian responses elevated even when other threats recede.
• XREF: Connects to moral panic theory and how media amplification sustains a threat narrative, paralleling the reader’s library on Fear of Crime and media-driven punitiveness. — connects to: Asymmetric public attention to false negatives drives punitive politics — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 891
• QUESTION: The claim that media and political appeals actively maintain crime-elicited punitiveness is suggestive but needs empirical support; worth looking for later evidence.