Jon Hurwitz’s research while affiliated with University of Pittsburgh and other places

Profound differences exist in how Americans from various racial and ethnic groups view police and court officials. We argue that vicarious experiences contribute to this racial and ethnic divide. Drawing on research on social communication, social network composition, and negativity biases in perception and judgment, we devise a theoretical framework to articulate why vicarious experiences magnify racial and ethnic disparities in evaluations of judicial actors. Four hypotheses are tested using original survey data from the state of Washington. Results provide strong evidence that vicarious experiences influence citizens’ evaluations of both police and courts, and they do so in a manner that widens racial divides in how those actors are perceived.

How do members of racial groups explain the large disparity in the way Blacks and Whites are treated by the criminal justice system in the United States? And how do such explanations (attributions) influence support for punitive crime control policies in America, as well as arguments against such policies? Our study of the structure, sources, and consequences of racial attributions in the justice system, using original survey data in Washington state, contributes to the literature in several ways. First, unlike traditional measures of racial prejudice—that is, racial resentment and stereotypes—our measure of racial attributions distinguishes cleanly between dispositional explanations (e.g., Blacks’ aggressive nature) and discrimination. Second, we examine the attributions of three pivotal groups with different experiences with legal authorities: Latinos, Blacks, and Whites. Third, an issue framing experiment demonstrates the power of both attributions for shaping support for the death penalty and arguments against the policy based on racial justice.

Studies focusing on black–Latino intergroup perceptions in zero-sum environments (e.g., jobs) have found little perceived outgroup discrimination or a tendency for each group to perceive the injustices faced by the other group. In contrast, we examine the non-zero-sum criminal justice domain. Although we find some asymmetry—that is, blacks are somewhat more likely to see discrimination toward Latinos than vice-versa, we mainly find both groups acknowledge the discrimination faced by the other disadvantaged group, especially those who feel closely linked to the fate of their own group. Under such circumstances, blacks and Latinos recognize a common sense of deprivation and discrimination and are likely to regard the other group as facing comparable victimization, potentially seeing the other group as a coalition partner for remediating mutual concerns.

Faced with the threat of terrorism, many Americans have supported policies aimed at promoting security even when those policies possibly infringe upon civil liberties. To what extent does this policy support constitute a “terror exception” made by citizens who would otherwise seek the preservation of those liberties, and to what extent does it represent a more general rejection of constitutional principles? In order to address this question, attitudes regarding anti-terror policies must be viewed in a broader context. Toward this end, we examine data from a split-ballot experiment included as part of the 2006–2007 Congressional Elections Study. Respondents were asked policy items focused on either terrorism or serious crime. We find that respondents are almost as willing to sacrifice civil liberties to fight crime as to fight terrorism, and that attitudes regarding terrorism and crime policy exhibit considerable structural similarity. These findings cast doubt on the civil libertarian convictions of Americans even outside of the realm of anti-terror policy.

Criminal justice policy in the US has long been exceedingly responsive to public opinion. Unfortunately, public attitudes towards justice in the US are severely bifurcated along racial lines, such that Whites see a system that is “colour-blind” and Blacks perceive one that is severely biased against them. In this paper, we explore the magnitude of this racial cleavage and, more importantly, demonstrate how it impacts differential reactions to events (such as accusations of police brutality) and policies (such as capital punishment) in the justice domain. To the degree that elites base policies on (mainly White) majority preferences, such policies are unlikely to be responsive to the racial discrimination that is a part of the current criminal justice environment. Résumé. La politique pénale aux États-Unis répond énormément à l'opinion publique. Malheureusement, les positions populaires envers la justice américaine sont radicalement divisées suivant l'appartenance raciale. Aux yeux des Blancs, le système est essentiellement neutre envers les groupes raciaux différents, mais les Noirs le perçoivent comme étant fortement entaché de discrimination contre eux. Dans cet article, nous considérons l'étendue de cet écart racial et, surtout, nous démontrons comment ces perceptions entraînent des réactions différentes envers les événements (comme les accusations de brutalité policière) et envers les politiques publiques (comme la peine capitale) dans le domaine de la justice. Dans la mesure où les élites fondent les politiques sur les préférences de la majorité (surtout blanche), il est peu probable que ces politiques puissent remédier à la discrimination raciale qui fait partie du système pénal actuel.

While political science has made effective use of research on the psychology of stereotyping, psychology has not benefited from political science in the same way. This chapter argues that the study of racial stereotypes can be improved by a mutual effort on the part of political scientists and psychologists alike to better understand and apply the methods and perspectives that dominate each discipline. Discussion focuses on three principal disciplinary contrasts. First, while psychology has typically been concerned with the processes underlying stereotypes, political science has focused on the collective sources and political consequences of stereotyping. Second, while political science could benefit from more experimentation, psychologists should implement research designs to enhance the external validity of their research. Finally, both disciplines are limited to the extent that they typically focus on the beliefs of the dominant group, and stereotyping research would benefit from a greater emphasis on the beliefs of racial minorities.

Although there exists a large and well-documented “race gap” between whites and blacks in their support for the death penalty, we know relatively little about the nature of these differences and how the races respond to various arguments against the penalty. To explore such differences, we embedded an experiment in a national survey in which respondents are randomly assigned to one of several argument conditions. We find that African Americans are more responsive to argument frames that are both racial (i.e., the death penalty is unfair because most of the people who are executed are black) and nonracial (i.e., too many innocent people are being executed) than are whites, who are highly resistant to persuasion and, in the case of the racial argument, actually become more supportive of the death penalty upon learning that it discriminates against blacks. These interracial differences in response to the framing of arguments against the death penalty can be explained, in part, by the degree to which people attribute the causes of black criminality to either dispositional or systemic forces (i.e., the racial biases of the criminal justice system).

We examine the huge racial divide in citizens' general beliefs about the fairness of the criminal justice system, focusing on the political consequences of these beliefs for shaping diverging interpretations of police behavior. Predictably, most blacks believe the system to be unfair and most whites believe the opposite. More importantly, these beliefs influence the interpretation of events quite differently. African Americans who view the system as unfair are much more suspicious of the police in con-frontations with black civilians. Fairness for whites, however, has fewer racial connotations; they naively interpret the confrontations disregarding civilian race. Still, whites holding antiblack stereo-types are much more sympathetic to the police in their confrontations with black civilians. On April 29, 1992, a mainly white jury in Simi Valley, CA voted to acquit four white police officers charged with the beating of Rodney King, an African Amer-ican. Almost immediately, massive rioting erupted in nearby Los Angeles; one of the casualties was Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was pulled from his vehicle and severely beaten. On October 18, a mostly African-American jury acquitted the two blacks accused of beating Denny on virtually all counts. Racial divisions over this verdict were stark: a Los Angeles Times poll found whites almost twice as likely to disagree with the verdict as blacks (67 to 38%), with whites more than twice as likely to express "anger" over the outcome (48 to 19%). A magnified division reemerged several years later during the contentious trial of O. J. Simpson and continues today over a host of criminal justice issues and events (Roberts and Stalans 1997), many of which 1 are nationally scrutinized.

We examine the huge racial divide in citizens’ general beliefs about the fairness of the criminal justice system, focusing on the political consequences of these beliefs for shaping diverging interpretations of police behavior. Predictably, most blacks believe the system to be unfair and most whites believe the opposite. More importantly, these beliefs influence the interpretation of events quite differently. African Americans who view the system as unfair are much more suspicious of the police in confrontations with black civilians. Fairness for whites, however, has fewer racial connotations; they naively interpret the confrontations disregarding civilian race. Still, whites holding antiblack stereotypes are much more sympathetic to the police in their confrontations with black civilians.