International Criminal Justice Review

Public perceptions of the seriousness of crime have long been presented as an indicator of actual crime seriousness, which features prominently in contemporary criminal policy. However, doubts persist on the policy relevance of such perceptions, among others, because their predictors and the extent of consensus about them in our pluralistic societies are unclear. Against this background, we examine the extent to which conservation values, legal cynicism, and religiosity drive public crime seriousness perceptions and generate heterogeneity. A general population survey in Belgium eliciting 1,278 valid responses indicates a limited impact of these values, attitudes, and beliefs on crime seriousness perceptions, with exception of the “mala prohibita” considered. Of the three predictors, conservation values have the most consistent impact across different crimes. Moreover, our findings suggest that crime seriousness perceptions are still largely consensual, thus allaying one concern for their use for policy-making purposes.

Public safety consolidation of police and fire departments has long existed, but there are no quantitative measures of its implementation. Previous research has suggested a typology ranging from nominal to full consolidation. Our research explores how public safety departments may vary by both command consolidation and cross-training of personnel. Considering both these dimensions is essential to measuring the form and extent of implementation of this service model. To develop a scale for consolidation, we surveyed all known U.S. public safety departments, asking each about its services, administrative structure, and training requirements. Altogether, 74 of the 130 (57%) departments we were able to identify responded to a mail survey with phone follow-up, providing us information on their levels of structural integration and cross-training, among other characteristics. The results showed both some concentration at lower and higher levels of measured consolidation as well as some variation among departments with identical scores. Although our research is limited by a relatively small number of departments, preventing development of more sophisticated measures, use of this additive scale can still yield insights on what influences consolidation, the problems consolidation may ameliorate or produce, and operational characteristics by extent of consolidation.

The imprisonment rate in New Zealand ranks seventh among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Yet the imprisonment of Indigenous people is on par with the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate. Almost 70% of the prison population in New Zealand is comprised of people racialized as non-White. In 2016, the National Government proposed to spend $2.5 billion over a 5-year period to build new prisons (1,500 prison beds) to accommodate a growing prison population. This study assessed public attitudes toward the need for more prisons and the equity of treatment of individuals within the criminal justice system. Findings from a 2016 and 2017 quantitative survey of 5,000 respondents each year revealed that roughly half of the respondents believed the proposed spending for new prisons to be extremely to somewhat necessary. A large proportion of respondents also believed Māori and Pākehā, if convicted of the same crime, are treated similarly within the criminal justice system. New Zealand scholars have critiqued news media coverage of contentious sociopolitical issues, such as crime and prisons, for employing tactics that have worked to construct a morally and culturally deficit “Other” while normalizing whiteness, rendering it invisible and raceless. This article concludes that this process masks racial disparities of individuals located within the criminal justice system and preserves the ideal that prisons are a normal function of the social landscape.

Life satisfaction is an important concept for both workers and employing organizations. Past research on the spillover theory has found that higher life satisfaction results in lower absenteeism and turnover/turnover intent, higher job performance, and better mental and physical health. The current study examined how job variables (i.e., job stress, job involvement, and job satisfaction) were associated with life satisfaction among Nigerian prison staff in an attempt to determine whether the aforementioned workplace variables have similar or different effects across nations. Data for this study came from a survey of 120 responding staff at a prison located in the Ebonyi state in Southeast Nigeria. In a multivariate ordinary least squares regression analysis, job stress had significant negative effects on life satisfaction, and job involvement and job satisfaction had significant positive effects. The findings for job stress and job involvement are consistent with that found among U.S. correctional staff. The finding that job involvement had a significant positive effect differs from that reported for U.S. staff. The results suggest that prison administrators should attempt to lower job stress and increase job involvement and job satisfaction.