Emotions about crime and attitudes to punishment

Various polls and surveys seem to indicate that a substantial proportion of the Canadian public desires harsher penalties for crime. While various explanations have been offered for this punitiveness, emotional reactions to crime have been under-researched. The present research draws on a Canadian data set to test the hypothesis that the emotions of fear and particularly anger about crime are significant predictors of punitive attitudes once crime victimization, economic insecurity, internal attributions of crime causation and other variables are controlled for. This research also examines the possible indirect effects of economic insecurity, victimization and internal attributions of crime causation on punitiveness through their impact on fear and anger. The multiple regression results support the role of emotions, particularly anger, in explaining punitive attitudes. While indirect effects of victimization and economic insecurity were insignificant, 14 per cent of the effect of internal attributions was through anger.