Perceptions of Crime Threat and Criminal Justice Institutions
Effects on Capital Jurors’ Sentencing Decisions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21424774 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jimin Pyo (0000-0002-9826-9555, California State University, Northridge, corresponding author), Cooper A Maher (0000-0002-7352-6922, Michigan State University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 233-251 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Criminal Justice and Behavior (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0093-8548 • E-ISSN: 1552-3594 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00938548251375336 |
| OpenAlex | W4414578425 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 46 |
Despite the importance of perceptions of crime threat and criminal justice institutions in the study of public punitiveness, less is known how they collectively impact capital jurors’ sentencing decisions. Using a vignette survey experiment, this study examined how these perceptions can shape mock jurors’ sentencing decisions in a capital trial. Death-qualified participants ( N = 744) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk recommended a punishment for the defendant after reviewing a randomly assigned trial summary where aggravating characteristics and defendant race/ethnicity were varied. Mock jurors with heightened perceived crime threat were more likely to support punitive sentencing decisions. Although distrust about the crime control capabilities of criminal justice institutions did not directly influence sentencing decisions, its effect was significant through its associations with perceived crime threat. Findings highlight the important roles of jurors’ perceptions of crime threat and criminal justice institutions in shaping their decisions
Criminal justice · Distrust · Economic Justice · Fear of crime · Perception · Poison control · Punishment (psychology) · Punitive damages · Vignette · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Jury Decision Making Processes · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems
Fear of crime
The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials
Twenty-First Century Punitiveness
Racial Bias in Mock Juror Decision-Making
Attribution, Salience, and Attitudes toward Criminal Sanctioning
Concern About Crime and Confidence in the Police
The Theory of Constructed Emotion
Basic Emotions or Constructed Emotions
Predictors of Death Sentencing for Minority, Equal, and Majority Female Juries in Capital Murder Trials
End of Its Rope
Looking Deathworthy
A psychological perspective on vulnerability in the fear of crime
Confidence in criminal justice and judgments of guilt in criminal trials
Is a conservative just a liberal who has been mugged
Public support for the death penalty in a red state
Punitive attitudes toward criminals
Juror Perceptions of the Legitimacy of Legal Authorities and Decision Making in Criminal Cases
Emotion, Authority, and Death
The Social Sources of Americans' Punitiveness
Public opinion on the death penalty in Latin America
Do they matter? A meta-analytic investigation of individual characteristics and guilt judgments
Life or death
Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling
Crime, policing and social order
Distrust of Government, the Vigilante Tradition, and Support for Capital Punishment
The Threat of Victimization
| Highly cited | No |
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