Search

The American public’s fascination with the death penalty has given rise to many empirical studies. Perhaps because of its perceived severity and finality or perhaps because of its power to express collective outrage, Americans remain engaged in the debate about the ultimate abrogation of a criminal career. However, curiously few members of the media or the academy have examined the population to which the question is most directly relevant— prison inmates. Who can speak more meaningfully to the effects of punishment than the punished? Who better than criminals can speak about what will deter crime? Although public opinion polls are useful for tracking shifts in penal preferences, they generally cannot speak to more than the public’sperception of how well the death penalty is accomplishing the goal of crime reduction.

Seeking to redress the lack of inmate-centered research, the authors examine inmate attitudes towards capital punishment to determine whether individual and social characteristics predict death penalty support for a sample of 309 midwestern inmates. The authors’ results indicate that while a slight majority of inmates opposed capital punishment (53%), opposition softened considerably for crimes such as serial killing, child molestation, and child abuse. Factors that significantly predicted inmate death penalty support included the belief that capital punishment deters violent crime, family members’ capital punishment advocacy, and a high score on the Alpha scale (a measure assessing inmate identification with violent and aggressive aspects of hegemonic masculinity). In addition, a significant inverse relationship emerged between the belief that a person can be rehabilitated and death penalty support. The findings strongly suggest that inmate death penalty opinions are complex and nuanced and can offer considerable insights regarding the efficacy of current social control practices.