Neighborhood context of attitudes toward crime and reentry

While much recent attention has been focused on the impact of incarceration on ex-prisoners, less has been paid to the general public's informal attitudes and responses to crime and offenders. This article begins to fill this void by exploring the impact of individual and neighborhood characteristics on attitudes toward crime and prisoner reentry. The article is based on two phases of data collection. During phase one, residents of four Massachusetts communities were surveyed about their attitudes and experiences with crime and prisoner reentry. During phase two, qualitative interviews and participant observation were used to explore how crime and reentry issues are framed across community context. The survey data suggest both that individual-level predictors (e.g. political affiliation, sex, parenthood, and several crime-related factors) of punitiveness are significant, and that there is a neighborhood context to these beliefs. The focus in analyzing the qualitative data is on two contrasting communities. These data suggest varying ways of framing 'the crime problem' that help explain the neighborhood context of these attitudes. Specifically, a localized framing shapes less punitive attitudes, while a focus on a general crime problem contributes to greater punitiveness.