Over the past two decades, considerable political rhetoric has focused on the need to get tough on crime. Justification for this hard-line approach has been the publics apparent concern about rising crime rates and its increasing dissatisfaction with criminal sentencing. These concerns, often fuelled by the medias selective presentation of information about crime, are thought to leave people feeling afraid and, as a consequence, more likely to support punitive sentencing policies. The subject of this thesis is on the nature of and influences on peoples perceptions of and responses to crime. Four studies are reported. / The first study compared how people perceived the seriousness of an offence when it was presented first in the abstract form as is customary in public opinion surveys, and then as an exemplar based on an actual crime. Although the overall ranking of seriousness for the two conditions corresponded closely, the majority of crimes were rated as significantly less serious when presented in vignette form. / In study two, the role of social cognition and language in the evaluation of crime seriousness was examined. The findings revealed that when the offender in a crime vignette was named, the offence was perceived as less serious, and the offenders behaviour less internally motivated, less stable, and less under the offenders control than when the offender was not named. Similarly, manipulating the verb used to describe the offence resulted in significant differences with respect to the perceived crime seriousness, the degree to which the offenders behaviour was controllable, and the level of responsibility attributed to the offender for that behaviour. / Study three, which examined the relationship between fear of crime and punitiveness, entailed the development of two new measures: crime apprehension and locus of control for crime victimisation. Locus of control was found to be a significant predictor of crime apprehension, while the measure of crime apprehension revealed a pattern of concern that differentiated between types of crime, and involved different graduations in the assessment of their relevance to the individual. Punitiveness was shown to be related to a concern about the likelihood that one would be harmed personally; concern about property crime or the perception that crime is on the increase were not reflected in punitiveness. / Study four investigated the relationship between people's television viewing habits, their apprehension about crime, and their beliefs about increased crime prevalence. The pattern of responses revealed that heavier viewing of different programme types was associated with beliefs about perceived increases in different crime categories and for different aspects of crime apprehension. For example, watching more reality television and Australian crime drama was positively associated with beliefs that person-related offences had substantially increased over the preceding five year period, and increased apprehension about becoming the victim of person- and property-related crimes; watching more commercial news and current affairs programmes was also related to increased apprehension about becoming a victim of person and property-related offences. / A recurring concern in these studies was the need the address perceived deficiencies in definition and measurement of constructs of interest. The pattern of results confirmed the importance of such concerns and moves closer to resolving some of the inconsistencies evident in the research undertaken to date. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267637 |
| Creators | Casey, Sharon |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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