Early release from prison in time of COVID-19: Determinants of unfavourable decisions towards Black prisoners

Mariana P Miranda, Rui Costa-Lopes, Gonçalo Freitas and Catarina L Carvalho

PLOS ONE, 2021, vol. 16, issue 5, 1-17

Abstract: On the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the overcrowding in prisons led to efforts to decarcerate in order to prevent and control outbreaks in prisons. This study analyses how public support for such exceptional measures are determined by cognitive and ideological factors known to create and maintain racial biases in the criminal system. Participants were asked to express their level of agreement with the early-release of hypothetical prisoners. Results showed participants to be less favourable to the early-release of Black compared to White prisoners, when they had committed a stereotypically Black crime. As expected, the congruency between the crime stereotypicality and the colour of the prisoner’s skin did not emerge for White prisoners. Moreover, the difference between the agreement with the release of the Black vs. the White prisoner when both committed a stereotypically Black crime was higher as the level of endorsement of Meritocracy increased. Contrastingly, Anti-egalitarianism only predicted an overall disagreement with prisoners’ early-release. This paper highlights the cumulative explanation by different levels of analysis of this current problem and implications for the development of the public opinion on penal subjects.

Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252319 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 52319&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0252319

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0252319

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().