Investigating Group Threat's Role in the Relationship Between Attitudes Towards Black People and State-Level Punitiveness (thesis)

Abstract

This thesis is about understanding the relationship between group threat and punitiveness at the state level. In Chapter 1, I begin by giving an account of the history of racialized mass incarceration and how it's been especially harmful for the Black community. Then, I discuss group threat theory and how it relates to White people's attitudes concerning Black people and states' levels of punitiveness. In Chapter 2, I attempt to understand the motivation for White voters who support punitive policies by looking at how group threat impacts White voters' attitudes towards Black people as well as their attitudes towards police at the individual-level. In Chapter 3, I replicate and extend a paper that provides a way of measuring punitiveness across different dimensions, and then I look at how ethno-racial demography and White people's attitudes concerning Black people may work together to predict state-level punitiveness. [From introductory section]