Blame and punishment: attitudes to juvenile and criminal offending

Responses of 139 undergraduate social welfare students and 79 community members to a questionnaire regarding contemporary issues in juvenile and general justice were partially accounted for by a Punitive-Internal factor. Scores on a resultant 8-item index of punitive-internal attitudes were positively correlated with scores on belief in a just world and were lower for social welfare students than for community members. In a follow-up study with a second sample of 78 community members, scores on the Punitive-Internal index were significantly related to ratings on measures of attitude toward authority and political conservatism but not to reported experience of crime. Findings are consistent with previous research and indicate that opinions on juvenile offending have a similar attitudinal basis to opinions on offending in general.