Attitudes Toward Crime and Punishment in Vermont: Public Opinion About an Experiment With Restorative Justice, 1999
Description
By the summer of 1998, the Vermont Department of
Corrections (DOC) had completed three years of operational experience
with "restorative justice," a concept that involves compensating
victims and establishing community-based reparative boards that
determine how offenders can make amends for their crimes. The purpose
of this project was to update the benchmark findings from an earlier
survey of Vermont residents in 1994, to assess public attitudes about
the reforms and changes that had been instituted by the Vermont DOC,
and to explore the possibility of expansion of responsibilities of the
reparative community boards. This project involved a telephone survey
of a new sample of 601 adult residents of Vermont. The interviewing
was conducted on March 15-21, 1999. Respondents were asked a series of
trend questions to update the 1994 findings. Respondents were also
asked questions about two other programs: the diversion program, in
which selected first offenders who fulfilled the terms of a
community-based sanction could have their records expunged, and the
furlough program, in which offenders making the transition from prison
to the community were supervised for an interim period. The survey
also explored whether Vermonters would like to see the
responsibilities of the reparative boards expanded to include
community notification and other types of cases. Residents assessed
whether crime in general, violent crime, and illegal drug use had
increased compared to five years prior, whether more prisons should be
built, whether Vermont's jails and prisons were overcrowded, and
whether violent offenders were being released before completing their
sentences because of overcrowding. They commented on how often
offenders in four scenarios should go to prison and how often they
believed that these offenders in fact did go to prison. Respondents
rated the performance of various segments of the Vermont criminal
justice system and, given 15 offense scenarios, were asked whether the
offender should spend time in jail or in community service and
rehabilitation. In addition, respondents were asked whether anyone in
their household had been a victim of a crime within the last three
years and, if so, whether it was a violent crime. Demographic data
include sex, employment, education, race/ethnicity, and age category
of the respondent, and the county and region where the resident
lived.
Resources
| Name |
Format |
Description |
Link |
|
0 |
ICPSR03016.v1 |
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03016.v1 |
Tags
- victim-c
- correctional-facilities
- program-evaluation
- restitution-programs
- corrections-management
- restorative-justice
- community-service-programs
- diversion-programs
- public-opinion
- alternatives-to-institutionalization
- criminal-histories
- communities