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Study finds Americans do not like mass incarceration

UC criminologist says we are in a new era of penal sensibility

headshot of Angela Koenig By Angela Koenig 513-558-4625
3 minute read May 28, 2025

A new study, co-authored by an esteemed University of Cincinnati criminologist, has found that most Americans have an unfavorable opinion of mass incarceration.

headshot of Francis Cullen

Francis Cullen, PhD | Photo/UC Marketing + Brand

The study — “Most Americans Do Not Like Mass Incarceration: Penal Sensibility in an Era of Declining Punitiveness” — was undertaken by criminologist Francis Cullen, a distinguished research professor emeritus in UC’s School of Criminal Justice, and a team of researchers from across the country to determine current perceptions about the American penal system.

Cullen says their findings are in line with other opinion polls that show a decline in “public punitiveness,”  or the tendency or desire to punish.

"There is a new 'penal sensibility’ known as a new way the public thinks about corrections in America,” Cullen says.

The researchers commissioned international online research data and analytics group YouGov to conduct a nationwide survey of 1,000 respondents.

The study, which now appears in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, found:  

  • Most Americans favor community programs for nonviolent and drug offenders as opposed to prison sentences.
  • Most do not want to spend tax dollars building more prisons; they favor spending money on prevention programs.
  • Few respondents have positive emotions about prisons.

  • Forty percent of Americans agree the prison system is racist.

These results, Cullen says, suggest that the “get tough” movement — starting in the 1970s — has lost traction in the United States. For half a century, he says, “America was in a punitive era in which prison populations grew rapidly, until reaching 2.3 million people incarcerated at times.”  

As a core policy, Americans do not want another era of mass incarceration.

Francis Cullen Distinguished research professor, School of Criminal Justice

About 15 years ago, however, he says prison populations suddenly and unexpectedly stopped growing and then started to decline; Americans' punitiveness also started to decline, he says.

“Our paper probes whether these developments are signs of a correctional turning point in which a new penal sensibility has taken hold, when in fact it has,” says Cullen.

While the study shows Americans are not favorable toward mass incarceration, Cullen says that this does not mean that if someone commits a serious crime study respondents would not want the person locked up.   

“But it does mean that as a core policy, Americans do not want another era of mass incarceration,” says Cullen.

The research team included criminologists Alexander Burton, PhD, lead author from the University of Texas at Dallas; Cheryl Lero Jonson, PhD, from Xavier University in Cincinnati; and Justin Pickett from the University at Albany, State University of New York. Both Burton and Jonson earned their doctorates in criminology from UC’s School of Criminal Justice, under the tutelage of Cullen.

Featured image at top: iStock Photo/george tsartsianidis

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