Stanford psychology researchers discovered that when white voters perceive more black Americans in the prison population, they support harsher laws.
Informing the white public that the percentage of black Americans in prison is far greater than the percentage of white people behind bars may not spur support for reform. Instead, it might actually generate support for the policies - such as stop-and-frisk and three-strikes laws - that created the situation. Although African-Americans constitute only 12 percent of America's population, they represent 40 percent of the nation's prison inmates. But informing the white public of this disproportionate incarceration rate may actually bolster support for the very policies that perpetuate the inequality, according to a study published in Psychological Science , a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Stanford psychology researchers Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt found that when white people were told about these racial disparities, they reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of punitive policies that exacerbate the racial disparities. The expansion of harsh policies - such as California's Three Strikes law and similar measures by other states - has led the United States to have the largest per-capita prison population in the world. "Most people likely assume this must be due to rising crime rates, but the explosion in the prison population is better explained by harsh criminal justice policies," said Hetey, a postdoctoral scholar and the lead author on the study.
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