what has happened to public support for the death penalty in texas

Conviction in the Capital punishment System in Texas and Support for a Death Penalty Moratorium:

Special Legislative Report

(2000 Texas Crime Poll )

Dennis R. Longmire, Ph.D.

Professor and Managing director

Survey Research Plan

Scott Vollum, M.P.P.

Doctoral Boyfriend

Criminal Justice Heart

Survey Inquiry Program

Sam Houston State Academy

Huntsville, Texas 77341

(936) 294-1651

electronic mail: ICC_DRL@SHSU.EDU

http://www.shsu.edu/cjcenter/College/srpdex.html

Recommended citation:

Longmire, Dennis R. and Scott Vollum (2001). Confidence in the Decease Penalty System in Texas and Support for a Death penalty Moratorium: Special Legislative Report (2000 Texas Law-breaking Poll) . Huntsville, Texas: Higher of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University. http://www.shsu.edu/~icc_drl/Confidence_in_Death_Penal.htm

Introduction

This Special Legislative Report was prepared for presentation before the Texas House of Representatives� State Affairs Committee every bit a resource document related to House Bill 720 on March nineteen, 2001. Information technology draws from data included in the 2000 Texas Law-breaking Poll , the 33rd statewide public opinion survey completed under the auspices of Sam Houston State University�due south Criminal Justice Center. The Criminal Justice Center was established past the Texas Legislature in 1963 when it passed House Resolution 469. This resolution chosen for Sam Houston Land University to work in collaboration with the Texas Department of Corrections to establish a programme of excellence with 4 objectives:

1) establish caste programs for individuals seeking careers in criminal justice;

2) provide continuing education programs for professionals already employed in the field of criminal justice;

3) conduct inquiry on the problems of crime and the administration of justice; and

4) provide technical assistance to criminal justice agencies.

The 2000 survey and all activities conducted nether the auspices of the Criminal Justice Heart�south Survey Enquiry Plan help to fulfill the third of these objectives by reporting information on public opinions regarding criminal justice and related issues. The showtime Texas Crime Poll was completed in 1977 and surveys have been repeated annually since that date with multiple surveys completed in several of these years. Copies of the Last Reports for each of these surveys is bachelor for review at the Center�s web-site located at http://www.shsu.edu/cjcenter/College/srpdex.html. The general purpose of these surveys is to provide legislators, public officials, and Texas residents with a reliable source of data nearly citizens� opinions and attitudes concerning crime and criminal justice related topics.

The 2000 Texas Crime Poll included a series of questions designed to ascertain how Texans' attitudes nigh offense and justice have changed since 1994. The data included in the 1994 Texas Crime Poll reflect Texans' attitudes about the criminal justice system in the final yr of Governor Ann Richards. The data collected in 2000 reflect Texans� attitudes in the final year of Governor Bush and offer some interesting comparisons that are beyond the scope of this Special Legislative Report . The results of this comparison are available at http://world wide web.shsu.edu/~icc_drl/TexasCrimePoll2000.html and a copy of the �Executive Summary� highlighting the major findings is fastened as an Annex to this Special Legislative Report .

The data for this report depict from questions focusing on items about the expiry penalty system that were non included in the 1994 survey just are particularly salient for today�s Texans. A general discussion of the survey�s methodology and a description of the respondents to the 2000 survey is followed by an examination of how much confidence Texans accept that the expiry penalty is being administered adequately and with adequate measures of certainty that innocent people are not being subject to this sanction. Whether or not in that location is general back up for a moratorium on executions in the country is also examined.

Section 1: The 2000 Survey and Characteristics of the Sample

The 2000 Texas Crime Poll involved a statewide telephone survey designed and commissioned by the Criminal Justice Centre�s Survey Inquiry Program at Sam Houston State University. In that survey, conducted by Texas A&M Academy�s Public Policy Inquiry Institute (PPRI) on behalf of Sam Houston Country University between Oct 3^rd and October 22^nd of 2000, a total of 403 Texans were queried almost their attitudes toward a wide variety of offense and criminal justice problems.

The questionnaire used can exist viewed at the Center�south web-site located at http://world wide web.shsu.edu/~icc_drl/TexasCrimePoll2000.Survey.html and a Technical Report showing the response rates and other pertinent data is available at http://world wide web.shsu.edu/~icc_drl/TexasCrimePoll2000.Technical.html.

The data presented in Table ane show the age, ethnicity/race, and gender of the participants in the 2000 survey. The size of this twelvemonth�s sample, while somewhat pocket-sized, allows general frequencies reported to fall within a margin of error or (+/-) four.5%. The sample was also selected to insure that it reflects the most current demography estimates of Texans along the dimensions of gender and race/ethnicity, all the same, due to the small number of respondents within each of the different demographic groups, caution is urged in drawing conclusions well-nigh the attitudes and opinions of these different groups.

Table ane Age, race, and gender of respondents

% of Total (Due north = 403)

Age
xviii - 29	23 (92)
30 - 44	30 (117)
45 - 61	31 (123)
Over 61	16 (61)
Ethnicity
White	71 (280)
Black/or African American	viii (33)
Hispanic	16 (62)
Other	7 (20)
Gender
Male	49 (201)
Female	51 (202)

SECTION 2: Public Confidence in the Capital punishment Organisation: General Overview

Recent national attention has focused on several questions about the certitude and fairness of the system used to sentence people to death. In January of 2000, questions about the possibility of executing someone who is actually innocent of the alleged offense led the Governor of Illinois to impose a temporary moratorium on executions until that state�s decease penalisation system can be reviewed. The Nebraska legislature had already imposed such a moratorium on executions in that state in 1999 and in 2000 New Hampshire�s legislature as well passes moratorium bills. In both of these instances, the governor vetoed the bills.

A number of jurisdictions throughout the U.S. accept passed legislation to insure that Dna testing is available to protect against the execution of innocent people, even so, these measures will not provide protection in cases where DNA evidence has not been relied upon during adjudication. This leaves open the possibility of executing innocent defendants erroneously convicted in such cases. It is merely such a possibility that contributed to the decision by several European nations to impose a prohibition against the death sentence and lead the European Union to crave fellow member nations to prohibit the use of capital letter penalty in order to maintain eligibility for membership.

In improver to questions of certitude, longstanding questions about the fairness of the capital punishment accept once once again drawn public attention. Concerns about whether or not capital defendants receive a fair and impartial trial with admission to competent legal counsel and whether or not the death penalty is applied disproportionately confronting racial/ethnic minorities or the economically underprivileged served as the impetus for the U.S. Supreme Court�s imposition of a national moratorium on the capital punishment in the well known example of Furman five. Georgia in 1972.

Texas, forth with several other states, revised its capital punishment laws to the Court�s satisfaction in 1976 and at the shut of the calendar year in 2000 in that location had been 239 people executed under the new law. According the figures presented at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice�southward spider web-page (http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/racial.htm), as of March 8, 2001, another 440 men and 7 women were on Texas� death row awaiting execution. Texas�due south political leaders have consistently proclaimed that the �modern death sentence system� is fair and impartial and that there is a high probability of certainty that innocent people have not been executed.

A recent report entitled A Land of Denial: Texas Justice and the Decease Penalization completed by the Texas Defender Service (2000) raises serious questions about these proclamations. This report represents the kickoff systematic attempt to ascertain whether or non the citizens of Texas share this high level of conviction in the death penalty organisation.

The 2000 Texas Crime Poll included several questions designed to ascertain how confident Texans are that innocent people take not been executed and that the system operates fairly and every bit for all. Responses to these questions provide the foundation for the Part I of this report. Texans were likewise asked whether or not they would back up a moratorium on the carrying out of majuscule sentences pending the completion of studies to determine the certitude and fairness of the system. Responses to these items constitute the Role Two of this report.

Part I: Support for and Confidence in Texas�s Death sentence System

Back up for the Death Penalty. The results reported in the 2000 Texas Criminal offense Poll, concerning Texans� support for the death penalty are reproduced in Tabular array 2. These figures prove that, in response to the simple question, � Do you favor the employ of the death penalty in the case of murder ?� 72% of today�s Texans said �yes� compared with 81% in 1994. When asked whether or not they would keep to support the capital punishment if there were a � true life sentence without the possibility of parole ,� these numbers dropped to 60% in 2000 and 66% in 1994.

Table 2 Percentage of Texans Supporting the Death penalty: 1994 vs. 2000

Year of Survey	% Supporting the Decease Penalty	% Maintaining Support if a �true life sentence� were bachelor
1994	81	66
2000	72	60

These figures show that a majority of Texans continue to favor the use of capital penalization, however, in the 2000 survey, immediately after request nearly their general support for the sanction, respondents were asked �How much confidence do you have that death sentence organization in Texas protects innocent people from being executed? Would you say a lot of confidence, some confidence, fiddling confidence or no confidence?� Similar questions followed with the focus shifting from innocence to whether or not:

1) the capital punishment in Texas is being imposed fairly on poor people ;

2) the capital punishment is imposed fairly on members of minority groups ;

3) people charged with capital murder in Texas receive competent legal representation during their trial ; and

4) people bedevilled of capital crimes in Texas have acceptable levels of access to the appeal process .

Confidence in the Death sentence System. The percent of respondents reporting each level of conviction for each of these five aspects of the death punishment system are reported in Figure i. The aspects of the death penalty system are listed in decreasing order of general confidence.

Fifty percent of the respondents have �a lot� of confidence that people in Texas who have been bedevilled of capital crimes take acceptable levels of access to the entreatment process with another 32% expressing �some� conviction in this area. Only 13% reported �little� confidence in the accessibility of the upper-case letter appeal process and five% reported �no� such confidence.

Texans show a similarly high level of general confidence that Texans charged with majuscule crimes have access to competent legal representation with only 22% reporting �little� (16%) or �no� (6%) such confidence in this aspect of the expiry penalty organization. Almost 80% of the respondents reported either �a lot� (30%) or �some� (48%) conviction that upper-case letter defendants receive competent legal representation during their arbitrament.

Only three-quarters of the respondents, nonetheless, felt that innocent people in Texas are protected against wrongful convictions with 38% expressing �a lot� of confidence and 36% expressing �some� confidence. The remaining 26% had �little� (17%) or �no� (9%) confidence that innocent people were protected confronting wrongful convictions. More specific exam of the issue of certitude, addressed through a series of additional questions included in the survey, is discussed beneath.

Texans have the lowest levels of confidence that the State is able to apply the death penalty fairly in the treatment of minority group members and the poor. Only 35% of the respondents expressed �a lot� of confidence that the capital punishment treats minority group members fairly and only xxx% had �some� confidence in this regard. Twenty-three percent of all respondents said that they have �footling� confidence in the fairness of the decease penalty system�s treatment of minorities and 12% had �no� such confidence. Over a third of the respondents had �lilliputian� (21%) or �no� (14%) conviction that Texas�south decease penalisation organisation treats the poor fairly.

Certitude in the Application of the Capital punishment. Possibly the most disquisitional consequence facing those charged with administering any punishment system is to insure that sanctions are merely applied confronting those who are truly guilty of the offense for which they are being punished. This upshot is specially salient in the instance of the death penalisation since, once executed, a person cannot be saved from the consequences of a wrongful conviction. While the numbers reported in Figure 1 evidence that Texans are relatively confident that the state�s capital punishment system protects against such events, information technology is worth recalling that 26% of the respondents had �little� or �no� confidence in the system�s ability to assure certitude in the administration of capital punishment.

In an endeavour to better understand what the general public thinks about the result of finality in the assistants of the capital punishment, 2 subsequent questions were asked of all of the respondents to the 2000 Texas Crime Poll . They were kickoff asked � How often do you think innocent people have been executed in Texas? Would you say never, rarely, occasionally or ofttimes ?� All respondents except those who responded �never� were then asked � How many of the last 100 people executed in Texas exercise yous think were innocent ?� and their verbal response was recorded. The distribution the responses to these questions is presented in Tabular array 3.

Table 3 Texans� Perceptions of How Frequently Innocent People Are Executed

Response	% of Respondents	Average number of last 100 who were innocent (standard deviation)
Never	9	due north/a
Rarely	53	2.74 (vi.74)
Occasionally	28	8.39 (nine.33)
Frequently	9	22.75 (23.18)

It is credible from the figures in Tabular array three that the majority of Texans believe the execution of innocent people occurs somewhat frequently. Only nine percent of the respondents believed that Texas has �never� executed an innocent person. Fifty-three per centum consider the likelihood to be �rare.� The remaining 37% of the respondents, all the same, consider it to be a more common occurrence with 28% saying it �occasionally� happens and 9% believing it to be a frequent occurrence.

When asked to reverberate on the question with a more current frame of reference, respondents who believed there to exist some possibility that an innocent person may have been executed in the past reported that anywhere from naught to 89% of the final 100 executions involved innocent people. The range of these estimates is indeed extreme making it misleading to try to characterize the arithmetic �mean� of the sample at large.

The �ways� for each grouping of respondents reported in Tabular array iii, however, show that those respondents who think such an mistake is �rare� believed that, on average, 2.74% of the past 100 people executed in Texas were innocent. Those characterizing such errors as �occasional� believed that, on boilerplate, the execution of innocent people occurred viii.93% of the time and those characterizing such events as �frequent� reported an average error rate of 22.75%. Although not reported in this Table, the �median� guess, or the point where 50% of the respondents fall above and l% fall below, was 2 and the �mode� or the most frequent estimate offered, was that none of the most recent executions involved innocent people.

General Level of Confidence in Texas� Death Penalty Arrangement. In an effort to ascertain the full general level of confidence Texans have in the death sentence organisation, an �Index of Confidence in the Death Penalisation� was constructed using responses to the five different items included in the above analysis. Responses to each item were coded so that those who had �a great deal of confidence� on a particular detail received a score of �4.� Those who had �some conviction� received a score of �three.� Those reporting �petty confidence� received a score of �ii� and those reporting �no confidence� received a score of �1.� For each case, the sum of the scores on each of the v items was calculated and divided by a count of valid (non-missing) responses. For example, if a respondent indicated �no confidence� (confidence score of �one�) on three of the items, �some confidence� (confidence score of �2�) on ane item and refused to answer or left bare the other, the score would exist calculated as:

Index of Confidence in the Death Penalisation Score = (ane+1+1+2) / 4 = 1.25

These index values can range from �1� to �iv� with higher values indicating high levels of confidence in the death penalty system and lower values indicating low levels of overall conviction. The example given above would indicate that the respondent had a low level of confidence in the capital punishment system in Texas. This index value tin be treated as an interval level variable so that differences beyond groups of respondents can be examined. The sample�s overall �Index of Confidence in the Death Punishment� is reported in Table 4 forth with the �mean� scores expressed past five unlike demographic groups who are frequently identified in research equally having statistically pregnant differences in their levels of support for the capital punishment.

The figures reported in Tabular array 4 show an boilerplate �Index of Confidence in the Decease Punishment� of two.997. Members of racial and ethnic minority groups written report significantly lower levels of confidence in the organization with Black/African Americans scoring only two.253 and Hispanics scoring ii.767 compared to an index score of iii.152 for White respondents. There are also statistically significant differences in the index of confidence for people from dissimilar economic groups. The higher a person�s income, the higher their �Index of Confidence in the Death sentence.� Those respondents reporting annual incomes of more than $lx,000 had an average alphabetize score of 3.132 compared with scores of two.802 for those earning less than $fifteen,000 per year.

While the confidence alphabetize score of 3.072 for men was slightly higher than for women (2.992) this difference was not statistically pregnant. Similarly, the differences in conviction expressed by members of the dissimilar educational groups were not statistically meaning.

Table 4 Overall Index of Confidence in Texas� Capital punishment Arrangement

and Differences in Levels of Confidence Expressed by Members of Different Demographic Groups

	Mean Index of Confidence in the Decease Penalty	Standard Deviation	F value (significance level)
Total Sample	2.997	.790	north/a
Race/Etnicity White Blackness/African American* Hispanic*	three.152 two.253 ii.767	.762 .634 .661	17.163 (sig. < .001)
Gender Male Female	3.073 ii.922	.780 .795	3.648 (sig. = .057)
Didactics Less than High School Loftier School or GED College Avant-garde Degree	2.892 2.953 3.052 two.871	.882 .734 .775 .933	.992 (sig. = .396)
Annual Income Less than $xv,000 $xv,000 - $30,000 $thirty,000 - $60,000 More than $60,000	ii.802 2.856 2.966 3.132	.730 .746 .761 .793	2.826 (sig. < .05)

*Significantly different from Whites at the .001 level of significance

It is apparent from these figures that a large number of Texans take concerns about the fairness of the death penalty system and that those people who are most likely to be subject to uppercase sanctions, the poor and minority grouping members, are the ones with the greatest concerns. It is besides important to remember that a sizeable proportion of the sample believed that Texas has executed innocent people in the by. The side by side task is to examine whether or non there is sufficient concern about the state�s death penalty system to warrant a moratorium on carrying out uppercase sanctions, for any of the reasons discussed in this section.

Office ii: Back up for a Moratorium on Executions in Texas

In addition to the questions about conviction in the death penalty system, the 2000 Texas Crime Poll included a series of items designed to determine whether or not Texans would back up a moratorium on executions until the organisation used to administer this punishment has been examined to insure that it is operating fairly and with acceptable levels of certitude. The questions used in this effort were asked immediately following the initial question about �confidence� in each surface area of the death penalty system.

For example, immediately afterwards ascertaining how much confidence respondents had that innocent people were protected from the death sentence, they were asked �Exercise y'all call up at that place should exist a �moratorium� on Texas's executions (a flow of time during which at that place are no people executed in Texas) until the system can exist studied to make sure innocent people are not being executed ? Similar questions were asked post-obit each of the five �confidence questions.� Respondents were asked to merely respond �yep� or �no� to each of these questions.

It is noteworthy that, with the exception of �access to legal appeals,� a majority of Texans reported that they would support a moratorium on executions pending the outcome of studies to examine each of the different dimensions of the decease penalty organization. Given the public�due south relative conviction that people sentenced to death have adequate access to the appeal procedure, the finding that fifty-fifty 48% of the respondents would back up a moratorium to study this issue is noteworthy.

Fifty-four percent of the respondents to this survey reported that they would support a hiatus in the actual execution of people bedevilled of capital murder pending the results of studies looking into the questions of the fairness of the system�due south treatment of minority grouping members and the poor. Fifty-iv percent of the respondents also reported that they would back up a moratorium pending the result of studies to insure that the innocent are protected from being executed. L-three percent of the respondents indicated support for a moratorium pending the outcome of studies looking into the adequacy of legal representation offered to uppercase defendants.

Alphabetize of Support for a Decease Penalty Moratorium. In an attempt to assess the full general level of support Texans take for a moratorium on executions, an �Index of Support for a Expiry Penalty Moratorium� was synthetic using like methods every bit those used to construct the �Index of Confidence in the Death Penalization� discussed in Section 1. In developing the overall index, the responses were first coded so that �yes� = 1 and �no� = 0. And so the aforementioned process as previously described was implemented to construct a respondent�south overall �Index of Support for a Decease Penalty Moratorium.� For instance, if a respondent indicated back up (�yeah�) for a moratorium on 3 items, no support (�no�) on one item, and left the other blank, the score would be calculated every bit:

Index of Support for a Capital punishment Moratorium Score = (one+ane+i+0)/4 = .75

The index values range from �0� to �1� with higher values indicating high levels of back up and lower values indicating low levels of support. The example given above indicates a respondent with a relatively high level of support for a moratorium.

Tabular array 5 Overall Alphabetize of Support for a Death Penalty Moratorium

and Differences in Levels of Support Expressed by Members of Different Demographic Groups

	Hateful Index of Back up for a Death Penalty Moratorium	Standard Deviation	F value (significance level)
Total Sample	.5324	.4500	n/a
Race/Ethnicity White Black/African American* Hispanic*	.4306 .8879 .7720	.4391 .2643 .3809	20.648 (sig. < .001)
Gender Male person Female person	.4672 .5969	.4596 .4317	eight.495 (sig. = .004)
Didactics Less than Loftier Schoolhouse High School or GED College Advanced Caste	.7444 .5977 .4835 .4361	.3895 .4306 .4528 .4697	4.996 (sig = .002)
Annual Income Less than $15,000** $fifteen,000 - $thirty,000** $xxx,000 - $60,000*** More than $sixty,000	.7053 .6622 .5534 .3896	.4105 .4212 .4261 .4550	viii.350 (sig. < .001)

* Significantly unlike from Whites at the ,001 level of significance.

** Significantly different from those earning more than $60,000 at the.001 level of significance.

*** Significantly different from those earning more than $threescore,000 at the .017 level of significance.

The figures reported in Table v show that the overall sample has a moderate level of support for a death penalty moratorium with an �Index of Support for a Death Penalty Moratorium� of .5324. The closer this score comes to �i.00� the greater the level of support. There are, nevertheless, statistically significant differences in the levels of support for a moratorium expressed past each of the dissimilar demographic groups. Women, Black/African Americans, and those with the lowest annual incomes expressed the highest levels of back up for a moratorium on executions while Whites, males, and those respondents who had higher levels of education expressed the everyman level of back up for a moratorium.

Summary and Give-and-take of Findings

The current data show that issues of certitude and fairness in the administration of capital sanctions resonate every bit the chief concerns Texans have nearly the administration of the capital punishment. Their responses to the �confidence� items suggest that they are fairly confident that the system is operating effectively and they seem to be quite willing to hold off on executions until these beliefs have been studied. Questions about exactly what they would recommend if these studies failed to confirm their confidence was non included in the 2000 Texas Criminal offence Poll .

In the 1995 Texas Crime Poll , (Longmire and Sims) which is available at http://world wide web.shsu.edu/~icc_drl/TEXAS_CRIME_POLL_ON-LINE.html, a series of questions was included to examine the �constancy� of people�s support for the death penalty in the face of several different issues including the issues of certitude and fairness. Respondents to that survey were offset asked whether or not they supported the death sentence for the crime of murder and were then asked � What if you were to larn that some people who have been executed were actually innocent ? Respondents were asked to indicate whether such information would crusade them to be � more likely to favor � the capital punishment, � more likely to oppose � the death penalty, or whether it � wouldn�t matter � to them. Similar questions were asked about how their positions would be effected if they were to learn that � members of minority groups are more than probable than others to receive the decease penalisation for the aforementioned criminal offence ,� and that � poor people are more likely than others to receive the decease punishment for the same crimes.�

Table 6 shows the percent of respondents who initially supported the capital punishment and how this support would change if they were to learn that innocent people had been executed or that the system did non treat minority group members or the poor fairly. While these figures were not gathered from the same grouping of Texans included in the 2000 Texas Crime Poll , they may offer some insight into how today�s Texans would answer to such results.

Tabular array 6 Effect of Dissimilar Factors on Texans� Support for the Death sentence: 1995 Texas Crime Poll

	% of Full (N = 578)
Initially support the expiry punishment for the crime of murder?	78 (449)
Would continue support even if innocent people had been executed .	37 (211)
Would keep support even if minority group members were treated differently .	47 (270)
Would go along support fifty-fifty if poor people were treated differently .	42 (243)

It seems reasonable to assume that the general level of support for the death penalty in Texas would wane considerably if the outcome of studies conducted during a moratorium period failed to sustain people�due south general confidence in the certitude and fairness of the death punishment organisation. Appropriately, law makers and criminal justice policy makers would be encouraged to make whatsoever adjustments are necessary to reply to these problems.

Data analyzed in this report evidence that a sizeable majority of Texans back up the death penalisation for the law-breaking of murder, it is every bit apparent that they presume the system responsible for administering this sanction is operating with a fairly high degree of finality and fairness.

Whether or not the arrangement itself is actually fair and certain has not been systematically tested and a bulk of today�s Texans are open to the imposition of a moratorium in executions until these issues can be reviewed. If the system fails to meet these expectations, appropriate remediation should be taken to insure that the organisation is operating fairly and with a sufficiently high level of certitude.

Addendum

2000 Texas Offense Poll: Executive Summary

A copy of the complete Last Report can be viewed at http://www.shsu.edu/~icc_drl/TexasCrimePoll2000.html

CITIZENS' CONCERNS ABOUT CRIME

Texans are overwhelmingly less concerned with the problems of criminal offense and drugs than they were in 1994 but are considerably more than concerned about education.

37% of the 1994 respondents mentioned crime as the most important problem facing them at the local level compared to only xiv% in 2000.

In 2000, viii% of Texans mentioned law-breaking as the well-nigh important problem facing them at the state level compared to 35% in 1994.

Declining family values and education are the about important issues facing today's Texans at the local and land levels.

CONFIDENCE IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE Organisation AND ITS COMPONENTS

Texan's today are considerably more satisfied with each of the components of the criminal justice organization today than they were in 1994.

The greatest increases in satisfaction occurred in Texans' satisfaction with their local police force enforcement departments, the Department of Public Safety, and the state prison system.

The smallest increases in satisfaction occurred when people reflected on their county probation departments and the state parole system.

Texans are considerably more satisfied with the delivery of criminal justice services today than they were in 1994.

In both years, Black/African Americans reported considerably lower levels of satisfaction with the criminal justice system than did whatsoever other demographic sub-group.

Support FOR SOLUTIONS TO Prison OVERCROWDING

In both 1994 and 2000, Texans are most strongly in favor of "solutions" to prison overcrowding that rely on increasing the availability of new prison house space.

Today's Texans are considerably more than likely to support the increased use of electronic monitoring every bit a solution to prison overcrowding (66% in 1994 vs. 76% in 2000).

Today's Texans are more likely to support the increased utilize of probation as a solution to prison overcrowding (seven% in 1994 vs. 18% in 2000).

SUPPORT FOR THE Expiry PENALTY

Today'southward Texans are considerably less supportive of the capital punishment than they were in 1994.

72% of the 2000 respondents support the death penalty compared to 81% supporting information technology in 1994.

The greatest reductions in support occurred among Blacks and "Other" ethnic groups, younger respondents, and respondents at both ends of the educational continuum.

The only category where at that place was increased back up for the capital punishment in 2000 compared to 1994 was in the case of treason.

In both 1994 and 2000, the overall level of back up for the death penalty drops considerably with the introduction of a "true life sentence."

60% of today'south Texans would continue to favor the death penalty if there were a "true life sentence available" compared with 66% of the 1994 sample.

Women and Black/African Americans are significantly less likely than others to continue to support the employ of the death penalisation if in that location were a "truthful life sentence" available.

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Source: https://www.shsu.edu/~icc_drl/Confidence_in_Death_Penal.htm

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