Graduation Term

Fall 2025

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Department of Sociology and Anthropology: Sociology

Committee Chair

Susan Sprecher

Committee Member

Justin Turner

Committee Member

Frank Beck

Abstract

Problem: The shift from a focus on rehabilitation to the more punitive, “tough on crime” approach to illegal behavior in the U.S. has been enacted in no small way by policies connected to the use and abuse of drugs. The disparities between crack and powder cocaine—two chemically similar substances—have headlined this shift (Vagins and McCurdy 2006). However, research is scarce on laypeople’s approval of deterrence approaches for drug offenses, including as a function of types (e.g., powder vs. cocaine possession). This study examined people’s perceptions of prosecutorial decisions for drug offenders—whether they are punished, rehabilitated, or both—and whether people perceived the offenders differently based on their socioeconomic status (SES) and use of crack versus powder cocaine. Procedure: A vignette study was conducted with 332 college students. The vignette contained two stages. The first described the offender, including manipulations of the type of cocaine and the offender’s SES; the second revealed a court decision with three conditions—prison sentence, rehabilitation, or both. Dependent variables included the participants’ reactions to the target (e.g., recommended punishment in Stage 1; reaction to the hypothetical court decision in Stage 2). Individual difference variables of the participants, including political identity and their propensity to experience compassionate love (Sprecher and Fehr 2005), were also measured. Analyses and Results: For Stage 1, a 2 (SES: lower vs. higher class) x 2 (cocaine type: powder vs. crack) ANOVA was conducted to examine both the main and interaction effects of the manipulated variables on participants’ reactions to the presented target. For Stage 2, a one-way ANOVA was conducted to look at the main effect of the court decision variable on participants’ reactions to the court decision, among other analyses. Variation in the participants’ reactions as a function of the SES of and cocaine-type used by the hypothetical drug offender presented, as well as among the participants’ characteristics (e.g., political identity, propensity to experience compassionate love, etc.), was found, implicating particular characteristics of both the drug offender and the survey respondents as determining factors for views on approaches to drug offenses. Conclusions and Implications: This study serves as demonstrative of how people perceive criminal justice approaches specifically in the context of drug crimes and perceptual differences based on both a drug offender’s and participants’ characteristics, and it fills gaps in criminal justice and sociological literature pertaining to realistic judgments vis-a-vis the survey’s experimental design and its inspection of certain difference variables, yielding an understanding of what factors may serve as predictors of attitudes toward drug use and its solution.

Access Type

Thesis-Open Access

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