Public opinion and prison conditions in Canada: The relationship between attitudes and knowledge.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis explores the relationship between attitudes and knowledge, and assesses the impact of factual information on attitudes on the topic of prison conditions in Canada. A questionnaire, distributed to a non-representative sample of volunteer first year criminology students, forms the basis of this research. The questionnaire incorporated an attitude scale, measuring respondent "punitiveness", and a knowledge scale, measuring the accuracy of factual information concerning prison conditions at the disposal of respondents. The questionnaire was comprised of both global and specific questions and included an experimental manipulation (i.e., case scenarios). Respondents were supportive of both punitive and progressive penal policies and practices. Study participants were familiar with the general facets of prison life, but lacked information on penal policies, prisoner health issues, prisoners' rights, and release from prison. The results of this research do not support a relationship between attitudes and knowledge. Respondents held particular attitudes concerning prison conditions regardless of the amount or accuracy of factual information at their disposal. Participant assessments of penal severity were positively associated with their perceptions of sentencing severity. However, this research indicates that this relationship is spurious. An underlying individual trait, "punitiveness", influenced both attitudes towards sentencing and attitudes towards prison conditions. Respondents favouring punitive penal practices were more likely to appraise prison conditions and sentencing practices as lax. This research also indicates that providing participants with factual information via case scenarios does not alter their opinions. Respondents receiving global questions and those receiving case scenarios expressed statistically similar perceptions of prison conditions. Further, manipulating offence severity within the case scenarios did not alter participant perceptions of prison conditions. However, factual information, in the form of case scenarios, strengthens the relationship between "punitiveness" and perceptions of criminal justice leniency.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".