Punishment, Rehabilitation, or Both: Assessing Public Support for Balanced Justice for Attempted Mass Shooters

This study assesses public opinion on how attempted mass shooters should be handled by the criminal justice system. Multinomial logistic regression determined the relative roles of age and mental health status in predicting the endorsement of punishment, treatment, or balanced approaches that incorporate both punitive and therapeutic treatment. Findings suggest that the endorsement of rehabilitative or balanced approaches depends heavily on perceptions of the likely effectiveness of treatment programs and offenders’ deservedness of access to treatment. Specifically, support for balanced approaches to processing attempted mass shooters extends across age and mental health status for people who believe in the effectiveness of treatment. To a lesser extent, the same pattern exists for people who believe offenders deserve treatment in general.