Race, Gender, and Juvenile Determinism: A Mixed Methods Approach to Understanding Punishment Attitudes Toward Juvenile Offenders

This article examines intersections of race and gender in young adults’ attitudes toward juvenile offenders. Using original survey data, we first replicate a quantitative model testing race and gender differences in support of punitive treatment for juvenile offenders. We then use qualitative interview data to understand how young adults reconcile their own past offending with deterministic beliefs in racialized and gendered ways. Our findings indicate stark differences by race and gender in young people’s support for punitive treatment of juvenile offenders. White respondents and women respondents are much more supportive of punitive treatment than their Black and men counterparts. Qualitative analyses support this pattern but also find that race and gender intersect in important ways in the narratives young people use to justify their beliefs. White men draw upon narratives of difference (or sameness) to other offenders to justify (or refute) deterministic and punitive beliefs. These narratives are not central for White women, who generally advocate for punitive beliefs regardless, or for women and men of color, who generally advocate for rehabilitative beliefs regardless. Such findings suggest that identification with offenders is racialized and gendered not only in who experiences it, but also in its implications for policy and practice.