Assessing attitudes toward rehabilitation during the COVID-19 pandemic: an explorative study of two samples using natural ‘intervention’

This study explored potential associations between students’ attitudes toward rehabilitation of convicted offenders and factors such as the emotional impact of social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and their knowledge about criminology and criminal justice. The pandemic’s social isolation context enabled the measurement of the emotional experience (affective component) on punitive and rehabilitative attitudes. The study analyzed quantitative data from a voluntary sample of 192 criminology and criminal justice undergraduate students from two different countries using web-based surveys to measure rehabilitative and punitive attitudes. The aim was to examine potential relationships between isolation experiences, knowledge, cultural differences, selected demographic variables, and attitudes toward rehabilitation. U.S. students reported experiencing more difficulties than their Israeli counterparts. The latter expressed significantly less supportive attitudes toward rehabilitation than did the U.S. students. Findings from this study indicate the importance of examining the potential associations between both emotional/affective and cognitive components and attitudes toward rehabilitation. Students who reported being more affected emotionally by isolation tended to exhibit more supportive attitudes toward rehabilitation. Additionally, those with greater knowledge about rehabilitation tended to express more supportive views. This research highlights the potential value of considering both emotional experiences and knowledge when examining attitudes toward offenders’ rehabilitation.