Abstract
A number of studies in the United States examine the impact of religiosity on attitudes towards various types of criminal sanctioning. Research seems to indicate that more conservative denominations and faiths have a more punitive preference for criminal sanctions. Previous studies have also examined these attitudes between criminal justice and non-criminal justice students. While this area of inquiry has drawn attention in the United States, only scant attention has been paid to this phenomenon in other countries. To the best of our knowledge, no study has addressed this issue in China and our research seeks to serve as a foundation for examining this topic in that country. Using data collected from students attending universities in China, we examine the relationship between respondents’ religiosity and their punitive attitudes. We also compare the punitive attitudes between law and non-law majors. Findings indicate that students with higher levels of religious behaviour were less likely to support the death penalty. In addition, law majors were found to be less likely to endorse severe sentences. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
Introduction
Understanding public attitudes towards punishment is important because public opinion may inform policies on crime and crime control (Flanagan and Longmire, 1996). Previous studies have discussed the factors that determine punitive public attitudes and whether and how different dimensions of religion affect those attitudes. In the United States, this particular area of inquiry has drawn research scrutiny, but only scant attention has been paid to it in other countries (Hanslmaier and Baier, 2016; Kutateladze and Crossman, 2009). To bridge this burgeoning gap, this study examines how, in China, religiosity plays a role in shaping college students’ attitudes towards punishment.
Recent scholarship has defined religiosity broadly as a resource that helps individuals cope with various stressors. As a result, religiosity as a term can come to mean a whole litany of activities and expressions that help people cope with life by fostering a connection with the divine. In particular, prayer, interacting with a congregation, religious belief, membership in religious communities and many other religious behaviours and attitudes are considered measures of religiosity (Zwingmann et al., 2011). While we accept the overall definition of the term, specifying such a broad measure is beyond the scope of this study. As a result, we take two aspects of religiosity (religious behaviour and importance of religion) and seek to lay the groundwork for their potential impact on punishment attitudes among Chinese university students. More specifically, we utilize several items of religious service attendance, religious group participation, private prayer and individual religious importance to operationalize religiosity.
This study makes several important contributions to the literature regarding the understanding of attitudes towards criminal sanctions. First, since we know of no other research that has addressed this issue using a sample collected in China, the results that we present here can be contrasted with those of a number of studies that have examined the impact of religiosity on attitudes towards various types of punishment in Western countries (Bader and et al, 2010; Unnever et al., 2010). Similarly, this study is also the first of its kind in addressing the role of religiosity in shaping Chinese college students’ attitudes towards criminal punishment. Third, the present study examines whether there are variations in attitudes towards criminal sanctions between law and non-law majors. This approach is also important since some previous scholarship has found that students of criminal justice in the United States were more apt to support harsher punishments (Mackey and Courtright, 2000; Shelley et al., 2011), while other investigations found criminal justice majors held less punitive attitudes (Tsoudis, 2000). The more specific contribution in this area seeks to determine if that finding is replicable among law students in China. Finally, while attitudes towards criminal punishment have received scrutiny in some Western countries, very little scholarly attention has been paid to this topic in China. As a result, this research serves as a vehicle to begin examination of these matters and to address these gaps in the literature.
Literature review
Religiosity and attitudes towards punishment
A considerable body of scholarship has emerged which explores the relationship between different dimensions of religion and punitive attitudes in the United States. Some researchers have examined the possible linkage between fundamentalism and views of crime. These scholars postulate that fundamentalists who hold conservative attitudes are more likely to support harsh punishment. The findings of a number of empirical studies (Borg, 1997; Britt, 1998; Grasmick et al., 1993; Young, 1992; Young and Thompson, 1995) concur with this assumption: they found that fundamentalist Protestants were more likely to support the imposition of the death penalty compared to members of other religious denominations or groups.
Other studies have examined the influence of religious feelings, beliefs and involvement on shaping attitudes towards punishments and corrections. Analysing data derived from the 2004 General Social Survey, a nationwide data collection effort, Unnever et al. (2006) found individuals who expressed having a personal relationship with God were less likely to support capital punishment for convicted murderers. Holding religious beliefs that promote forgiveness or a retributive response towards offenders may also affect punitive views (Garland et al., 2017). More specifically, Applegate et al. (2000) found that people who strongly believe in forgiveness were more likely to favour rehabilitation and treatment for prisoners. They also found that people who see God as punitive were more likely to support those same responses to criminal behaviour. In addition, Bader et al. (2010) discovered that residents of the United States who held a punitive image of God were simultaneously more likely to endorse harsher general punishment and were less likely to support the abolition of the death penalty.
With regard to the impacts of religious involvement on punitive attitudes, Unnever et al. (2010) found that individuals who prayed and attended religious services with a higher frequency were less likely to support the imposition of the death penalty. Similarly, Bader et al. (2010) found that frequent church attendance was associated with lower support for harsh punishment for criminals. Likewise, using a national sample in the United States, Baker and Booth (2016) found an association between higher levels of religious behaviour (measured by church attendance, prayer and scripture reading) and lower levels of punitiveness. Another study by Garland et al. (2017) reported that residents of the Midwestern United States, who held strong beliefs of forgiveness and less punitive attitudes rooted in their religious convictions, were more likely to support re-entry initiatives for newly released offenders.
While most existing studies that examined the relationship between religiosity and attitudes towards punishment have utilized US data, only a couple of them used data from other countries. One of these studies, based on a representative sample in Germany and conducted by Hanslmaier and Baier (2016), found that individuals who perceived God as loving and those who practised their religion on a frequent basis (measured by frequency of engaging in prayer and attendance at church services) were less likely to support the imposition of the death penalty. Another study by Kutateladze and Crossman (2009) that compared gender differences in punitive attitudes between the United States and Georgia found that there were no distinct differences in punitive attitudes between males and females in both countries. They also found that compared to atheists, Christians held more punitive attitudes. Conversely, Evans and Adams (2003) indicated that neither religious beliefs nor religious involvement was associated with South-eastern US residents’ rehabilitative or punitive perspectives.
Attitudes towards punishment among college students
A number of studies that examine attitudes towards punishment have focused on college students, some of which compare criminal justice majors’ punitive attitudes with students of other disciplines. Newton (1989) states the premise of education aims to enable students to analyse social problems and ascribe changes for the common good of society. According to Astin (1977), college education informs students of the liberal and global interconnectedness of societal evolution. Shelley et al. (2011) have argued that criminal justice or criminology students have been exposed to more in-depth information on crime and criminal justice than non-criminal justice/criminology students and thus are more apt to view punishment from different perspectives. Some have argued that within the discipline of criminal justice, this liberalizing effect manifests itself in less punitive attitudes towards criminal sanctions and correctional policies (Guller, 1972).
Once again, of the small number of studies that have examined college students’ attitudes towards punishment, most have been conducted in the United States and the findings of these empirical investigations are somewhat mixed. For example, some researchers assert that majoring in criminal justice has a liberalizing effect on students’ attitudes towards criminal sanctions. An early study by McCarthy and McCarthy (1981) found that criminal justice students were more likely to favour the due process perspective and support rehabilitative treatment outcomes for criminal offenders. Similarly, Tsoudis (2000) also found that criminal justice students in an urban Midwestern university were more likely to be concerned about defendants’ rights and less likely to support harsh punishment. Another study, conducted by Falco and Martin (2012), reported that college students in a state university in the North-eastern United States, who majored in criminology held less punitive attitudes, compared to students from other majors. When results were parcelled out by the educational level, seniors held the least punitive attitudes, whereas the freshmen were more likely to support harsher punishments.
On the other hand, other investigations have found that criminal justice students held more conservative views regarding punishment outcomes and, therefore, were more punitive in their outlook. For example, analysing data derived from college students in the North-eastern United States, Mackey and Courtright (2000) found that criminal justice students supported harsher punishment outcomes compared to students in other majors. Analysing survey data derived from students from two Midwestern universities, Lambert (2004) found criminal justice major students held more punitive attitudes, compared to students majoring in other disciplines. In a recent study, Denney and Goulette (2019) also supported the findings that criminal justice majors were more punitive than other non-major students. Yet they found that on exposing students to high-impact practices (HIPs) that involve collaboration with others and exposure to circumstances with diverse beliefs, students changed their attitudes towards community supervision. After such HIP exposure, some students became less punitive towards community sanctions and thought probationers should be provided several opportunities before revoking their probation (Denney and Goulette, 2019).
In a comparative study, Jiang et al. (2007) compared US and Chinese college students’ attitudes towards capital punishment and found that 70% of Chinese versus 57% of US respondents supported the use of the death penalty as a criminal sanction. In addition, 67% of the Chinese and 64% of US sampled students strongly agreed or agreed that they were in favour of the death penalty. They also discovered that deterrence was the strongest predictor for Chinese student support for the utilization of the death penalty. Of the US students who supported the same sanction, retribution played the most significant role. While all perspectives in deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution and incapacitation influenced US students’ attitudes towards the death penalty, only the first three perspectives, deterrence, rehabilitation and retribution, affected Chinese students’ views on the death penalty (Jiang et al., 2010).
Finally, and just as importantly, some research also seems to indicate that no distinct difference in punishment attitudes exists between US criminal justice majors and non-majors. For example, Kuehn et al’.s (2018) longitudinal design produced results that indicated that taking criminal justice courses made no difference in overall punitive attitudes over time.
Other factors affecting punitive attitudes
Previous investigations have also indicated a number of other factors that may also affect punitive public attitudes. For example, several indicate the potential existence of a gender gap in punitive attitudes. Some studies have found women are less punitive than men and that women are more likely to advocate for rehabilitation (e. g., Applegate et al., 2002). Other studies found that men are more likely to support the death penalty than are women (e.g. Krajewski, 2009). Besides gender, studies have also found that age may be related to punitive attitudes. Tyler and Boeckmann (1997) found young people were more punitive. In addition, previous studies indicate that conservative ideology may also affect attitudes towards punishment and that conservatives were more likely to support the death penalty (Sandys and McGarrell, 1995), whereas some found no relationship between conservative ideology and support for the sanction (Durham et al., 1996). Studies have further reported that there are significant variations in punitive public attitudes among different geographic locations (e.g. urban or rural areas; Mulrooney and Wise, 2019), with higher public support for the death penalty in rural areas and among those who occupy lower socio-economic strata (Krajewski, 2009).
Finally, Doble (2002) indicated that people can support multiple sentencing goals, while not viewing such support as contradictory. While people may endorse harsh sentences for certain offences, they may also be supportive of the use of alternatives to incarceration and parole for particular offenders (Bartels et al., 2018; Doob and Roberts, 1983). The relationships between attitudes towards various sanctions also appear to be complex.
The current study
As delineated above, some previous studies have examined how religiosity shapes punitive attitudes. Moreover, some have also compared how punitive attitudes of students majoring in criminal justice vary from those of non-criminal justice majors. Nevertheless, none of the existing studies have concurrently looked at how religiosity and criminal justice major affect punitive attitudes. The current study advances previous studies by examining the role of religiosity and law major in shaping attitudes towards punishment.
Studies conducted in the United States and in Germany have found that religious attitudes and behaviours affect attitudes towards criminal sanctions and corrections. Most of these studies have found that a higher level of religiosity was associated with less punitive attitudes towards criminal justice sanctions. As a result, we seek to examine whether students in China who harbour positive religious attitudes or engage in common religious activity are less severe in their attitudes towards Chinese criminal sanctions. We hypothesize that Chinese university students with higher levels of religiosity (measured by the perceived importance of religion and frequency of participation in religious activities) would be less likely to hold punitive attitudes. In other words, we hypothesize that students with higher levels of religiosity would be more likely to oppose harsh punishment for drug users and severe sentences in general. Likewise, we also assume that students with higher levels of religiosity would be less likely to support the death penalty. In addition, students with higher levels of religiosity would be more likely to favour rehabilitation for drug users.
Criminologists in the United States sometimes utilize samples of criminal justice majors for studies examining attitudes towards punishment. Some of those studies found that criminal justice or criminology students held less punitive attitudes, compared to non-criminal justice/criminology majors, suggesting that criminal justice education may have a liberalizing effect with regard to punishment attitudes and outlook. However, in China, ‘criminal justice’ is not normally an academic discipline or major in higher education. In fact, those choosing to engage in the study of crime in Chinese society usually do so as law students in law schools, which are typically housed within traditional Chinese universities and colleges. As such, we are unable to directly assess the attitudes of Chinese ‘criminal justice students’ attitudes’ regarding criminal sanctions. Instead, we attempt to examine what law majors (and non-law majors) contemplate regarding these important issues. Due to the liberalizing effects suggested by previous studies, we would assume that law major students would be less likely to be proponents of the death penalty and less likely to hold punitive attitudes towards criminal sanctions (harsh punishment for drug users and severe sentences overall in our study). In addition, we assume that law major students would be more likely to propose rehabilitation for drug users.
Methodology
Data collection
Since the research questions addressed attitudes towards various criminal punishments across religious participation and political groups, we developed a relevant survey that was composed of constructs specific to feelings regarding various forms of criminal sanctions and religious attitudes and participation. The items governing attitudes towards the death penalty were adapted from Jiang et al.(2007). Given that the data were collected from Chinese students, studying in China, we sought to take advantage of the opportunity and include other items that gauged students’ attitudes towards rehabilitation and parole for various types of crime. Additional demographic information regarding gender, age, place of original residence, household income and whether the respondent was a law major or member of the Communist Party was also included. The specific measures and their coding follow below.
The potential respondents can be characterized as a ‘snowball convenience sample’, comprising Chinese university students from several mainland institutions. Due to the time constraints imposed on the collection opportunity, we felt that this method would allow us to gather the most appropriate data to address our questions, within the available time period. The vast majority of responses were collected from several colleges and universities from a single province, located in the South-eastern region of China. While the data collection occurred during the Spring 2016 semester, the institutional review process was underway approximately 1 year prior.
In April 2015, the required institutional review board (IRB) process was initiated at both the participating US institution as well as the Chinese university where the study would be virtually posted and accessed by respondents, which ensured that all potential regulations were followed. The US institution was involved in the IRB process due to the fact that one of the investigators is affiliated with such an institution, not because students at the institution were taking the survey.
Protocol requirements regarding the collection of an international sample were discussed with the IRBs of the two institutions. The process included the production and translation of the formal survey instrument that would be utilized for the data collection and various levels of administrative approval from the institutions involved. During survey development, one of the authors oversaw changes to the document as it was translated into Chinese and back into English. This process was pursued to ensure that the most reliable English words and Chinese characters were included. Once the instrument was finalized, 25–30 students at the Chinese host university were asked to take the survey and provide feedback. The commentary provided by the students was forwarded to the author working with the American IRB, who further revised the questionnaire from January to February 2016. Final approval was obtained from the Chinese host university and the US institutional IRB, in February 2016. Following the IRB approvals, we then collaborated further to ensure that the survey was posted to the Chinese host university site that students could easily access, via any type of electronic device, from whatever location they chose.
In identifying the potential sampling pool, we implemented a number of safeguards that provided for the effective collection of anonymous data. Initially, potential respondents were students who were enrolled in classes offered by the law school of the Chinese university that participated in the study, during their Spring 2016 semester. A number of these courses dealt specifically with Chinese practices regarding prosecution, evidence collection and admissibility, divorce procedures, administrative regulations and civil law. We allowed for anyone enrolled in the law classes to take the survey if they chose to do so. This approach allowed for both law majors and non-majors to take the survey.
We also employed procedures that we believe protected anonymity, promoted participation and ensured that participants were not completing multiple surveys. To that end, once the survey was finalized and posted online by the host university, law school faculty announced in early March 2016 that students could complete the survey and do so anonymously online via whatever device they chose, which included laptops, desktops, phones and iPads, at whatever location they chose. At no time did any of the authors become involved in posting the survey online. This process ensured that the host university providing the opportunity to fill out the survey did so with minimal intervention. In the end, all the respondents utilized in our study were verified as university/college students. Potential respondents were also told that they could choose not to participate at all or discontinue their participation at any time.
This methodology accounted for the cases obtained in the universities outside the host institution. In an effort to address concerns that might arise about whether respondents might have filled out multiple surveys, we provide some basic information about our metadata. This additional information includes Internet protocol addresses (ip), date of submission, type of device used, time stamps (in seconds) and location stamps for completing the survey. No ip address is repeated in any subsequent survey, and the time stamps indicate that questionnaires were completed in normal time frames. Moreover, Chinese government issued identification information must also be entered into a screen dialog box for interaction with the web, so if a student was trying to complete additional surveys, he or she would be easily identifiable.
In mid-March 2016, about 2 weeks after the initial announcement, law school faculty again reminded their students in their classes about the opportunity to complete the questionnaire. A final reminder was provided to the students, again by the law school faculty, in late March. Generally, about 800 potential respondents existed from the host university (University A). This entire process resulted in the collection of 432 usable cases. Two hundred ninety-nine of the total usable cases were from the host university (University A). Another 50 cases came from other universities in the single, South-eastern province. In addition, 83 cases were scattered across various universities in other provinces. The host university (University A) houses a law school which offers baccalaureate to doctoral-level law degrees. This institution and others that we collected responses from also offer traditional majors, such as social, medical sciences, engineering, education and the liberal arts. Finally, the host institution has approximately 50,000 enrolled students, with several campuses to accommodate them, throughout a single, South-eastern Chinese city.
Table 1 presents the demographic information, which indicates that roughly 69% of the sample is female. Further, approximately 48% of the sample comes from urban residential areas, with the remaining 52% from suburban or rural locales. In addition, approximately 73% of the sample are non-law majors, and with regard to political affiliation, about the same percentage of the respondents did not identify as members of the Communist Party. The average age for law major as well as non-law major students was 22 years. While not reported in the table, the vast majority of participants (93%) fell within an age range of 16–30 years. Several people acknowledged that they were in their 40s and 50s, but many of these universities have non-traditional continuing education and graduate programmes that could account for such outliers.
Demographic statistics.
Dependent variables
The issues under examination deal with levels of attitudinal support for criminal sanctions among Chinese university students. The dependent variables include ‘harshly punishing drug users’, ‘support death penalty’, ‘severe sentences’ and ‘rehabilitating drug users’. These attitudinal items are 5-point Likert-type scales, with the following responses: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree. Each individual item represents an outcome variable and they are ‘You support harsh punishment for drug users’, ‘You support the death penalty’, ‘Sentences for criminals should be more severe than what they are now’ and ‘You support rehabilitation for drug users’
Independent variables
We utilized a total of five items to operationalize the three independent variables, which include different types of religiosity and whether a student is a law major. We utilized two dimensions of measurement to conceptualize religiosity so as to capture both the participation in religious behaviour and its religious importance for each individual participant. We constructed an additive index by summing the following three items to operationalize Religious Behaviour (α = .681). The items were ‘How often do you attend religious service?’ (1 = never, 2 = a few times a year, 3 = once a month, 4 = two or three times a month, 5 = once a week, 6 = more than once a week), ‘How often, if ever, do you pray by yourself?’ (1 = never, 2 = a few times a year, 3 = about once a month, 4 = a few times a month, 5 = about once a week, 6 = a few times a week, 7 = once a day or more) and finally, ‘How often do you attend a religious group to pray or discuss religious topics?’ (1 = never, 2 = a few times a year, 3 = once a month, 4 = two or three times a month, 5 = once a week, 6 = more than once a week). A higher score indicates a higher level of religious behaviour. Religious Importance was measured by the single item: ‘How important or unimportant is religious faith in shaping how you live your daily life?’ and it had the following responses: 1 = not important at all, 2 = somewhat important, 3 = very important, 4 = extremely important. A higher score on this measure reflects a higher level of importance of religion to the respondent in living their daily life. The third independent variable is law major, which was measured using a single dichotomy that asked whether the respondent was a law major (0 = no, 1 = yes).
Control variables
As we pointed out in the literature review, there are other factors that may affect punitive attitudes. Since the primary focus of our study is to examine the effects of religiosity and studying law on punitive attitudes, we thus control for the factors that may affect respondents’ punitive attitudes. The control variables include Communist Party membership, gender, age, family income and individual perceptions of the utility of parole. Party Membership was a dichotomous measure that simply asked ‘Are you a member of the Communist Party?’ (0 = no, 1 = yes). Similarly, Gender was a dichotomous single item which asked ‘What is your gender?’ (0 = female, 1 = male). Age is a continuous variable, which was measured by the following item, ‘How old are you?’ with respondents being allowed to enter a number corresponding to their age. Urbanity was measured by asking ‘What type of residential area are you originally from?’ with the item coded 1 = rural, 2 = suburban, 3 = urban. It was dichotomously recoded to 1 = urban areas, 0 = non-urban areas. Income was a continuous measure that addressed the following question: ‘About how much does your family make per year in RMB?’ To normalize the distribution of family income, we used the log of this item. We also controlled for an individual’s attitudes towards parole. The variable parole was an additive measure by summing up the following three items. ‘You support parole for first time offenders’, ‘You support parole for non-violent offenders’, ‘You support parole for violent offenders’ (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree). Cronbach’s alpha for the index was .674.
Results
An analysis of variance was conducted to compare the mean differences between law and non-law major students among the independent and dependent variables. Next, we conducted a correlation analysis to determine the strength and direction of the relationships in the data. Finally, multiple regression was utilized to assess whether religiosity and law major affect students’ support for the death penalty and their punitive and rehabilitative attitudes, controlling for the above-mentioned demographic variables.
Table 2 presents the results for the mean comparison between law majors and non-law majors. For the severe sentences item, the mean for the non-law majors (2.91) is significantly higher than that for their law major counterparts (2.55), indicating that the non-law majors have more support for severe criminal sentences than law majors. More specifically, law majors favour the granting of parole to first-time (3.23–2.63), non-violent (3.33–2.73) and, finally, violent offenders (2.24–2.02). For the remaining item addressing support for the imposition of harsh punishment for drug users, the higher mean score ascribed to the non-law majors (3.53) versus the law majors (3.22) indicates that, once again, the non-law majors support the harsher criminal sanction.
Mean comparison between law and non-law major students.
ANOVA: analysis of variance.
One-way ANOVA was used to for the ratio.
p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
A correlation matrix is displayed in Table 3. Religious attitudes were significantly and positively correlated with religious behaviour. Sex had statistical correlations with urban location, law major and the logged income items. That is, male students were more likely to come from families with higher incomes and less likely to live in urban areas and major in law. Age was significantly and positively correlated with Communist Party membership and supportiveness of punishing drug users. Urban location was positively associated with religious attitudes and religious behaviour and log income. Religiosity (both religious attitude and religious behaviour) was significantly and negatively correlated with support for the death penalty and rehabilitation for drug users. Law major was significantly and negatively associated with punishing drug users and severe sentences. Law major was also significantly and positively associated with support for parole. The variable ‘You support harsh punishment for drug users’ was positively and significantly related with support for death penalty and severe sentences (r ranged from .229–.264). It is also positively and moderately correlated with rehabilitation for drug users (r = .398). Support for death penalty was moderately (r = .315) associated with severe sentences and positively correlated with rehabilitation for drug users (r = .183).
Correlation matrix.
CCP: Chinese Communist Party. *p<.05, **p<.01.
Regression results are displayed in Table 4. It was found that severe sentence was positively related to attitudes supporting harsher punishment for drug offenders. This result is indicative of the assertion that those university students who supported severe sentences for offenders overall were also more supportive of harsher punishments for drug offenders. The control and independent variables explained about 9% of the variance of the index of harshly punishing drug users. The second panel of the regression table showed that students with higher levels of religious involvement (behaviour) were less likely to support the death penalty. Nevertheless, religious importance had no significant effect on death penalty outlook. Individuals who generally supported harsh sentences were also more likely to be proponents of the death penalty. The R2 value was .145. This means that the independent and control variables explained approximately 15% of the observed variance of the variable that indicated support of the death penalty. In addition, the result of the third panel of the regression model indicated that students who majored in law were less likely to support the notion that sentences should be more severe than what they currently are. In addition, students who supported parole for various categories of offenders were less likely to support harsh sentences overall. Nevertheless, the predictive power of this model was somewhat low. The R2 value was .069, indicating only about 7% of variance was explained in this model. Finally, religious behaviour, but not religious attitude, was significantly associated with lower support for rehabilitating drug offenders. The R2 value was the lowest across the four equations. Basically, the independent and control variables only accounted for 3% of the variance observed in the index of rehabilitating drug users. To summarize, the results show that students with higher levels of religious involvement (behaviour) were less likely to support death penalty and rehabilitate drug users. Students who majored in law were less likely to endorse severe sentences.
Multiple regression analysis.
CCP: Chinese Communist Party.
Unstandardized coefficients.
Standard error.
p < .05, ***p < .001.
Discussion
In this study, we captured results from indicators that measured both attitudinal and behavioural religiosity measures. Our findings indicate that only religious behaviour impacted Chinese student attitudes towards the death penalty. These findings are consistent with results reported by both Unnever et al. (2010) and Hanslmaier and Baier (2016). More specifically, those investigations concluded that individuals who frequently prayed and attended religious services were less likely to support the imposition of the death penalty. Nevertheless, we did not find a significant association between religious importance and support (or lack of it) for the death penalty. We also found that religious involvement was associated with a less favourable attitude towards rehabilitation for drug offenders. Bader et al. (2010) found that more frequent church attendance was related to less favourable attitudes towards harsh punishment. Unnever et al. (2006) found that individuals who perceived God as punitive were more likely to feel that criminals should be punished harshly. While we do not measure individuals’ perceived image of God, fundamentalism or self-identified religious affiliation, it is interesting to note that prior investigations of these matters have found that such measures are sometimes significantly associated with punitive attitudes. While our religiosity measures did not perform as we had hoped, we believe that it is important to discuss why that might be the case.
While debate in the comparative context concerning religiosity and its impact on society, particularly criminology, is robust in the West (Koster et al., 2009), making similar comparisons with the Chinese context is difficult for a number of reasons. First, some of these complications arise due to the nature of religious expression in other societies as compared to China. These types of issues sometimes occur because of conflicts with religious expression and the requirements of the ruling Communist Party (Leung, 2001). Second, other difficulties are methodological and appear due to the inability to empirically compare religious participation in different societies because adherents engage in different religious practices in China (Yang and Hu, 2012).
One of the major impediments to measuring religious activity in China is the changing nature of its development over time. During China’s dynastic periods, religious expression was frequently part of the office of the emperor and accompanying rituals were performed at various times of the year. Over time, and specifically after the elimination of the dynastic period in the 1920s, Western religious expression began to influence Chinese society. However, since 1949, China has been governed by the Communist Party, which mandates that all religious activity be subsumed under the authority and regulation of the state. A further complication is that private religious gatherings above a certain number of participants, which are common in Western societies, are not in China (Bays, 1996).
A further complication is that religious practitioners commonly recognize some form of a higher power as the object of their worship and fealty. In fact, it is not uncommon for religious adherents to allow their daily lives to be impacted by their religious beliefs. However, such spiritual loyalty, which often manifests itself at both the individual and group levels in China, is sometimes at odds with the basic tenets of the Party. Due to this tension, conflicts sometimes arise between religious worshipers and the government, and recent reports in the West have highlighted these contentions as well (Harris, 1993). As a result of these difficulties, religious expression, participation and research examining these important human activities in China are much different than what are experienced in other countries.
Similarly, many studies in the religiosity–crime literature utilize complex measures of religiosity using commonly understood religious traditions along with their associated attitudes and behaviours (Salas-Wright et al., 2014). Common religious worldviews referenced in this broad body of work include the denominations associated with Christianity, Islam, Judaism and other religious faiths. Items commonly included in these studies to accurately measure participation in these religious traditions include church attendance, prayer, religious group social activity, the reading and studying of holy writings and many other beliefs and activities that adherents would find commonplace in many parts of the world. However, while these faith traditions do exist in China, adherents are in far fewer numbers than in other countries. As a result, it is difficult to find practitioners of common ‘Western’ faith traditions in China and compare them to their counterparts in an international setting.
Complicating matters further is the fact that, in China, many people observe the principles of ancestor worship, Buddhism, Confucianism and folk religious traditions, and while there are adherents to these faiths in Western studies that examine religiosity, they are also difficult to find. One of the concerns with such comparisons is that popular traditions in China, such as Confucianism, are not thought of as ‘traditional religion’, where a practitioner worships a deity to rectify living an unholy life on earth. Instead, these religious perspectives focus on living a certain way, emphasizing familial loyalty and social unity. As a result, religiosity is frequently measured far differently in China than it is in many other places. Given these contradictions and concerns regarding the measurement and practice of religiosity in China, it is perhaps easy to see why our measures were not as inclusive as we might have hoped them to be.
An additional area that deserves attention revolves around the results pertaining to the ‘major’ variable. In contrast to some of the findings reported in the United States, we found that law majors in China held less punitive views than non-law majors. Law major students were less likely to support harsh punishment for drug users. They were also less likely to favour severe sentences. However, some support for our results in the comparative literature does exist (Falco and Martin, 2012; McCarthy and McCarthy, 1981; Tsoudis, 2000). The analysis of variance showed that the Chinese law majors were more likely to support parole for various types of offenders and less likely to support severe sentences. In comparison with non-law major students, law major students were also less likely to support harsh punishment for drug offenders. The multiple regression revealed that compared to non-law majors, law major students were less likely to endorse harsher sentences.
At first glance, it may appear that Chinese law students are more lenient in their attitudes towards criminal sanctions and that such an outlook is rooted in their knowledge of how their system works. Similar results have gained support in the United States among criminal justice majors, so it would not be surprising if law majors in China, studying the functioning of the Chinese legal system, might be less punitive in their perspective than other majors. For example, Lambert and Clarke (2004) discovered that criminal justice majors differed in their knowledge and understanding of the death penalty and other aspects of the criminal justice system than did their non-criminal justice major counterparts. Such differences could also be driving the gap in punitiveness (or lack of it) between both criminal justice majors in the United States and law majors in China.
Limitations of this study
While these results serve as an important foundation for future research regarding Chinese attitudes towards criminal sanctions, we acknowledge that some of the measurements are not as comprehensive as they could have been. We also wish to address a number of further weaknesses of our investigation. First, if possible, future Chinese studies discerning punishment attitudes among university students should include those who take criminology courses. In China, criminology (or criminal justice)-related courses are usually offered by the law school, which are usually required courses for law majors. Unfortunately, we were unable to directly compare the punitive attitudes of criminal justice (or criminology) majors or those who took those kinds of courses with non-criminology or non-criminal justice majors. Such studies are common is the United States, but no such reference point exists in the Chinese literature. As a result, our analyses were based on the punitive attitudes of law majors and non-law majors. A related limitation pertains to our inability to compare attitudes between different types of law students. Some law major students may wish to become prosecutors in the future, while some may pursue their career path as a different type of lawyer. Their career selection and ambition may affect their punitive attitudes. Consequently, a better constructed sample than ours would need to be collected to make such comparisons. As such, our findings should be interpreted with these caveats in mind.
Second, given the cross-sectional nature of the data, and the fact that they were drawn from only a few Chinese universities, the generalizability of our results is limited.
Future studies of criminal punishment attitudes in China should include longitudinal data. Such a research design would allow for a clearer statement regarding causation between these related variables. Third, much of the Western literature focuses on the dominant Judeo-Christian values and theological conceptions that connect punitive views to Bible scriptures (Hempel et al., 2012). Yet, the recognized dominant religions in China, such as Buddhism, Taoism and Catholicism, do not view God in the same way, since Catholicism is thought of as a traditional Judeo-Christian denomination, while Buddhism and Taoism are not. Future research should include survey questions exploring respondents’ views on God to further address this weakness. A fourth and related shortcoming is one that highlights our lack of specificity in asking about the particular religious beliefs of the respondents. While university students are allowed to harbour religious beliefs in China, such beliefs are frequently and overtly discouraged. Given that student activity and speech may be monitored by both the university and the authorities in China, we thought it best to ask these sorts of questions to the students in a nebulous way. However, we do concede that future studies, if possible, should collect more specific data in this area.
Similarly, in China, it is also sometimes difficult to focus on the specifics of religiosity as well. In other parts of the world, respondents might not think twice about divulging the content of their religious activities, such as prayer and where and when it might occur. Citizens of other societies might also discuss religious gatherings and their locations as well. However, in China, asking about such specifics from university students could be a problem. Since this study was small in scope and was relatively unencumbered in execution, we elected to, again, be mindful of the context of what we were doing and where we were doing it. In the end, we also acknowledge this to be a weakness of our study and hope that future investigators will have the opportunity to collect more detailed information in this area than we did.
In addition, future investigators should also attempt to generate samples with more detail regarding how attitudes towards Chinese criminal sanctions are formed and perpetuated. As these indicators are important markers of social discourse over time in other countries, very little is known about the structure and development of these types of viewpoints in China. The sample in the current study comprised a far greater percentage of female respondents (69%) than males, so future studies should increase the number of male respondents to further test whether these results hold. While researchers cannot control who responds to a survey, it is important to point out that, due to the makeup of our sample, interpretations of these results should be made with caution and take this factor into consideration. Finally, future studies considering the impact of religion on punishment attitudes in China should try to contextualize such measures to the Chinese experience, understanding and practice of religiosity in China. Despite these limitations, this study can serve as the starting point for future studies that explore this important area of inquiry.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
Due to the sensitive nature of collecting data on survey respondents in China, the data may not be available.