Public Opinion on Crime: Message Framing and Deliberative Democracy for a Progressive Consensus [Paperback]

1. Political Stagefright 2. The Punitiveness Problem 3. Mechanics of Opinion Formation 4. Deliberative Democracy: Enhancing Public Crime Debates 5. Practising Deliberative Democracy 6. Progressive Shifts and Consensus: Evidence for Enhanced Public Dialogue 7. Deliberative Process: Persuasive Information and Civic Inspiration 8. Roadmap to Social Change

Examining the inter-relationship between political rhetoric, reactionary governments and discriminatory ideologies, this book offers a fuller account of how our views on crime are formed.

Thomas McNeil is Chief Executive of The JABBS Foundation for Women and Girls, a charity making strategic grants to help prevent women becoming caught in the criminal justice system. He is also appointed to the UK Ministry of Justice Womens Justice Board and is a trustee of the Criminal Justice Alliance.

Examining the interrelationship between political rhetoric, reactionarygovernments and discriminatory ideologies, this book offers a fuller account of how our views on crime are formed.

From media headlines to community groups on social media, fear of crime permeates society. At its worst, societal anxiety manifests in public demands for ever harsher approaches to punishment or the weaponising of crime by exploitative political leaders. In either case, societies are often distracted from the real factors behind crime: poverty, hardship, abuse and lack of opportunity. Many researchers and policymakers recognise this harmful spiral but struggle to answer the question: How do we create the conditions for better public debates on crime? This book explores public opinion theories highlighting a degraded civic and media debate on crime. As an antidote, the author presents evidence on how to hold better public conversations, using facts, emotion and message framing capable of shifting punitive attitudes towards a progressive conselS-