Overview
Q: Let's start with a brief summary of you research project.
A: Purpose of the research was to investigate the effects of media coverage of a very well publicized crime. On perceptions of the criminal justice systems. Particularly perceptions of fairness or equity within the criminal justice system. The specific focus of the research was looking at how an interracial crime, a crime that involved black offenders and a white victim, influenced race differences in the perceptions of the criminal justice system.
Research Questions
Q: Where did you come up with the research questions?
A: We got lucky. The victim didn't get lucky. In the middle of data collection of a larger project on public opinion towards the criminal justice system, a very nasty crime occurred. It involved the murder of a young, white female at a dessert store in Toronto, Ontario. In which the offenders were four black males. Basically they stormed the place, held everyone hostage and the middle of robbing most of the customers, the victim was killed. This received extensive media coverage during the middle of our data collection which lead to a natural experiment.
Q: What theory or theories if any helped you formulate the research question and interpret the results?
A: The focus of our research question led quite naturally to a classic issue in the sociological deviance. Which is whether reactions to crime provide consensus or provide conflict within society. And this led to a legacy of work started with Durkein (?) who argued that defining crime and reacting to crime was a way to build social solidarity. At the same time, other research by Kier (?), research by Geoffrey Alexander (?) provides evidence that reactions to crime also produce dissension, produce conflict within society. So we use these theories as a framework for investigating race differences and perceptions of the criminal justice system related to media coverage of an interracial crime.
Q: What were the main research design questions of the larger study?
A: The larger study was derived from a commission on systemic racism in the criminal justice system. It was a public opinion survey of fifteen hundred residents of Toronto, Ontario. Approximately, third of them were Black, a third of them Asian and a third of them were White. The focus of the public opinion survey was on attitudes towards fairness or equity within the criminal justice system. With a specific focus on treatment by police officers and treatment by judges.
Design Sampling
Q: Did you seriously consider any alternative research designs?
A: There were several other projects ongoing funded by the commission. Our focus was on a public opinion survey.
Q: What was the nature of the sampling design?
A: The sampling design was actually quite complicated. To work we had to over-sample Asians and Blacks in Toronto in order to get a balanced sample to make the types of comparisons that we wanted. So we used random digit dialing not targeted towards specific communities because we didn't want a community effects. What this meant was the number of calls required a suitable respondent was reasonable for White respondents, was more complicated for Blacks, I believe we needed 7 to 8 phone calls to locate a suitable Black respondent. And we needed between 30-40 to get a suitable Asian respondent.
Q: But when you did the analysis the sample represented the universe of residents in Toronto?
A: Yes. And it could be weighted as such.
Q: And how did you decide on the size of the sample and the nature of the comparisons you wanted to make?
A: There were two considerations one budgetary, we only had a certain amount of money to collect data. So we had to limit the sample that way. For example, we couldn't investigate community variation that we thought might be very important. Second, we simply the objective of the overall study was to make comparisons between Blacks, Whites and Asians. So as long as we had a reasonable enough sample size within each of those groups we could make comparisons across them.
Q: What was your response rate?
A: I believe it was about 62%. Which is typical for urban samples, a little low for national samples.
Q: So you were in the middle of doing this public opinion survey when the murder occurred?
A: Yes
Measurement & Data Collection
Q: And then what did you do differently after that? Anything?
A: Absolutely nothing. The survey went on as if nothing had changed.
Q: But you kept track of when you interviewed people so you could tell if they were interviewed before or after the murder?
A: It was part of the research design from the beginning, in which we knew the date and the time of the interview. When it came time to analysis, we went back to the media coverage to identify the period of media saturation. And then that gave us a window of I believe it was 15 days in which we could identify a period of peak media coverage. And then we used that to identify a sub-sample of people who would've been exposed to, or hypothetically exposed to media coverage of the crime.
Q: Did you ask any sensitive questions?
A: From our side of things, no. Most of the criminal research that I do is in criminal victimization. I consider those to be sensitive type questions. The only thing that could be considered sensitive questions we did ask people their experiences with the criminal justice system. So whether they had ever been arrested, whether they'd ever been to court. I suppose those could be considered sensitive questions. They are certainly not within the same realm of sensitive questions as questions about victimization or sexual assault.
Q: Did you hire a data collection company to do the interviews and code and process the data?
A: Absolutely. We hired the institute for social research at York University. If I remember correctly, we actually interviewed four or five companies to figure out which one seemed to be attuned to doing this type of research and ISR seemed to come out on top.
Q: What lessons did you learn from the data collection process that might be of help to other researchers?
A: I wasn't actually involved in the data collection. ISR did most of the research. The one thing that they mentioned as important was that in an urban sample such as Toronto, with the massive racial and ethnic diversity it was very important to have interviewers who could speak a number of different languages. It wasn't just sufficient for someone who could speak Cantonese. I needed someone who could speak Mandarin as well. They needed someone who could speak to Laotians, Vietnamese people, someone who could speak to West Indian immigrants. That was quite important and I haven't seen that reported in a lot of the methodological literature. Talking about what it means to be doing public opinion surveys in light of the massive wave of immigration that has been taken place over these years.
Q: So what would happen if a phone interviewer got a Chinese person on the line? Then they would call somebody who spoke Chinese to do the interview?
A: They would be automatically switched to Chinese interviewers. Someone who could speak the language. And there was a panel of people if I remember correctly, who were all listening on the main line to identify the language that was being spoken. And then the switch would be made
Data Analysis
Q: Let's move on to analysis. What analysis techniques did you use and did you use any statistical significance tests?
A: We did our analysis was based on regression models with interaction terms using conventional t-tests of significance. The key to the whole project, what made it work was the actual data collection of the items on the attitudes on the criminal justice system. The designer of those question, Professor Scott Wortley (?) did a wonderful job linking two issues. One, do different groups get treated differently and two, how often does this happen. This allowed us to create a very sensitive scale on attitudes towards the criminal justice system. I believe it was a 180 point scale that was very sensitive to minor fluctuations. This made regression analysis very easy.
Q: So what were the conclusions or results from the study?
A: What we found was that there was a very small effect across the whole sample in terms of media coverage. Media had a very small effect on attitudes towards injustice in the criminal justice system. If I remember correctly it was negative effect. Which would support a consensus type of argument. At the same time when we broke it down in terms of racial differences and differences of experience within the criminal justice system, people who had been stopped or not stopped by the police in the previous two years and differences in education. We found so much complexity. We found that Black respondents who had been stopped by the police and were quite educated were most likely, they in fact showed very significant decreases in perceptions of injustice. They saw the system as working much more fairly. In contrast the other groups didn't seem to be affected by it very much. What this suggests to us, the argument of consensus and dissension is more complicated then simply saying does it happen or doesn't it? What we found for some groups you do see a consolidation effect. You see a consensus effect for media coverage. For other groups you don't. It seems to be function of their background, their experiences and their education levels.
Q: So during the high media coverage period, during the two weeks immediately following the murder. The educated Black people tended to have less feelings of injustice toward the justice system.
A: That's correct.
Q: But then after those two weeks that attitude went back up again. Why do you think it went back up?
A: Our argument was that essentially educated Blacks have the most to lose by this type of crime coverage. Skepticism, discrimination, prejudice, bias all come to the forefront during this type of media saturation. There were a number of incidents where Black individuals in Toronto were subject to vigilante type attacks. So the sense the groups are most integrated into society among minority members. Those who are educated are the most to lose about continuing skepticism about the criminal justice system. A related argument to this, but one that also might help explain it is they are also quite vulnerable to street crime. By having street crime be something so apparent to them, something so in their face. That causes them to think, well maybe the police need to be doing these random stops. Maybe the police need to be stepping down hard on individuals in order to prevent crime.
Q: And the Black educated people are more likely to experience random stops by the police than other groups? Right?
A: Yes
Q: Or Blacks in general, both educated and non-educated. And so that turns out to be a major factor in predicting people's perception of justice, whether or not they have been stopped.
A: It was a factor, yes. People who have been stopped by the police, particularly Black respondents who were educated were most likely to express dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system. To perceive it to as to being unjust.
Interpretation & Dissemination
Q: So what would say overall were the most important implications of you findings and conclusions?
A: I think there are two important findings. First of all, we identified quite clear media effects. And the media does play a role in shaping public opinion towards crime and criminal justice institutions. I think that's important. At the same time, it is not an easy answer. There is much complexity to how the media actually influences people based on who they are, what they've experiences, the level of education they have. I think some people in a sense maybe more susceptible based on their social location to media influences.
Q: What were your primary audiences for this study?
A: I think we had two audiences for this study. One, we were interested in addressing these issues towards the general sociological community. Maybe general social science community, to get them to think about these complexities between media and race and crime. Second, we also thought that media people would pay some attention and recognize that what they do isn't simply reporting the news and what type of news they report and how they report it does have implications for how people think in society.
Q: Have you had any evidence yet that either of these groups did react in the way that you were hoping?
A: Not that they reacted. Our research was actually cited in a number of media reports. But it was the front end of the research that was cited, it was the fact that we demonstrated evidence that educated Blacks that have been stopped were most likely to be skeptical of the criminal justice system. The media effects didn't get much play in the media. Perhaps not surprisingly.
Q: So did the Toronto's newspapers write up your study at all?
A: They wrote up the part about the perceptions of injustice being highest among educated Blacks who've been stopped.
Q: Now that you have done this interesting project. What do you think is the logical next step and are you planning to do more research on this?
A: There are two different projects that are going right now, my co-author professor Wortley (?) is looking to see whether perceptions of injustice actually influence criminal behaviors. Whether people who see the system unjust feel freer to engage in crime and delinquency. He sees perception of injustice as a way of neutralizing normative values as a way of softening people's connections to norms and values. My own focus is wondering whether people's perceptions of injustice actually shape the way criminal justice institutions operate. I don't think it would be much of a surprise to judges and police officers that minority males in particular, are very skeptical of the treatment that they get. I wonder if this actually shapes criminal justice practices. Whether judges see the young black males as symbolic offenders simply by the fact that they distrust criminal justice institutions and react to that and censer them harsher than they would otherwise. Whether police officers are more likely to stop young black males and get into conflicts in them because they recognize the skepticism and this distrust that exists.