Assessing the relevance of political attitudes towards 'rulebreakers' in the criminal justice system, the welfare system and the educational system in British society today.

‘Punitiveness’ has been the focus of increasing criminological attention in recent decades. This study extends this focus by taking a multi-disciplinary approach to examining punitiveness in the criminal justice system, the welfare system and the education system in British society today. In doing so, this study uses new survey data (n=5,781) applying ordinal and linear regression and structural equation modelling to examine the relationship between public punitiveness towards ‘rulebreakers’ and political values. This is explored through assessing punitive attitudes towards the treatment of i) school pupils who break school rules, ii) towards the treatment of benefit recipients who fail to comply with the rules, and iii) towards people who break the law. Findings suggest that neo-conservative values are consistently related to punitive attitudes towards rulebreakers. Neo-liberal values, and social, economic and political nostalgia also appear to play an important role, however. ‘Tiered punitiveness’ is also introduced, suggesting that ‘punitiveness’ is not a discrete attitude but has different degrees to it, identified here as ‘Basic Punitiveness’ and ‘Ultimate Punitiveness’.