NCJ Number
216005
Journal
Justice Research and Policy Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Dated: Fall 2004 Pages: 25-44
Date Published
2004
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This study examined awareness among felons of a public service advertisement campaign conducted in Kansas City designed to inform people with felonies about mandatory minimum sentencing in relation to being caught in possession of firearms.
Abstract
The results indicated that felons in the community had a high level of awareness of the public advertisement campaign. The findings also revealed that the sentence enhancements related to possessing a firearm significantly impacted their perceptions of likely future outcomes within the criminal justice system. The findings thus suggest that a deterrence-based public advertisement campaign aimed at specific target populations could have a positive impact, although more research is needed, preferably using official data rather than self-report surveys. The current study relied on the administration of self-report surveys on the public advertisement campaign to 2 groups of felons: 116 felons under parole supervision and 250 felons under probationary supervision, all of whom were living in the community. Surveys were administered by Missouri Probation and Parole officers at three points during the public advertisement campaign and focused on the extent to which they were aware of the media effort related to the new gun legislation, whether the media campaign affected their behavior, and whether the media campaign affected the behavior of their peers. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to examine the data. Figure, tables, footnotes, references