Multilingual Poll of California Ethnic Groups on Criminal Justice Issues
Funded by the JEHT Foundation and the Open Society Institute
NCM Poll, Conducted by Bendixen & Associates, Posted: Mar 23, 2004
(See PDF for full report)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The criminal justice system is one of the most powerful entities in our nation, and the issues that define its policies are constantly setting boundaries for millions of Americans. The way various citizens view criminal justice issues is not only important to the system but also to society as a whole.
This first-ever comprehensive “ethnic” poll on criminal justice issues interviewed 1,854 California adult residents – 450 Latinos; 401 Asians from China, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, Japan and India; 401 Middle Easterners from Armenia, Iran and several Arab nations; 200 African Americans; 200 American Indians; and 202 non-Latino whites – in 12 languages during May 2003.
The findings reveal that racial and ethnic groups have strong, at times near unanimous, opinions on crucial criminal justice issues that range from alternative sentencing to police misconduct. They command the attention of California legislators, who write the criminal justice laws; of prosecutors and judges, who enforce those laws; and of advocates who wish either to reform the system or to maintain its status quo. A summary of the major findings of the study follows.
MAJOR FINDINGS
I.The most important finding of this poll shows that California minorities overwhelmingly prefer alternative sentencing and rehabilitative programs for minor offenders. There is unanimous agreement among all racial and ethnic groups that people with drug problems who commit a minor crime should be sent to drug treatment programs rather than to prisons.
There is also evidence in the polls that California residents firmly support community service as a form of punishment over imprisonment for those who have committed minor crimes such as shoplifting or petty theft. More than four out of five Latinos, Asians/Middle Easterners, African Americans and American Indians would prefer to punish petty theft offenders by requiring them to work in homeless shelters.
Solid majorities of ethnic and racial groups in California also favor rehabilitation programs for prisoners that will enable them to get high school and college diplomas while they are still in prison. They are strongly supportive of the notion that former convicts should be eligible for government college loan programs.
II. Another important finding of this poll reveals that the image of California’s criminal justice system is in trouble. Surprisingly, in a country where the criminal justice system is supposed to be the strongest and the most dependable, majorities of the poll’s 12 racial and ethnic groups think California’s system favors the rich and powerful. Eighty-eight percent of African Americans and 75 percent of American Indians agree with that concept. Moreover, the state’s criminal justice system scored low on the most important criterion: its fairness. More than two out of three African Americans, Latinos and American Indians indicated that they have only “some” or “very little” confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system of California.
III. The study indicates that California’s racial and ethnic groups have decidedly mixed feelings about the death penalty. The groups that most strongly oppose the death penalty for people convicted of murder are Koreans and African Americans. In contrast, Chinese, Arabs and American Indians strongly favor the death penalty. But the poll reveals that there is a strong consensus when racial and ethnic groups are asked about the death penalty for juveniles convicted of murder.
All of the groups that are strongly in favor of the death penalty for adults are staunch opponents of the death penalty for juveniles (those 16 and 17 years old). The biggest shift is seen with Asian/Middle Eastern respondents. Sixty-three percent support the death penalty for adults, but only 26 percent favor the death penalty for juveniles.
IV. California “ethnics” also support more lenient sentences for juveniles in general. They are opposed to Proposition 21, a law that allows juveniles in California who commit serious felonies or are involved in gang-related crimes to be sent to adult prison. Sixty-five percent of African Americans, 55 percent of Latinos and 52 percent of Asians/Middle Easterners are opposed to the idea of treating juveniles like adults.
These racial and ethnic groups want their state government to change its priorities. They would like to see California increase its spending on rehabilitation and crime prevention programs rather than funding the construction of more prisons and juvenile detention facilities. Racial and ethnic minorities also support spending money on expanding education opportunities for juveniles.
V. The results of the poll reveal good news and bad news for California’s police departments. On the positive side, all of the groups are satisfied with the job that their local police departments are doing in protecting their neighborhoods. More than half of all the groups and four out of five Arabs and Armenians rate their job performance as “good” or “excellent.” On the negative side, a majority of California’s racial and ethnic groups believe that their local police tend to harass and detain people with darker skin or with foreign accents more than they harass and detain other Americans. Namely, three-quarters of African Americans and nearly half of all Latinos believe that their local police officers often abuse their power.
VI. Most racial and ethnic groups in California get their information about the criminal justice system from local television news programs in English, where images of crime are often sensationalized. These poll results are in stark contrast to results of similar polls of California “ethnic” groups on other major issues, such as medical care and international events, that revealed that minority groups, especially immigrants, prefer ethnic media as their primary source of information. This is clearly not the case here. Ethnic media in California needs to accept the challenge of covering the state’s criminal justice system in a more comprehensive way.
PURPOSE OF THE POLL
For many months, the JEHT Foundation and the Open Society Institute jointly had wanted to research the opinions of California’s minorities on criminal justice issues. An ideal opportunity arose when Sandy Close, executive director of the Pacific News Service and of its offshoot, New California Media, proposed the present study. Close has been active in criminal justice issues in California since the late 1960s. In 1996, she and a dozen other San Francisco-area journalists founded New California Media to give organized voice to – and a common-interest meeting place for – the burgeoning number of minority-language broadcast, print and Internet outlets in California. NCM’s membership, now beyond 700 outlets, is still growing.
In requesting funding for this, NCM’s fourth multilingual poll conducted by Bendixen & Associates of Coral Gables, Fla., since 2002, Close noted:
“As NCM’s first multi-lingual poll documented, 54 percent of California’s new ethnic majority identifies ethnic media as their primary daily source of news, and 84 percent report accessing ethnic media on a regular basis. These figures suggest that ethnic media is emerging as the most powerful new force in American journalism since alternative media emerged in the 1960s. [Just as] alternative media once helped give a voice to the ‘disaffected,’ so ethnic media now provides critical reassurance on a daily basis that communities disconnected by language, culture, race, poverty and other factors now have a presence in the American media culture.”
This poll’s questions were propounded and vetted by Sergio Bendixen, founder and president of Bendixen & Associates, and his colleagues in Coral Gables. After the English-language questions were approved as to content and clarity by a team of experts , they were sent to qualified professional translators for translation into the poll’s other 11 languages: Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, Hindi and Japanese. The translations then were forwarded to a second panel of experts in each language for screening. The screeners’ job was to change into everyday terms familiar to speakers of each language any words or phrases deemed translated too literally to make sense if uncorrected.
“Too literal” can be complicated to explain, but here’s a real-life illustration. A few years ago, The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister paper, El Nuevo Herald, was translating into Spanish a Miami Herald story containing the English phrase “a grassroots movement.’’
The translator, a literalist at least at that moment, rendered the phrase into Spanish as “a movement of the roots of the grass.’’ This gaffe caused considerable amusement (and embarrassment) in both newspapers’ newsrooms. It also engendered head-scratching bemusement among El Nuevo Herald’s Spanish-only readers. Unlike El Nuevo Herald’s many English-fluent readers, who could readily make the back-translation into English, Spanish-only readers could only wonder what on earth the phrase meant.
Once corrected by the panel of screeners, the poll’s questions all were clear and unambiguous to all respondents in all 11 translated languages. Experienced interviewers then telephoned respondents who were scientifically chosen from throughout Northern California, the Central Valley and Southern California to represent fairly the subgroups in the 1,854-person sample. The subgroups included 450 Latinos, 401 each of Asian and Middle Eastern origin, and 202 non-Latino whites, 200 African Americans and 200 American Indians.
All respondents were asked to identify themselves as to which of the included groups they belonged. Next, all then were asked whether they preferred to be interviewed in English or in their self-chosen group’s native tongue. The interviews then proceeded in the language of each respondent’s choice.
The interviewers marked all responses to all questions, in all languages, on a common score sheet tabulated in a-b-c-d fashion. This eliminated the need to translate back into English the responses rendered in the other 11 languages. All responses then were totaled and collated by computer.
The margin of error for the sample of 1,854 respondents is plus or minus two percentage points. For the subgroups of 450 Latinos, 401 Asians and 401 Middle Eastern immigrants, the error margin is about five percentage points. For the subgroups of American Indians, non-Latino whites and African Americans, the error margin is seven percentage points.
(See PDF for full report)
For more information, contact Catherine Black at 415-503-4170 x 241 or Catherine@pacificnews.org
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