Date of Award

Spring 2026

Language

English

Embargo Period

4-18-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

School of Criminal Justice

Program

Criminal Justice

First Advisor

Justin Pickett

Committee Members

Francis Cullen, Theodore Wilson II, Greg Pogarsky

Keywords

behavioral economics, mass incarceration, anchoring, loss aversion, diminishing sensitivity, policy

Subject Categories

Criminology | Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance

Abstract

As many jurisdictions across the United States seek to reduce their prison populations, a pressing question is whether the public will support the reforms necessary to do so. Public openness to reform likely varies across policy areas, with the path of least public resistance occurring where attitudes are the most malleable and loosely held. A major challenge, however, is that traditional methods for measuring public opinion are poorly suited to identifying which policy areas are characterized by such weakly held views.

This dissertation develops a novel behavioral economics framework for identifying these areas. I theorize that when public opinion is “mushy,” attitudes will be reference-dependent and shaped by cognitive heuristics rather than stable preferences. In such contexts, judgments about criminal punishment should be influenced by behavioral economic mechanisms such as anchoring, diminishing sensitivity, and loss aversion. To test this framework, I designed and administered five original survey experiments to a national sample of 1695 U.S. adults. These experiments examined whether key behavioral economics principles influence how individuals evaluate sentencing decisions and proposals to shorten prison sentences.

The results show that absolute sentencing preferences are highly susceptible to anchoring effects: higher anchors lead respondents to prefer longer sentences. I also find evidence of diminishing sensitivity to prospective sentence reductions, with individuals expressing equal or greater support for moderate reductions for those serving longer sentences compared to those serving shorter sentences. Finally, consistent with the principle of loss aversion, I find evidence of punitive asymmetry: respondents react more negatively to sentences that are more lenient than their preferences than to sentences that are more punitive than their preferences.

These findings suggest that reforms aimed at reducing prison sentences are likely politically feasible, even for more serious offenders. However, policymakers must be careful not to overshoot the bounds of political permission in ways that activate loss aversion. More broadly, this dissertation demonstrates how behavioral economics can inform policy decisions, improve the measurement of public opinion, and provide new insights into how attitudes about criminal punishment are formed.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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