Americans lacked confidence in the American criminal justice system, said survey results as published by the Gallup News Service. Fewer Americans had “A great deal” or “Quite a lot” of confidence in the system than respondents who had “Some” or “Very little.” 

The criminal justice system ranked 13th among 17 institutions covered by the survey. Results for the courts, lawyers, judges, juries, jails, prisons, parole boards, and all the other parts of the system turned out broadly negative across all demographics. 

“Now I am going to read you a list of institutions in American society. Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one — a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little?” asked Gallup pollsters.

The institutions in the survey included — in random order — Congress, the presidency, the U.S. Supreme Court, the military, the media (television news and newspapers), organized labor, big and small business, banks, large technology companies, the police, public schools, churches or organized religion, higher education, the medical system, and the criminal justice system.

The survey used the percentage of responses as the key indicator of public confidence. Respondents who had “A great deal” of confidence in the criminal justice system amounted to only 8%; respondents who had “Quite a lot” of confidence calculated to 13%; a sum of these percentages produced an overall confidence score of 21. Another 34% respondents said they had “Some” confidence and 42% respondents said they had “Very little” confidence.

Gallup also categorized the results into the demographic categories of gender, race, age, education, party affiliation, and annual income. Like Gallup, the San Quentin News’ interpretation of these data added the number of respondents who said “A great deal” and “Quite a lot” to calculate the number of confidence in the system. The analysis added the number of respondents who said “Very little” and “Some” to show non-confidence.

Gallup, America’s premier survey company, called a random sample of 1,005 adults over the age of 18, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error calculated to plus or minus 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Gallup also provided historical data that revealed the criminal justice system has not broken out of a 14 to 34 range over the last 28 years. It reached its high of 34 in 2004 and its lowest point of 14 in 2022. Its current score of 21 lay below its median of 28.

“No one feels really satisfied with the criminal justice system,” said resident Charles Crowe. “Victim advocates think the system too soft on crime, and reformers think of mass incarceration as a failed strategy.”