Changing Dominant Carceral Attitudes: A Deep Canvass Organizing Field Experiment

Background and Purpose: Black-led social movements have brought to the public’s attention calls for the defunding or abolition of carceral institutions. Organizers, scholars, and advocates have long questioned how to increase public support for anti-carceral policies and change the dominant attitudes that uphold support for the carceral state. Prior research has found deep canvass organizing to be effective in increasing support for other equity policies and changing related attitudes. Deep canvassing is an organizing tactic that focuses on sharing personal stories and making emotional connections about political issues, rather than simply sharing information.

Still lacking is evidence of how to change carceral policy opinions and related attitudes in real-world contexts. This study aims to inform organizing practice by addressing a specific need identified by social movements––evidence of strategies that work. Additionally, the evidence from this study will further develop theory and research on carceral and racialized attitude change.

Methods: This study extends examination of deep canvass organizing within the context of a jail decarceration policy proposal in Los Angeles County. Through a randomized, placebo-controlled action research field experiment, a community organization conducted a deep canvass organizing campaign with a sample of registered voters in majority-white neighborhoods. Two deep canvass conversation models were compared: one that explicitly discusses anti-Black racism in the criminal legal system and another that does not. Outcomes were assessed through participant completion of an ostensibly unrelated public opinion survey panel.

This project addresses several questions related to the intervention’s causal effects. To what extent does deep canvassing change anti-carceral policy opinions and related carceral and racialized attitudes? How do the effects of a race-explicit approach compare to those of a race-absent approach? Are effects heterogeneous and will they persist over time?

Results: The results show that one week after being canvassed, only the race-absent conversation model was effective at increasing support for jail decarceration. This approach also reduced voters’ understanding of the criminal legal system as structurally racist, however. In contrast, the race-explicit approach had no impact on jail decarceration attitudes but did increase support for investing in alternatives to policing.

Two months after being canvassed and after exposure to a Sheriff’s department counter-message, the effects of the race-absent approach no longer persisted. Instead, the voters assigned to the race-absent conversation were swayed by the counter-message––they became more concerned with crime and stronger in their justification of existing carceral systems. In contrast, the race-explicit approach was now effective at increasing support for jail decarceration.

Conclusions and Implications: Given a history of minimal effects from persuasion strategies, it is particularly notable that deep canvassing was effective at increasing support for anti-carceral policies. The results suggest that in the short term, organizers may have more impact by using a race-absent approach. Further inquiry reveals, however, that the race-explicit approach is the only method that inoculates voters to a counter-message and has durable effects for at least two months. Additional organizing implications will be discussed.