Playing the Race Card in the Post-Willie Horton Era: The Impact of Racialized Code Words on Support for Punitive Crime Policy

Jon Hurwitz, Mark Peffley · Public Opinion Quarterly · 2005 · political-science · 10.1093/poq/nfi004 · record hurwitz-peffley2005-racial-priming
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית
Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (corpus-body); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. Claim type is mechanism rather than existence because the paper's stated interest is in how respondents reach their decisions (which evaluative criteria the frame recruits), not merely whether the phrase moves opinion; the mechanism is also stated causally at 'Quotation withheld-African-Americans.' method is labelled behavioural-experiment because it is a randomised survey experiment embedded in an RDD telephone survey; there is no separate 'survey-experiment' value in the vocabulary. The paper never uses the word 'limitation'; the three limitations recorded are self-qualifications stated in the authors' own voice. A fourth relation (to Nelson and Oxley 1999) was left out because the sentence stating it is interrupted mid-way by a JSTOR download footer in the extracted text, so no exact contiguous quote exists. 2026-08-19 and 2026-08-25 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.
How to read this page. The article itself is not reproduced here — this paper is not cleared for redistribution, so what follows is the tag layer alone. The evidence sentences are withheld with the article. The table at the foot lists every tag the record carries; each row names the facet it belongs to, and the whose words column says whether the tag records the paper's own wording or the tagger's sentence about the paper. Every tag links to each other paper in the corpus carrying it. The machine-readable edition of the same thing is the TEI file beside this one, where the tags live in standOff, and the article is at its publisher via the link below. When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.
Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
priming 2 fields

Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 6 concept tags on this paper, 4 are grounded in a quoted sentence. 2 carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.
priming racial priming issue framing racial stereotypes code words racial attitudes racialized code words inner city punitive crime policy support for punitive crime policy behavioural-experiment

Legend

relation to other workclaim_relationshow this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim typeclaim_typethe shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edgeconcept_edgesan asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
conceptconceptsan idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tagcontent_tagsa finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
controlcontrolsan experiment run to eliminate a rival explanation
limitationlimitationswhat the paper says its evidence cannot support
methodmethodhow the paper produced its evidence
phenomenonphenomenonthe effect or regularity under study
sensesensesa distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it

The paper

The full text is not reproduced here. This article is not cleared for redistribution, so the page carries the tag layer only. Its evidence sentences are withheld; the grounding status remains with each tag, and the article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfi004. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

Every tag on this page

claim_relations 3 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 1 · concepts 4 · content_tags 4 · controls 1 · limitations 3 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 4

Relations on this page carry a quotation for the claim. Where a relation was separately evidenced — and so tested against the vocabulary for its type — the row says so; none of 1 relation here carry that mark. The rest are the tagger’s reading of the sentence quoted beside them.

This record holds no mechanisms. A layer is empty when the tagger recorded nothing in it — which is not the same as the paper having nothing to record.

facettagfieldconf.whose words
claim_typemechanism
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_typethe paper's words
phenomenonracial code-word framing of crime policy opinion
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
phenomenonthe paper's words
methodbehavioural-experiment
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
methodthe paper's words
limitationsThe authors do not claim their frame is the subtlest possible racial cue; many respondents openly equate the inner city with black Americans.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
limitations[0]the tagger's words
limitationsThe design tests policy preferences only; extension to candidate preferences is asserted but untested.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
limitations[1]the tagger's words
limitationsThe analysis is restricted to white respondents; the African-American subsample was dropped for lack of variance on the outcome.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
limitations[2]the tagger's words
controlsthe experiment administered at random to half of the white sample, 290 respondents
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
eliminates: self-selection into the experimental condition, and any difference between the people who saw the framing manipulation and those who did not · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[0]0.85the tagger's words
conceptsissue framing
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: issue framing
concepts[2]the paper's words
conceptsracial stereotypes
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[3]the paper's words
conceptscode words
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: code words
concepts[4]0.95the paper's words
conceptsracial attitudes
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[5]0.95the paper's words
sensesTHE EFFECT IS NOT A SHIFT IN THE ANSWER - IT IS A CHANGE IN WHAT PREDICTS IT. `whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded, `inner city` question.` The outcome here is a REGRESSION COEFFICIENT, not a mean or a latency: the same people, the same policy question, and a different thing driving their answer depending on two words. A corpus that stores `prime -> outcome, direction: increases` cannot express this at all - the direction is not up or down, it is `your prior attitudes now matter more to what you say`
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[0]0.95the tagger's words
sensesTHE SMALLEST PRIME IN THIS CORPUS, AND THE AUTHORS SAY SO DELIBERATELY: `Quotation withheld (like `welfare queens`).` Two words inserted into one survey item. Every other prime in this corpus is a word list, an image, a scent, a room, a sentence structure or a period of noise; this is a modifier. And the minimalism is the argument - the paper's point is that after the Willie Horton ad made blatant appeals costly, what remains available is this small
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[1]0.95the tagger's words
sensesTHE CAUSAL CLAIM IS EXACT BECAUSE THE DESIGN IS THAT SIMPLE: `Quotation withheld.` The inference chain is stated in full and each link is separable - the two words differ, therefore the difference is theirs, therefore the group was brought to mind, therefore the policy was judged by the group. `It seems clear` marks where the demonstration ends and the interpretation begins
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[2]0.95the tagger's words
sensesIMPLICIT BEATS EXPLICIT, AND THAT IS AN EMPIRICAL CLAIM ABOUT PERSUASION RATHER THAN ABOUT COGNITION: a blatant message `would, today, be either unproductive or counterproductive because, as a number of studies suggest, implicit appeals are much more effective.` Most of this corpus treats implicitness as a methodological device for isolating automatic processing. Here it is a STRATEGIC property with a history: the Willie Horton ad made the explicit version expensive, so the implicit one is what survives
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[3]0.95the tagger's words
claim_relationsbuilds-on → Nelson and Kinder (1996), group-centric issue framing
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[0]the tagger's words
claim_relationsextends → Mendelberg (2001), implicit/explicit racial appeals and the Willie Horton ad
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[1]the tagger's words
claim_relationsbuilds-on → Druckman (2001), limits of elite framing
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[2]the tagger's words
concept_edgesissue framing —causes→ racial attitudes
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
strength of the relation: 0.9 · note: NO effect direction, AND THIS IS THE CLEAREST CASE YET FOR WHY THAT AXIS DOES NOT FIT EVERY EDGE. The code word does not increase or reduce racial attitudes - it increases how much they PREDICT the policy answer. The vocabulary has no term for 'raises the weight of', and 'increases' would be read as 'makes people more prejudiced', which is not what was measured and would be a serious misreading of a paper about race. Weight 0.9: the design supports the causal claim, and the quantity it acts on needs the note. Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but racial attitudes mattered more under racially coded frames; causes from 'issue framing' is loose.
concept_edges[0]0.95the tagger's words
content_tagsracial attitudes shaped punitive-policy preferences much more when the coded 'inner city' cue was present
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsa single coded phrase ('inner city') can carry strong racial connotations
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsthe authors situate the effect within the issue-framing literature
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[2]the tagger's words
content_tagssupport for punitive crime policy
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.variables[1]the tagger's words

Interpretive choices

Tags that could not be placed in the text:

What was deliberately not tagged, and why, is recorded per paper by the tagger. Where a paper has no such record, this page says so rather than implying that nothing was declined.

© 2026 Shir Sivroni · ORCID 0009-0000-2597-2824