Codie McKeighen Soc 111

Codie McKeighen 600 Words

In an article titled "Who Lives and Died on Death Row? Race, Ethnicity, and Post-Sentence Outcomes in Texas", Michelle A. Petrie and James E. Coverdill review a set of data centering on the racial differences in death penalty sentencing and relief. The evidence used in this article is drawn from male offenders living (or lived) on death row in Texas between 1974 and 2009. The ultimate question was whether and how race, ethnicity, and number of crime attributes affect an offender's likelihood of execution and the probability of sentence relief. Petrie and Coverdill used the Cox regression analyses and multiple-imputation method in order to find the pieces of missing data. The data that was used was pulled from public records of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The timeframe was set two years after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 ruling of Furman v. Georgia. Furman v. Georgia was a case that reinstated the death penalty and forced states to remove arbitrary and discriminatory effects. Another set of data that was used was the "Capital Punishment in the United States, 1973-2005".Other data sets that were used were the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Death Row U.S.A, newspaper accounts, along with three websites. Some of the variables include event timing and type, offender attributes, victim attributes, and crime attributes. Within these variables are multiple subtopics such as sentence year, whether the person was executed or still on row, sentence relief, previous time in prison, age at sentencing, what type of relationship that victim and offender had, and type of crime. Overall, three patterns stood out: cases with blacks and Hispanics have vague results, there's a lack of evidence in relation to execution and sentence relief, and because of the multitude of variables previously unavailable there was a strong outcome. This piece does not take into consideration women on death row, used websites making the credibility questionable, and was based in a state known for their generosity in applying the death sentence. Overall it seems to be a strong research piece with a lot of data included.

In the article titled "Ethnicity, Information Sources, and Fear of Crime" written by Jodi Lane and James W. Meeker examine the how media effects risk and fear of crime. The data collected was taken through a program like iCati and based in Orange County, California. The dialing only lasted from September 3 through 28 of 1997 and was at complete random, with an equal participation of men and women. They also took into consideration Latinos specifically and randomly tested 100 last names that were considered Hispanic. There were a total of 779 people interviewed: 555 white and 224 Latino. The dependent variable in this piece is narrowed to a basic question of how a afraid of person was of 8 specific crimes. The independent variables include demographic, source of information regarding crime, and the risk they felt they were in relation to the dependent variable. These independent variables are also broken down further into specific groups. This survey did not come from a specific set of questions rather open-ended in way because there were not preset answers to choose from, therefore it left the interviewer to translate. Overall, the results were as follows: in relation to Latinos, television plays the biggest role in fear of crime while newspapers did not. In comparison, white were completely opposite – relying mainly on newspaper and the television having little to no effect on their opinion of crime. This piece fails to include all race groups and also seems to be questionable on the basis of the survey not being standardized.

Petrie, Michelle, and James Coverdill. "Who Lives and Dies on Death Row? Race, Ethnicity, and Post-Sentence Outcomes in Texas." Social Problems, 57.4 (2010): 630-652.

Lane, Jodi, and James W Meeker. "Ethnicity, Information Sources, and Fear of Crime." Deviant Behavior, 24.1 (2003): 1-26.