Choua Yang - Soc111 - Crime Quiz

Choua Yang

537 Words

 

Crime Quiz

 

Article 1: "The enduring racial divide in death penalty support" (315 words)

 

Data from the GSS and from a jury pool were used to try to explain why the black and white gap in death penalty support persists over time. Eleven factors (variables) were introduced as explanations for this divide. Among them are socioeconomic status (income, occupation, education), subculture, political ideology, religious orientation, views on right-to-life, social welfare, prejudice/discrimination/racial inequality, experiences with the criminal justice system, fear of crime and victimization experience, punitiveness, and attribution styles.

The GSS data provided trend information from 1972 to 1996. The cumulative data reveals that 72.4% of whites support the death penalty compared to 43.9% of blacks with a statistical significance of p<.0001. Although both white and black support for the death penalty has generally increased over time, the enduring gap still exists (parallel trend between the two). This increasing pattern of support suggests that both whites and blacks respond equally to the same social influences. However, the long-standing gap cannot be explained simply from the data because race remained significant regardless of the introduction of the controls for all eleven mentioned explanations.

The survey of a jury pool conducted in Florida in 1999 and in 2000 had similar results to the GSS data. However, these two studies also included data on Hispanics. The first study (1999) showed that 69.7% of whites supported the death penalty compared to 51.0% of blacks and 53.0% of Hispanics; the second study (2000) showed that capital punishment support from whites were at 86.4% with 77.1% from Hispanics and 64.4% from blacks. Race and ethnicity still played a role in the differences, with the black and white difference still being the largest. Interestingly, study #1 did show that the effect of race became insignificant when controlling for attitudes toward police. However, this was a localized survey, and both this and the GSS data need more replication and more studies to explain the results/reasons for the disparity.

 

Article 2: "Perceived Racial and Ethnic Composition of Neighborhood and Perceived Risk of Crime" (222 words)

 

            The study draws mainly from a 1996 survey of 3000 Florida adults, but also includes information from previous works. It tries to answer how the perceived risk of crime is influenced by different factors, such as race/ethnicity, gender, age, income, education, victimization experience, crime rates, perceived crime rates in the US and in the neighborhood, and perceived percentage of blacks/Hispanics living in the neighborhood

            The results show that gender and victimization experience increase the perceived risk, whereas age, income, and education reduces it. The findings also reveal that perceived black and Hispanic populations predict perceived risk of crime for Hispanics living outside of South Florida. However, this is true for whites living within South Florida. For blacks outside of South Florida, perceived Hispanic populations increases perceived risk of crime.

            The explanation for these results come from the idea of social threat. When whites are in South Florida, they feel threatened by the increasingly large numbers of minorities, especially the Hispanics (32% in S. Florida). Here, the Hispanics have gained and continue to gain economic and political power, largely due to the Cuban population. Outside of South Florida, the Hispanic population is less homogenous, and they feel threatened by blacks and other Hispanic ethnicities. Here, the whites are a clear majority and do not feel their position in society is threatened by minorities.