Valerie Crime Quiz

The first article I chose was " The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families" and this was a study to see how children were affected by their parents being deported back to Mexico. The families studied in this article were from Ohio, where the Mexican community is small, and New Jersey, also relatively small but larger than Ohio's community. In the Ohio community, immigrants are reported to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), for small traffic violations such as running a stop sign. While those in New Jersey are reported to the ICE for more serious offenses, such as driving under the influence. Through the local Catholic Church, she was able to make connections to families who were interested in being interviewed. She had the interviewees choose where they were most comfortable to be interviewed. In her interviews, she also found that in nine of sixteen families, one or both parents were deported back to Mexico.  Some children who lost their father to deportation lost contact with them, because the father is so far away and has been gone for so long. The ex-wives of the men who were deported claimed that their lives changed for the better, because they were no longer abused and they found a man to take care of them and their children. In the New Jersey portion, the author had made previous contacts from families she kept in contact with; she had lived there previously. Contrary to the interviews in Ohio, the interviews in New Jersey were more structured. The questions for the parents ranged from migrant history to effects of deportation on the children; the children were asked about their families and friends at school, the age of the child depended how in depth the questions would be. The results of this portion showed that the families were largely influenced from the fear of deportation in how they lived their lives.

The second article I chose was the " The enduring racial divide in death penalty support," the main focus of this was to measure the difference in how whites and blacks supported the death penalty. Three different surveys were used to collect data from. The tests were "exploratory," meaning that that were not chosen as definite pieces, but supportive. Two of the surveys were jury pools, so this adds a type of credibility due to the experience in the courtroom. The two different races that were specifically studied in this were Blacks and Whites. However, the study also looked at religion, income, political ideology, and urban or suburban living. These factors showed how these values and ways of living influenced the decisions of support for the death penalty. In the aspects of political ideology,  it seemed that conservative Whites had a higher level support of the death penalty over the more liberal minded Blacks. Another finding was that subcultures have an effect on support as well. The white subculture is portrayed as rural and southern in nature, while black subculture is portrayed as defiant and underclass. The results concluded that race had the most significant impact on the support of the death penalty. Meaning that Whites had a higher level of support of it over Blacks.

Valerie: 536