{"id":1435,"date":"2017-04-21T06:30:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T11:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2017-04-21T08:14:26","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T13:14:26","slug":"racial-and-regional-differences-in-support-for-the-death-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2017\/04\/21\/racial-and-regional-differences-in-support-for-the-death-penalty\/","title":{"rendered":"Racial and Regional Differences in Support for the Death Penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Andrew Petro, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With <\/span>Arkansas<\/span>\u2019 recent attempts<\/a>\u00a0to execute seven inmates in the course of eleven days, and the Supreme Court\u2019s upcoming oral arguments surrounding\u00a0<\/span>McWilliams v. Dunn <\/span><\/a>, there has been a lot\u00a0news about the death penalty this month. Although it is abolished in many other industrialized nations, <\/span>31 U.S. states<\/span><\/a> still retain the death penalty, and there is extensive\u00a0research on this \u201cpeculiar institution\u201d and why it remains resilient today. <\/span><\/p>\n

Despite a multitude of studies, current research remains inconclusive on the deterrent effects of capital punishment. These ambiguous findings are due to a lack of attention to “noncapital sanctions” for homicide like life sentences and incomplete data on potential murderers’ perceptions of capital punishment. What is<\/em> clear is that there is an extreme racial divide in support for the death penalty, with Black\u00a0Americans being consistently less likely to support capital punishment than whites. This divide is partly attributed to racial prejudice against Blacks, so much so that one study suggests that if\u00a0you exclude whites with extreme racial attitudes, support for capital punishment between Black and white Americans is not nearly as bifurcated. Death sentences are also applied disparately across racial lines, with defendants convicted of killing white females most likely to receive a capital punishment sentence, while those convicted of killing Black males are afforded more leniency. <\/span><\/h5>\n