Working against Racial, Class and Gender Discrimination - Essay Example

EXECUTIONS Civilizations define themselves by how, when and whom they punish. These choices are important especially in a society like ours, the United States; which has a long history of both violence and official racism. For many centuries throughout the world and in the USA, the ethnocentric beliefs have shaped social relations based on class, race/ethnicity and gender. When Thomas Jefferson declared that 'all men are created equal,' it seems that he was more appropriately talking about the male sex; a class of property owners; and a race - whites. Because the slaves were not even deemed men and it seems that the criminal justice system and the American society is still plagued by the issues related to race, class and gender. Keeping in view this social condition, the sociologists try to explore crime, crime control and the administration of criminal justice from the point of social constructionism. They view 'crime' and 'criminals' a product of social and political interests and where besides other, the most dominating factor are class, race and gender. They also take into consideration the historical and contemporary practices of criminal justice which is shaped and experienced by the racial and ethnic minorities and majorities, the rich and poor and by men and women, so as to help us understand the numerous social realities of justice in the United States; as this essay will try to examine the pattern of execution based on race, gender and class. The study of social inequalities has always been the central focus of sociologists. They are not only interested in issues related to race/ethnicity, gender and class but also the intersections of these dimensions by employing a wide variety of methods from the ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews to multilevel social and networks methods and statistical models. According to The ABA Kennedy Commission Report (June 23, 2004), the United States puts more people behind bars than any other country in the world and needs to eradicate the disproportionate impact 'tough on crime' laws it has for minorities. This is not because of higher criminal behavior among blacks, but because as compared to non-whites, they are more likely to be imprisoned especially as drug users. Though white drug dealers outnumber the black ones but 86.8% of those imprisoned for drug charges are blacks. In the 1980s, the media talked about drug-addicted mothers, perpetuating the racial stereotypes of African American women who trading sex for drugs rather than a white middle class woman snorting the more expensive cocaine powder. While the poor black pregnant women became targets of the criminal justice system, the middle and the upper class women escaped scrutiny of the criminal justice agents into the private facilities of detoxification. Similarly, most studies on crime take a narrow approach to the subject by treating a crime as simply a violation of legalized social norm that carries a penal sanction. The figure among black males was 3,405. Much of the history of sentencing reform both in capital and non-capital punishment has been influenced by implicit concerns about racial disparities and discriminatory decision making in the criminal justice system. In a study carried out to find whether the four delinquency theories, strain, social learning, low self-control and control theories could better explain juvenile offending in comparison to gender, race and class impact on delinquency. The findings suggested that the quantitative analysis is an effective tool for detecting intersectional differences resulting from gender, race and class to support feminist assertions that general theories are less universal than claimed by their proponents. Based on the unfair racial disparities in federal sentencing, a report released in 1984 by the United States Sentencing Commission confirmed, that the average federal prison sentence for black offenders was about five months longer than for whites. By 2001, the average sentence for black was almost 30 months longer. EXECUTIONS Though US more than most countries resorts to death penalty, still it has carried out well over 700 executions since 1990. Only a small percentage of murders result in execution in America, but one is forced to ask if the capital justice system selects these defendants by following a method which is free from racial bias. Although the African Americans make up 12% of the national population, they account for more than 40% of the country's current death row inmates one in three of those executed since 1977, and all had been convicted by white juries. According to a press release from ACLU of North California, in a study on race and death penalty; entitled, "The Impact of Legally Inappropriate Factors on Death Sentencing for California Homicides, 1990-99, documented the impact of race of the victim in the imposition of the death penalty. It stated that 80% of executions in California were for those convicted of killing whites, while only 27.6% of murder victims are white. And those who murder whites are over four times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill Latinos, and over three times more likely to be sentences to death to death than those who kill African Americans. Also a person convicted of 1st degree murder in a predominantly white, rural county is more than three times as likely to be sentenced to death, than a person convicted of a similar crime in a diverse urban county like Los Angels, which has the highest number of homicides in the state. The death rate by homicide in California varies substantially by race. African Americans are six times more likely to be murdered than whites. (Sept. 22, 2005). GENDER Over the past 25 years the severity of US criminal justice has had devastating consequences for the women and their families especially, the poor class. Feminist criminologists argue that the dramatic increase in the number of women imprisoned does not constitute a war on drugs, crime and poverty so much as a war on women. Studies carried out on ethnographic data collected from state prison for women revealed that the criminal justice policies did transform punishment practices on the feminine side of the penal system but it also altered the state structure on gender, crime and women's needs. While analyzing sex and race discrimination in the cases filed in Ohio from 1988 to 2003, the qualitative research clearly reveals that the expulsion, mobility and discriminatory expulsion are dominant features on the jobs. Among these cases, there are commonalities based on race and sex, as well as other specific gendered and racial process procedures. In the mid-1980s, the United States Sentencing Commission was directed by the Congress to create policies and sentencing guidelines that were entirely neutral with respect to the offender's sex, race, national origin, creed and socioeconomic status. Also as part of the shift from making the punishment fit the crime to making the punishment fit the criminal which is rehabilitation. In a fieldwork on participant-observation to understand; gendered contour of structural symbolic everyday violence against young addicted women in San Francisco revealed, that extreme levels of violence against women are common in the street-youth drug culture. Most young homeless women are forced into physical, emotional and sexual violence as well as having relationships with older men. By providing an insight through the theoretical and cross-methodological focus on social power contexts, social workers are helping stop the spread of infectious diseases and decrease social suffering in populations which are the most vulnerable. There is consistent evidence found, that gender effects greatly exceed the race and ethnic effects. The Wall Street Journal (Nov 26, 2004) story on the US Sentencing Commission's 15-year report highlighted the concerns about racial disparities. It stated that gender effects, both in drug and non-drug offenses greatly exceed the race and ethnic effects. The typical male drug offender has twice the odds of going to prison as compared to a similar female offender. The sentence length for men is typically 25 to 30% longer, for all types of cases. WOMEN Women are the fastest growing segment of the US prison population because of their growing involvement in drug crimes. Since 1995, there has been an increase of more than 50 percent of women in federal prisons as compared to 32 percent of men. Heimer and Kruttschnitt (2005) argue that while the rates of victimization and crime have declined, still there are more chances of women being attacked as compared to men. At the same time the number of women as arrestees and sentenced offenders is increasing because of the women's involvement in the criminal justice system. The criminologists are therefore, still trying to understand the patterns of offending and victimization and to determine ways to prevent them. In a study carried out to assess women's involvement in violent crimes, both as victims and offenders, in Hennepin County Adult Detention Facility (Minneapolis, Minnesota), it was found that out of a racially diverse sample of 205 women, 65 women provided information on 106 incidents of violence. The St. Petersburg Times (February 10, 2007) published an article related to gender sentencing stating, that though the male and female population in Florida increased at similar rates from 1977-2005, but the population of women in prison grew 600 percent, compared to 345 percent for men.The North County Times (CA) (Dec. 24, 2006) in an article on gendered perspective on drugs stated that in America's 25 year old war on drugs, women have paid the highest price. According to the figures from the Women's Prison Association show a 592 percent increase in the number of women jailed from 12,279 to 85,031.)) RACE and CLASS The intersection of race and ethnic discrimination and the criminal justice system is always an important topic of for the sociologists. One of the most serious social problems in the United States is racial discrimination, which has a long history and a well know fact throughout the world. It is an established fact that the earning of high income families increased by 15% on an average during the 1990s, but the gap between the rich and the poor remained unchanged. Similarly, white family home owners in 1998 were 72.2% while the Latin American and African American families were 44.9 and 46.4% respectively. It was also indicated by the report that 41% of the white youths could receive higher education as compared to the Latin Americans whose percentage was only 22. Ethnic discrimination is deep rooted in the employment sector too as the unemployment rate between African Americans is double that of whites. The organizations are not only gendered, but classed as well. It means that the ideas articulated and gender presentations are linked to class positions. Based on ethnographic analysis of performance of sexuality of sex-workers and dancers, it is also observed that there is consistency with client assumptions and class norm; and how working class or middle class sexuality should be expressed. What is worse is that there are nearly two million aboriginals who live on the streets of the big cities of the US and they are the poorest people in the richest country of the world. Not only that a large percentage of them; sometimes has to go without food for up to days at a time. In 2002, more than 84 percent of those sentenced for crack cocaine distribution were black, whit 9 percent were white. Some 30 percent of those sentenced for powdered were Hispanic and 5 percent were white. By contrast, 30 percent of those sentenced for powdered cocaine were black, 50 percent were Hispanic and 15 percent were white. (The Washington Times, July 26, 2006). CONCLUSION It somewhat seems sad that no one genuinely cares about the problems of racial/ethnic, gender and class and discrimination and disparity in the applications of the death penalty. Mostly it seems that the opponents of death penalty raise the race issue simply as an argument to support the abolition of capital punishment. While on the other hand, the proponents often refuse to grapple the issue of race, fearing that any real effort to stamp out racial disparity in the administration of capital punishment could also result in stamping out capital punishment altogether. In a report issued by Amnesty International in 2003 stated, that although the United States has committing itself to work against racial, class and gender discrimination as well as its effects in the criminal justice system, but the courts and legislation have failed to act decisively in the face of evidence that race has an impact on capital sentencing. The number of race issues in the application of death penalty is quite depressing. Out of over 1000 executions in the modern death penalty era, only 12 executions are for crimes in which a white defendant murdered a black victim, which is roughly 1% of all executions. Whereas, 208 executions are for crimes in which a black defendant murdered a white victim, which is roughly 20% of all executions. (Washington Post, Dec. 20, 2005). Racial, gender and class disparity in incarceration has been a moral blight on America from the beginning days of our criminal system. And this disparity continues and needs serious thinking and action to improve the issue. ______________________________________ BIBLIOGRAPHY Amnesty International. United States of America: Death by Discrimination - The Continuing Role of Race in Capital Cases. April, 2003. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR510462003 accessed: March 15, 2007 Bletzer, V. Keith. Risk and Danger Among Women-Who-Prostitute in Areas Where Farmworkers Predominate. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University. June 2003, Vol. 17, No. 2. pp. 251-278 Heimer, K & Kruttschnitt, C. Gender and Crime: Patterns in Victimization and Offending. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2005 Heimer, K & Kruttschnitt, C. Making Sense of Intersections in Gender and Crime: Patterns in Victimization and Offending. Eds. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2005: 269-302 Kruttschnitt, C. & Carbone-Lopez, K. Moving Beyond the Stereotypes: Women's Subjective Accounts of Their Violent Crime. 2006. Crimonology, Vol. 44, No. 2. pp.321-352. . Roscigno, J. Vincent. Social Closure and Processes of Race/Sex Employment Discrimination. Ohio State University: The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 2007. Vol. 609, No. 1, pp. 16-48 Trautner, N. Mary. Doing Gender, Doing Class. The Performance of Sexuality in Exotic Dance Clubs. University of Arizona. Gender & Society, 2005. Vol. 19, No. 6. pp. 771-788 ___________________________________ Read More