Article

ON REDUCING WHITE SUPPORT FOR THE DEATH PENALTY: A PESSIMISTIC APPRAISAL

By Steven F. Cohn / Steven E. Barkan / Criminology and Public Policy, on 1 January 2005



As Soss et al. (2003) point out, whites are the most influential racial groupand support the death penalty much more than blacks do. In the 2002GSS, 69.8% of whites favored the death penalty, compared with only42.1% of blacks. If white support for the death penalty was as low as blacksupport, it would be much more difficult for the Supreme Court to believethat “evolving standards of decency” had not evolved against capitalpunishment.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Public opinion, Public debate,



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