Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to initially explain what is death penalty and then to give the literature review, design, subject and analysis of the sampling to analyze. The present paper performs the first systematic gender-specific analysis of Death Penalty Support. It uses national data from the 1990 General Social Survey. Measures of three variable sets were employed: symbolic orientations (e.g., political conservatism, authoritarianism); crime salience (e.g., victimization, fear); and demographic controls.
Introduction
Capital punishment, also referred to as the death penalty, is the judicially ordered execution of a prisoner as a punishment for a serious crime, often called a capital offense or a capital crime. Some jurisdictions that practice capital punishment restrict its use to a small number of criminal offences, principally treason and murder. Prisoners who have been sentenced to death are usually kept segregated from other prisoners in a special part of the prison pending their execution.
Public attitudes toward the death penalty have policy implications. Public opinion is often used in the debate over establishing and/or extending the deployment of execution in the war against street crime. In the policy debate, many actors contend that in a democratic society public opinion regarding punishment should be respected (Durham, 1996). Recently, the debate over the death penalty has received special attention in the United States Presidential race and a wave of concern over alleged innocent people being sentenced to death (Benedetto, 2000; Gergen, 2000; Locy, 2000).
Literature Review
Research on the public's level of death penalty support (DPS)has neglected gender-specific models. While most previous work has shown that women have lower DPS than men, it is not clear whether traditional models of DPS will work for a sample restricted to women. The present paper performs the first systematic gender-specific analysis of DPS. It uses national data.......
