Page 249 - Sociology and You

Chapter 7 Deviance and Social Control 219
through indictment, conviction, sentencing, and parole (Shaeffer, 1993; Sknolnick, 1998).
Even when the criminal offense is the same, African Americans and Latinos are more likely than whites to be convicted, and they serve more time in prison than whites. Although African Americans account for only 12 per- cent of the total population in the United States, more than 43 percent of in- mates under the death penalty are African American. In interracial murders, an African American is thirteen times as likely to be sentenced to death for the murder of a white person as a white person is for murdering an African American.
About one-half of all homicide victims in the United States are African American (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998a). Nevertheless, the overwhelm- ing majority of prisoners on death row are there for murdering whites. Prosecutors are less likely to seek the death penalty when an African American has been killed, and juries and judges are less likely to impose the death penalty in cases involving African American victims.
Why are minorities and whites treated so differently? The conflict theory suggests several reasons for differences in the way minorities and whites are treated in the criminal justice system. For one thing, conflict the- orists point to the fact that minorities generally do not have the economic re- sources to buy good legal services. Thus, the outcomes of their trials are not likely to be as favorable to them.
Another source of difference involves the fact that crimes against whites tend to be punished more severely than crimes against minorities. Sociologists who follow the conflict perspective believe that this happens be- cause society sees minority interests as less important than the interests of whites. Victim discounting reduces the seriousness of crimes directed at members of lower social classes (Gibbons, 1985). According to the logic be- hind victim discounting, if the victim is less valuable, the crime is less seri- ous, and the penalty is less severe.
Even when they have committed the same crimes, African Americans and Latinos are more severely punished than whites.
victim discounting
process of reducing the seriousness of the crimes that injure people of lower status