Summarizing our Data
In this project, we wanted to determine how race affected the severity of sentencing, including capital punishment. In our first step towards finding this answer, we discovered that on average, white males are actually more likely, and have, been sentenced to death row. According to our five number summary, the median for a white male death sentencing is 1806 while black male median only compares to 1435; though this difference may only seem marginal by a few hundred points our findings were surprising because we expected Africans to face a harder sentencing severity in the court room. Additionally, both data sets reveals outleiers on the bottom the half; this means that throughout the years severity of sentencing has not always been consistent with, which is also predicable. But the surprising aspect was that there were no outliers on the upper half of our box plots, we expected that during certain years of segregation and such, captial punishment rates would be higher but our data does not indicate anything of that sort.
In the second part of our research, we made histograms using the same five number summaries in order to see how the different data was distributed and compare them directly with one another. Both of the distributions were skewed left and showed our proven point made earlier: sentencing was not consistent throughout the years. Although white people had higher rates for death sentencing and larger numbers than that compared to blacks, their graph distributions were fairly similar with a skewed left histogram. Because of the similar shape, we were not surprised to see that they both had the same z-score of .58. This means that for 58% of the years in our data set, death row had less white and black people on it. It has only been in recent times that the severity of sentencing has gone up for both races in terms of capital punishment; this was surprising to us because we predicted that in past years, not recent, severity of sentencing would actually be harsher.
The third part of our research included looking at regression lines and, in our case, looking at the correlation between African families below the poverty lines and those facing capital punishment. We predicted that because 40.7% of the prison population consists of Africans, who only make up about 13% of the total U.S population, we would find that many of the Africans facing death sentencing would also be below the poverty line. According to our findings, there was actually a negative correlation between these two factors, not a positive one. As to why there was a negative correlation, we weren't sure but after our findings we predicted that there may be a better chance of a positive correlation for less severe sentencing and families that were below the poverty line.
For the fourth part, we took a different stance for our research and actually went out to collect some of our own data. We were purposefully trying to yield a bias in our results by wording questions differently to elicit different responses from different people. We randomly asked a little more than one hundred juniors two different questions: "Do you think race plays a significant role in criminal sentencing?" or, "Given that African American males have the highest imprisonment rates of any demographic and make up 40.7% of prisoners serving non-violent drug offenses, while only making up 13.1% of the total U.S population, do you think race plays a significant role in criminal sentencing?". Unfortunately, our results yielded a very small amount of bias with only a 3% difference in answering no for the first question. We think that because our topic revolves so much around race and death sentencing, a topic which has been addressed and talked about multiple times in public, many of the people asked already had a disposition on our questions. Because their opinions had already been formed, it did not take long for them to answer for either question; either way, we yielded very little bias in our data collection and proved a point: most of the population agrees on the whole that race will, and does, affect the severity of sentencing.
In the last part of our research, we tried to answer the question: does race and age affect death sentencing? For our data we looked at the Stanford Experiment and a study, which was the report of death sentencing in Indiana from 1977 to 2013. In the Indiana experiment we actually found something that was shocking: most of those sentenced to death were not only white and male, but they were usually in the range of 40-49 years old. This study revealed that not only were there only very few (3) Africans on death row, but that age and race does affect the severity of sentencing, just in the opposite way that we expected. In the Stanford experiment, we weren't able to answer the question as directly because of obvious reasons. We were able to see, however, that people who were put in a position of power would be more likely to abuse it. Statistics were not given for this study, nor the age or race so we were not really able to determine with numbers the answer to this question so much as identify blocks, response variables, and so forth in this experiment.
In the second part of our research, we made histograms using the same five number summaries in order to see how the different data was distributed and compare them directly with one another. Both of the distributions were skewed left and showed our proven point made earlier: sentencing was not consistent throughout the years. Although white people had higher rates for death sentencing and larger numbers than that compared to blacks, their graph distributions were fairly similar with a skewed left histogram. Because of the similar shape, we were not surprised to see that they both had the same z-score of .58. This means that for 58% of the years in our data set, death row had less white and black people on it. It has only been in recent times that the severity of sentencing has gone up for both races in terms of capital punishment; this was surprising to us because we predicted that in past years, not recent, severity of sentencing would actually be harsher.
The third part of our research included looking at regression lines and, in our case, looking at the correlation between African families below the poverty lines and those facing capital punishment. We predicted that because 40.7% of the prison population consists of Africans, who only make up about 13% of the total U.S population, we would find that many of the Africans facing death sentencing would also be below the poverty line. According to our findings, there was actually a negative correlation between these two factors, not a positive one. As to why there was a negative correlation, we weren't sure but after our findings we predicted that there may be a better chance of a positive correlation for less severe sentencing and families that were below the poverty line.
For the fourth part, we took a different stance for our research and actually went out to collect some of our own data. We were purposefully trying to yield a bias in our results by wording questions differently to elicit different responses from different people. We randomly asked a little more than one hundred juniors two different questions: "Do you think race plays a significant role in criminal sentencing?" or, "Given that African American males have the highest imprisonment rates of any demographic and make up 40.7% of prisoners serving non-violent drug offenses, while only making up 13.1% of the total U.S population, do you think race plays a significant role in criminal sentencing?". Unfortunately, our results yielded a very small amount of bias with only a 3% difference in answering no for the first question. We think that because our topic revolves so much around race and death sentencing, a topic which has been addressed and talked about multiple times in public, many of the people asked already had a disposition on our questions. Because their opinions had already been formed, it did not take long for them to answer for either question; either way, we yielded very little bias in our data collection and proved a point: most of the population agrees on the whole that race will, and does, affect the severity of sentencing.
In the last part of our research, we tried to answer the question: does race and age affect death sentencing? For our data we looked at the Stanford Experiment and a study, which was the report of death sentencing in Indiana from 1977 to 2013. In the Indiana experiment we actually found something that was shocking: most of those sentenced to death were not only white and male, but they were usually in the range of 40-49 years old. This study revealed that not only were there only very few (3) Africans on death row, but that age and race does affect the severity of sentencing, just in the opposite way that we expected. In the Stanford experiment, we weren't able to answer the question as directly because of obvious reasons. We were able to see, however, that people who were put in a position of power would be more likely to abuse it. Statistics were not given for this study, nor the age or race so we were not really able to determine with numbers the answer to this question so much as identify blocks, response variables, and so forth in this experiment.
Sources:
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2012. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2011. Print.www.in.gov/ipdc/general/indianadpfactsheet.pdf
http://www.prisonexp.org/
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1400943/thumbs/o-DEATH-ROW-facebook.jpg
http://www.conectas.org/arquivos-site/PL%20Drogas%20EN.png
http://www.sentencingproject.org/images/photo/incarc%20rate%20by%20race%20%26%20gender%20-%20web.png
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/may/images/race.jpg
http://bossip.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/prison.png%3Fw%3D620
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2012. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2011. Print.www.in.gov/ipdc/general/indianadpfactsheet.pdf
http://www.prisonexp.org/
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1400943/thumbs/o-DEATH-ROW-facebook.jpg
http://www.conectas.org/arquivos-site/PL%20Drogas%20EN.png
http://www.sentencingproject.org/images/photo/incarc%20rate%20by%20race%20%26%20gender%20-%20web.png
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/may/images/race.jpg
http://bossip.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/prison.png%3Fw%3D620