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the politics of capital punishment

Capital punishment has long been one of the most hotly contested issues in America. Two recent studies reintroduce questions about whether the death penalty is an objective, value-free implementation of the law.

David Jacobs and Stephanie L. Kent (Social Problems, August 2007) found that social factors influence how capital punishment is applied. Executions are more likely after presidential elections in which candidates stress law-and-order platforms, but subside in the face of sustained civil rights protests. Indeed, all factors examined, political pressures are the most important determinant of executions, even in a system designed to be free of political influence.

Still, only 10 percent of those sentenced to death are ever actually executed. To learn which death row inmates are most likely to face execution, Jacobs and Kent with colleagues Zhenchao Qian and Jason T. Carmichael (American Sociological Review, August 2007) looked at what happens after sentencing. They found the race of the victim is the most significant determinant, with those convicted of killing a white person more than five times more likely to be executed than those convicted of killing a person of color. Again, however, the political environment affected the use of the death penalty: More executions took place in states where Republican candidates received the most votes. J.W.

after taft-hartley

Michael Wallace’s study of the Taft-Hartley Act may help us understand possibly the most famous labor law in American history (The Sociological Quarterly, September 2007).

Wallace examined strike activity between 1948 and 1980, the year before U.S. President Ronald Reagan so famously crushed the air traffic controllers strike. He found that not only did Taft-Hartley significantly reduce the number of strikes throughout the nation, it significantly altered the content of these strikes.

Taft-Hartley explicitly outlawed many effective labor strategies such as sit-down strikes, sympathy strikes, and secondary boycotts. The act, and subsequent similar labor laws, also created arbitration boards, dispute hearings, and other avenues of redress for discrimination complaints, workplace control, and most non-economic disputes, therefore narrowing the legitimate use of strikes to wage disputes and other purely economic concerns.

As a result, governmental policy can be seen as central to channeling conflict away from fundamental issues of workplace control and challenges to the capitalist system and into disputes over purely bread-and-butter issues. J.W.

good grades keep divorced dads around

After divorce, it can be difficult for non-resident parents to remain active in their kids’ lives. A new study finds the behavior of adolescent children plays an important role in keeping the lines of communication open.

Daniel N. Hawkins, Paul R. Amato, and Valarie King (American Sociological Review, December 2007) found that happy adolescents with fewer problems inspire, rather than result from, their non-resident fathers’ active involvement in their lives. Fathers are especially likely to get involved when their teens are doing well in school.

Active dads influence their adolescents’ well-being when they live together. But when they live apart, the researchers speculate, the system of mutual influence breaks down. Clearly, the parent-child relationship is not a simple one-way street. C.S.