Source: "The Criminal Stereotype" by Kimberly Maclin and Vivian Herrera.
Outline:
The article opens up by discussing the past research projects that have been conducted on the subject of criminal stereotypes. The author describes what the past research had concluded, as well as defining what a criminal and what a stereotype are.
The article then describes the first study the two authors conducted, which is that they asked a number of students to list the first 10 things that came to mind were when they heard the word "criminal".
Next the article just lists the results in percentages, listing the most popular answers.
The article then moves to the second study, which consists of taking the results found from the first study and creating a questionnaire based on those results. The authors then give those questionnaires to a seperate group of subjects who fills them out completely.
The results of these questionnaires are then talked about, including what jobs the subjects thought would be most likely to be a criminal, what characteristics they thought a criminal would have, and the types of crimes they thought would be committed.
The final part of the article is the author discussing the results that these two studies showed. The gist of this final section is that the stereotype they found on criminals subjects a person to an unfair treatment and an unfair availability of opportunities because of these stereotypes.
Summary: What this article essentially stated were the most common descriptions the subjects thought would fit a criminal. From the first study criminals were perceived to be 20% white, 40% black, 30% Hispanic, and 10% Asian. The average age the subjects thought a criminal would be was 23.7 years of age. Other benefactors found from these studies were that criminals would most likely have baggy clothes, short or no hair, and tattoos. The author then argues that these criminal stereotypes only hinder somebody who is accused of committing a crime because if they fit these characteristics then they then face an unfair trial because of it
This is pretty interesting, if you are able to use this for your paper it would be an interesting read.
ReplyDeleteGreat source. This person really knows how to give the necessary details and info to get the reader interested and that will transition well into parts of your paper.
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