Book Review: Racial Disparities in Capital Sentencing: Prejudice and Discrimination in the Jury Room

• Author: John Kramer
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016812459195
• Published date: 01 June 2013
• Date: 01 June 2013
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Delancey Street foundation cannot be generalized to other places or other offender populations. Del-

gado realizes this as a limitation, but still considers these programs as a good starting point for suc-

cessful reintegration.

This book provides readers with an overview of previous empirical inquiry on reentry, however,

does not add any new original research to the area of offender reentry. Additionally, Delgado iden-

tifies the benefits employers may reap by hiring post-released offenders, but does not delve into this

idea further. It would have been advantageous for the author to include more information regarding

financial incentives to employers (i.e., federal bonding, insurance programs, etc.) to aid in furthering

this idea. Overall, Delgado allows the reader to gain a better understanding of the different compo-

nents of reentry, specifically employment issues. The author provides detailed, although not general-

izable, solutions to many problems of reentry, and offers recommendations for future policies. In

general, this book will be most valuable for practitioners, criminal justice, or social work undergrad-

uate or graduate students interested in reentry, or to provide a researcher with a solid foundation on

current issues in reentry. It would be beneficial to conduct research pertaining Delgado’s suggestions

in order to further his goal of creating more fluid transformations from offenders to employed

ex-offenders.

Reference

Boston University: School of Social Work. (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://www.bu.edu/ssw/

about/facultystaff/faculty/delgado/

J. L. Flexon

Racial Disparities in Capital Sentencing: Prejudice and Discrimination in the Jury Room El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly

Publishing LLC, 2012. 159 pp. $65.00. ISBN 978-1593324858

Reviewed by: John Kramer, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016812459195

Jamie Flexon’s Racial Disparities in Capital Sentencing exposes how the administration of the

U.S. death penalty post Gregg v. Georgia (428 U.S. 153) contains the seeds of a racially discri-

minatory process. To accomplish this, Flexon brings to the dialogue research from other

disciplines, particularly psychology, to help the reader understand how psychological processes

can produce discrimination and how capital jurors, vetted through the hurdle of being ‘‘death

qualified,’’ are particularly vulnerable to the potential for discrimination. To build the case, the

author reviews Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238) and subsequent case law that created and

defined jurors eligible to sit on death penalty cases. This discussion sets the stage for helping

us understand how death-qualified jurors view justice and the defendants increasing the risk that

such jurors will be proprosecution and racially biased. To illustrate some of the dynamics of this

framework, the author utilizes the 1990 General Social Survey data to test for the dynamics of

potential juror decision making.

In Chapters 1 and 2, Flexon develops a psychological theoretical frame by distinguishing between

racial discrepancies and racial discrimination where racial discrimination means differences

accountable by illegitimate factors such as race of the victim. Then she reviews the Supreme Court’s

decision in Furman and subsequent decisions in Gregg and companion cases. The question posed by

Flexon is whether these decisions requiring states to develop guidelines for juries in deciding to

254 Criminal Justice Review 38(2)