Leymon 8
through sentencing differentials in crime classifications and demographic considerations (Alexander and
Gyamerah, 1997; Berndt, 2003; Kramer and Ulmer, 2002; Pettit and Western, 2004).
While overt discrimination against African-Americans was reduced in the criminal justice system by
the due-process revolution and the civil-rights acts of the 1960’s, in-depth research revealed that African-
Americans are more likely to suffer pretrial detention, use a public defender, and have a prior criminal
record, all of which indirectly link race and sentencing lengths (Albonetti, 1997; Jacobs, Carmichael, and
Kent, 2005; Steffensmeier and Demuth, 2000; Walker et al. 2000). Research focusing on other minority
groups is less extensive. While it is likely that discrimination against other racial groups is present, a lack
of research and consistent findings in the area leaves this question unanswered (Hebert, 1997).
Issues of racial disparities sometimes focus on the South. The South has a long history of both direct
and indirect racism (Jacobs et al., 2005; Messner, Baller, and Zevenbergan, 2005; Karnig and McClain,
1980). Studies of the former Confederate states in the period after the Civil War reveal a time dominated
by direct civil violence targeted at African-Americans. The violence was not limited to, but often took
the form of, lynching. Lynching was prevalent and nearly exclusive to the South until the 1930’s, when
less overt forms of Southern violence began to replace it. From the 1930’s to the 1960’s a steady decline
in lynching occurred, and by the mid-1960’s lynching became practically non-existent (Clarke, 1998;
Harries, 1988; Karnig and McClain, 1980; Messner et al., 2005). Some researchers have theorized that
the history of violence in the South targeted at African-Americans has led to cultural, political, and social
conditions that make the South unique in the study of criminal justice. Racism and violence are not
limited to the South, but found its most savage and enduring form in the South (Clarke, 1998, Jacobs et
al., 2005).
Some researchers have argued that informal social control in the form of violence targeted at
minorities in the South (i.e. lynching) has simply been replaced by formal state sanctioned controls. As
overt civil violence in the South steadily declined in the 20
th
century, the use of the criminal justice
system as a form of social control of blacks in the South grew (Clarke, 1998, Jacobs et al., 2005). The
highest per capita rates of execution occur in the South with African-Americans’ having
Convention