To what extent can it be said that Neoliberalism affects the way Capital Punishment within the USA is portrayed specifically to target criminality within racial minorities?

The purpose of this research is to explore how the spread of neoliberal attitudes throughout the USA have impacted on the usage of capital punishment in regards to racial minorities within the country. The USA over the last 50 years has seen a radical change in the principles and beliefs that govern society as Neoliberalism has grown and become dominant in both the USA and many other parts of the world. This neoliberal spread has seen many changes in the way different parts of US society are run, perhaps no more so than in the way criminality is treated and framed, especially in relation to the way the death penalty is shaped and imposed on racial minorities. Considering recent attitudes towards capital punishment that seem to show that support for it is waning, this research is more important than ever in order to highlight the disparities in law and order that are present in America in relation to race, and nowhere is this more clear than in the way the death penalty is framed against racial minorities within society. This work should hopefully therefore, draw others into the issue of race and criminal punishment within America. The research undertaken in this study is broadly qualitative, taking on the form of data analysis through a series of case studies following several capital trials of black men, selected by the use of a rigorous sampling framework in order to maintain fairness and balance. These five studies were then subjected to five key questions exploring how Neoliberalism has affected not only the proceedings of the trial, but also how both the courts and the media socially construct black offenders in line with neoliberal attitudes in the country. These studies have been analysed alongside not only themselves and other cases, but also quantitative data such as official statistics as well as comparative trials in order to highlight the disparity between white and black men in regards to criminality. The findings from the five questions will then be brought together to form a definitive conclusion to the study that highlights how neoliberal attitudes affect black criminality and the scope of capital punishment within the USA. The conclusions seen within this research do appear to show that black offenders in capital trials are treated and framed differently to white offenders, and this does in part appear to be attributable to neoliberal attitudes within the USA. The findings are reliable in part due to the repeated themes that are observable across all five case studies, but caution should be advised in the matters concerning the social construction of the offenders due to the sheer subjectivity that it comprises, as well as the different sources that some of the evidence has been located from; while some is from objective sources such as case trial notes, some has been gathered from far more subjective sources such as media and must be treated with caution. The significance of these findings is important to consider here as well, as it could help to shed light on one of the many ways in which racial minorities are discriminated against within the USA, as well as helping to provide clarity on the complicated matters concerning American law and justice and the spread of Neoliberalism throughout the country