I’ll repeat what was said in the article:
“women commit about 10% of all homicides”
“they comprise 1% of inmates put to death”
What I said was:
Because there is - if all women who committed homicide 10% of homicides were handed the death penalty, they might make up 100% of those put to death. As it stands, men commit 90% of homicides and make up 99% of death row inmates. Women commit 10% and make up 1%. You just didn’t track what I was saying.
Now back to the math. What I showed was how to make the populations equal.
I didn’t guess at numbers to make my math easier - I used the actual numbers available. Here’s one more.
As of January 1, 2013 there were 63 women on death row. This constitutes 2.02% of the total death row population of 3,125 persons. (source)
That actually matches really well with the numbers I found before. They suggest that there are about 241 people added to death row each year. I also found CDC homicide stats for 2011 as 16,238 committed. (source for death row stats)
If you combine the two pieces of information, you’ll find that:
14,695 homicides were committed by men (that’s 90% of the 16,238 committed)
238 men were added to death row (that’s 99% of the 241)
(That’s 1.6% of the expected men who committed homicides in 2011.)
1643 homicides were committed by women (that’s 10% of the 16,238 committed)
3 women were added to death row (that’s 1% of the 241)
As I already explained, to also put in 238 women would be 14% of the women who committed homicides (that’s elevating the female population percentage. To put in the same percentage as men (1.6%) you’d need 23 more women - so that’s your actual difference in number of women per year.
You’d need that many more women because you have so few women to begin with. So for 238 men, you’d need an additional 23 women (totaling 26) to make the 1.6% fair (if that’s somehow what you’re determined to get). Then each group would have 1.6% represented. About that number: “63 women on death row”. If women currently make up 2% of death row, they’re probably more than representing their population in proportion to men.
P.S. I’m off for the night.
