New Report Shows Socioeconomic Class As A Factor Determining Severity Of Sentencing
It is not hard to find examples of rich people acting like they are above the law. Eventually, the Florida Man Internet phenomenon died down because so much of the bizarre behavior documented on arrest reports in Florida was nothing less and nothing more than people acting out of desperation. That Florida Man who quoted a proverb that didn’t mean what he thought it meant as the police handcuffed him, when he knew he had the right to remain silent, is less funny when you consider that Florida Man was probably going to go to prison regardless of what he said or didn’t say. Consuming content about rich people who commit crimes and get away with it never gets old, however. You and I would never be so bold as to defraud consumers and then live large with the proceeds of our fraudulent products. We do not steal cars, wreck them, and then tell the court that it is our parents’ fault that we were so bored we had to resort to mayhem. You might not be rich, and you might not even have intentionally or knowingly broken the law, but if you get accused of a crime, you can increase your chances of a favorable outcome if you borrow a page from the playbook of the wealthy and hire a Pittsburgh criminal defense lawyer.
Private School Graduates Get Probation, Public School Kids Go to the Slammer?
Very few things in life are free, but everyone who gets accused of a crime has the right to representation by a professional attorney. The court will appoint a lawyer from the public defender’s office to represent you if you cannot afford to hire your own lawyer. It is in your interest to hire your own lawyer, though, because public defenders have no choice but to take on every case the court assigns them. They are overworked, and the client they met with half an hour ago who is pleading not guilty to murder charges is of higher priority than your lousy drug crime case. Therefore, by hiring your own lawyer, you increase your chances of getting acquitted, getting accepted to a pretrial diversion program, or negotiating a plea deal that enables you to avoid prison time.
In the News
This month, the Harvard Gazette published a report about discrepancies in sentencing; it focused on nonviolent felony drug cases, but its results may also be applicable to other types of cases. It found that racial disparities in sentencing persist, but they are less than they were at the height of the War on Drugs. For example, in 1992, a Black defendant was 14 times as likely to get a prison sentence for a drug conviction than a White defendant with the same conviction; in 2023, Black defendants were 1.5 times as likely to get prison time as White defendants convicted on the same charges. Meanwhile, socioeconomic class is an even bigger determining factor; college-educated defendants are less than half as likely to get prison time as defendants who did not graduate from college.
Contact Gary E. Gerson About Criminal Defense Cases
A criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges and want to avoid prison time. Contact the law offices of Gary E. Gerson in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania about your case.
Source:
news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/02/class-surges-as-factor-in-who-gets-sent-to-prison/
