Does Wealth Determine The Outcome Of Your Criminal Case?

From your perspective, it seems like wealthy people have an easy time in every aspect of life.  Their jobs are not physically demanding and offer them enough free time to exercise and to shop for and cook a variety of foods.  Because they have health insurance, they do not fear visiting the doctor, whereas the rest of us wait until we are on death’s doorstep before we set foot in a doctor’s office or urgent care center, since the bills are almost certainly worse than the disease.  They can spend the weekends taking their children to fun activities while hired cleaners clean their houses, or they can spend the weekends cleaning their houses while hired babysitters take their children to fun activities; if they are really rich, they can spend the weekends scrolling through social media while their hired assistants handle all the responsibilities.  Meanwhile, the rest of us spend some weekends embroiled in a chaotic mixture of housework and childcare, while on other weekends, we are too tired to do anything except lie around and scroll through social media while the mess piles up in your house and your children complain about being bored.  Everyone has the same rights when accused of a crime, but we would be fooling ourselves to think that wealth does not affect the outcome of criminal cases.  You may be living paycheck to paycheck, but if you are accused of a crime, it is a worthwhile investment to hire a Tampa criminal defense lawyer.

Harvard Gazette Report Shows Wealth Disparities in Sentencing of Convicted Defendants

The most recent issue of the Harvard Gazette summarizes the results of a report on sentencing trends.  It focuses on the sentences arising from convictions for nonviolent felony charges involving drugs, but it is likely that similar trends are present in other types of cases, too.  The report says that racial disparities in sentencing are less than they were in previous decades.  For example, the biggest racial gap was in 1992, at the height of the War on Drugs; in that year, the Black defendants convicted of nonviolent drug felonies were 14 times more likely to go to prison than White defendants with the same conviction.  In 2023, the most recent year for which data were available, Black defendants were 1.5 times as likely to get prison time as White defendants convicted of the same offenses.  The report did not include data on any other racial groups.

The disparities in prison sentences have increased, however, based on socioeconomic status, which the report measured by whether the defendant had graduated from college.  It found that defendants without a college education were more than twice as likely to get prison sentences as college graduates convicted on the same charges.

Contact Tampa Criminal Defense Attorney Bryant Scriven

A criminal defense lawyer can help you exercise your rights if you are facing criminal charges.  Contact Scriven Law in Tampa, Florida to schedule a consultation.

Source:

news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/02/class-surges-as-factor-in-who-gets-sent-to-prison/