Race, Socioeconomic Status and Sentencing in the Juvenile Justice System

Racial and social class discrimination in the administration of justice has long been of theoretical and empirical interest to criminologists.Although many theoretical works assume that such discrimination exists, Terry has pointed out that this assumption has been made ". .. even though empirical research dealing with these issues is relatively sparse and poorly conceived."I For example, Lemert states that "Members of minority groups, migrants, and persons with limited economic means are often the ... scapegoats of the frustrated police in our local communities." 2Clinard makes a similar assumption: 'It is a generally established fact that the Negroes, as well as Spanish speaking peoples, on the whole, are arrested, tried, convicted, and -returned to prison more often than others who commit comparable offenses." 3Sutherland and Cressey, without data, assert:(a) Negroes are more liable to arrest than whites ... (c) Negroes have a higher conviction rate than whites.(d) Negroes are often punished more severely than whites, but this is not true for all crimes.(e) Whites are most likely to receive probation and suspended sentences.(f) Negroes receive pardons less often than do whites. 4 The purpose of the present study is to examine empirically the validity of this assumption using