According to the United States Constitution, the sixth amendment provides citizens with the right to a “speedy and public trial” accompanied by “legal counsel”. When being tried by a jury, there are many legal factors being accounted for. But, in “Race, Socioeconomic Status and Sentencing in the Juvenile Justice System”, Terrence B. Thornberry, Ph.D. in criminal justice, claims there are two extralegal factors contributing to sentencing within the juvenile system: race and socioeconomic status. Furthermore, in “Unfair by Design: The War on Drugs, Race, and the Legitimacy of the Criminal Justice System,” Lawrence D. Bobo and Victor Thompson, Ph.D. in social sciences, states only 28% of blacks feel they were treated with equality within the courts and perceived the system as racially biased, which ultimately calls the justness of the system into question. Therefore, it has been noticed that socioeconomic status (SES) factors into conviction rates along with other extralegal factors.

Taken these claims into account, the question of to what extent low socioeconomic status impact conviction rates arose. Socioeconomic status has been a determining variable in conviction rates. Jeffrey Benedict and Alan Klein, experts in criminal law, discuss sexual assault and conviction rates of professional male athletes, claiming they’re less likely to be convicted. The two concluded that of the 217 cases examined, 172 athletes were arrested and only 10 were convicted while no action was taken for 45 of the cases (Benedict and Klein, p. 89). Therefore, defendants of higher social status have accessibility to resources, as they can afford a skilled attorney resulting in the women being exploited by the system (Benedict and Klein, p. 92).

Often, victimizing the athlete as a target and the accuser being labeled as “attention hungry,” resulting in more sympathy from jurors. According to Paul D. Butler, Ph.D. in law, a person of low SES is more likely to be imprisoned due to a highly selective justice system targeting those with fewer resources (2178). Butler states that more than half of the prisoners in 2005 reported an annual income of $12,000 and about a 25% unemployment rate, suggesting the reason for poor people being incarcerated a higher is to do a societal “sweep” of low SES individuals (2181). Stewart J. D’Alessio and Lisa Stolzenberg, Ph.D. in criminology, claim SES did not impact the conviction of individuals because there is not enough “offense specific evidence” (D’Alessio and Stolzenberg, p. 75). However, more “offense specific evidence” was provided by Thornberry, investigating the relationship of race, SES, and conviction rates showing that differing SES with similar crime history and offense resulted in higher conviction rates for youth of lower SES. Thus, socioeconomic status plays a role in conviction rates.

While examining the impact of SES on conviction rates, race was a transparent variable. According to Thornberry, black youth of lower SES were convicted at higher rates in comparison with the white youth while committing the same offense with the same criminal history (Thornberry, p. 96). Thornberry concluded that “... nonlegal variables are still related to the severity of the dispositions received,” due to members of minority groups with restricted economic accessibility being viewed as “scapegoats of the frustrated police in our local communities” (p. 90). Hence, blacks are incarcerated at higher rates due to racially biased law enforcement looking to decrease crime.