Recently, a couple left a child in a car in the summer heat here in St. Louis and the child died. Because the woman was a pediatrician and the father a researcher at Washington University, I told my beautiful wife and my child’s wonderful mother that, they probably wouldn’t face charges because they were doctors. Had they been less, they would be going to jail for child something-or-other, the charges society dishes out when it’s shocked and appalled how the lower classes treat their kids.
Sylvester Brown of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch expresses the same sentiments.
I think our prosecutors like to come down like a hammer on crimes of negligence without tempering their “justice” (enforcement of laws) with a little mercy because it’s easier to up conviction rates on “crimes” that shock society/juries/defense attorneys into seeking plea deals. And it’s not so tedious or dangerous for law enforcement to shackle these poor souls than to go out and get people who intentionally harm one another because those who intend harm tend to be better armed and more dangerous.
So…does anyone have any statistics to determine whether poor and working class parents are punished more harshly on this than the wealthy and upper middle class?
Is this something that someone with mad Lexis Nexis skillz could dig up?