Law, Sentencing and Criminal Justice - Research Proposal Example

The overriding query for this study is centered on an individual’s wealth affecting the verdict given by a court in sentencing a person. Moreover, will a sentence for a rich person be subjected differently as opposed to that of a deprived individual? Distant from having an integral structure that guards the poor against the affluent, there is a justice constitution that ditches the poor. There persist be numerous people who state publicly that affluent criminals, even killers who can use costly legal representatives, are never killed, while the minority increase in penitentiaries while the majority are stood for by public protectors or, occasionally, by pro bono members in big law firms. It is not purely the governing decree itself, but the broadening gap flanked by the haves along with have-Nots (Dorpat, 2007). It is those who direct some genus of white-collar felony for which, if sentenced at all, the doers can pine in country-club penitentiaries whereas the hardcore offenders- turned to felony since they were unfortunate, starving, or unlearned- did crimes to stay alive. The law might be unbiased, but fairness is hardly ever truthfully fair.

Problem Statement

One must gravely scrutinize how justice is described, traditionally, and then arbitrate the extent the law has diverged from its initial connotation: "Fairness has been described as the eminence of being unbiased, the equivalent handling of equals, and existing in concurrence with the innate law and the heavenly plan. Fairness entails integrity in coping with others and matching people’s lives to truths and precision. This ill-fated background carries on underplaying the significance of the natural law in handling human cases. One key predicament occurs before any jury appearance: specifically, the law implementation agencies counting the police force, sheriffs, and since the eminence of 9/11 the termed Homeland Security authorities. This reflects in the judicial attitude toward the sentencing of poor people (Ashworth, 2010). Frequently, the verdict of the jury on the rich people, if any subsists, is woefully derisory to facilitate their being sentenced to long-term periods. The jury is perceived more as error finders as opposed to solution givers and colleagues in the Governments also undertake this injustice.

Hypothesis:
The jury partakers will subconsciously deem a defendant’s financial background in the proposition of a verdict.
Depicting the variable
The Independent variable is a juvenile SFU scholar driving a 150,000-dollar vehicle and another youthful SFU scholar driving a 5000-dollar vehicle. The Dependent variable is the period that the culpable defendant is sentenced in a penitentiary.

Participants/ Population
The partakers of this venture include 20 scholars in a classroom framework. They include people from diverse backgrounds schooling in identical circumstances. This is because of the minimal period required to amass information on the required research.

Research Design
For this venture, the researcher has to collect the relevant information in class (about 20 individuals) for merely 10 minutes. Therefore, the questionnaire is deemed to be fairly short and has two examples of a similar case since the time frame is also squat. In addition, the procedure the researcher implores to investigate the hypothesis is by administering a single version (A or B) of the two drivers’ accounts to different scholars and afterward submission of the questionnaires.

The population will stipulate the number of required sentences they deem the offenders should be jailed. The stipulated range for choice is between five to fifteen years. On receipt of the data or rather information, the researcher will total up the results of each driver for comparison of the results. This is in an attempt to see whether the common citizens will propose extended periods to the wealthy student or the poor student.

Procedure
The story to be passed through portrays a university scholar named Kevin (either driving a Mercedes Benz car valued at 150000 dollars as version A or the same scholar driving a Toyota Yaris valued at 5000 dollars as (version B). The two scenarios are placed in the context of knocking down an ordinary cyclist who was having a ride while speeding up to get to an exam on time. The tale will merely be protracted as a paragraph in the questionnaire. The framework of each account will be depicted plainlytoo get the appropriate result of the situation. For hurting a cyclist in BC, motorists are typically sentenced to the least period of 5 years and an utmost of 25 years, regarding each individual case. A Questionnaire in this research with the question of how many years one will be subject to the culprit in each scenario is posed. This will be employed for the motive of getting the emotional perspectives of the individuals being interviewed. Read More