The bigger issue is that (1) laws are enforced more harshly in poor areas because there is pressure on prosecutors to focus on high-crime areas; (2) poor people are much more likely to be within one degree of separation of someone the cops are interested in. In many schools in poor neighborhoods, "kids are essentially assigned a gang affiliation." http://www.npr.org/2013/02/21/172593743/chicago-kids-say-the....
In an upper class suburb, a shoplifting charge is easy to dismiss as youthful indiscretion. In a gang-infested inner city neighborhood, where the perpetrator might have friends or family with known gang affiliations, it becomes very easy (if not fair or just) to see an indiscretion as a sign of something much bigger.
Yes, they are. It's not this blatant, but the result is the same.
First, the rich person has probably been told, repeatedly, "Shut the fuck up, and only talk to your lawyer." This is a HUGE deal and helps your end result dramatically.
Second, the rich person likely doesn't have to worry about losing their job or coordinating child care while being missing for 24 hours due to incarceration.
Third, the rich person doesn't have to worry about making bail.
Fourth, you mentioned "social separation". Agreed. The richer person likely has a closer contact to a friend inside the justice system. That helps.
Fifth, a rich person is more likely to "look" not guilty. So both the prosecution and defense negotiate with that in their heads.
Sixth, the rich person likely knows English well and understands the cultural norms. This is a significant advantage. For example, in the southwest US, more than a few Hispanics wind up pleading guilty to having underage sex thinking it's not a big deal without realizing that they're about to have a felony on their record.
Seventh, the rich person understands navigating a bureaucracy. Do NOT underestimate this skill. A lot of lower class people don't realize the power that lower level functionaries have and wind up pissing them off to their detriment. The number of times I have seen people mouthing off to someone in the probation office makes me cry.
Finally, your lawyer likely knows the inside game. He knows that this judge likes to slam young punks, so he'll try to avoid him for stupid pot offenses. He knows that this judge is getting back from vacation on this day and is likely in a good mood so he can get a better deal. He knows that this judges hates DUI's, etc.
The list goes on and on ...
So, the prosecutor doesn't actually think: "He's rich, so I won't prosecute this so hard." But at every point where a decision can go for or against, there's a bit of bias in the rich person's favor distributed throughout the system.
Eventually that multiplies up to a big advantage.
This is absolutely critical and I think best explains that undercurrent of things like "subconscious racism".
They get paid to bring successful prosecutions. That's the metric of success and lots of successful prosecutions will advance their careers.
If you can afford legal representation you get a lawyer who spends more than five minutes preparing to defend you. The prosecution is less likely to succeed, so the prosecutor is more willing to deal.
Prosecutors try to spend their time on the cases they can win. You don't even have to be criminally charged to see how farcical the system is: just go to traffic court sometime and watch how the system handles people with lawyers.
In Cook County, at least, you're given a time to appear in court. Everyone appears at that time. Cases are handled in alphabetical order. But: if you have a lawyer, your case is handled first --- the lawyers are on the clock, you see --- so there's about an hour and a half of waiting for lawyer after lawyer to come up and get their clients cases dismissed, while everyone else sits doing nothing.
No but in all seriousness it's a good time if you like talking/learning/debating cryptography and general security things.
People without lawyers didn't know that all that's really important is that you pay fines to the court. You're taking the court's time and you have to pay for it.
They tried to deny they sped, the cop said they did, and the ticket stuck.
Say you parked your car in a wrong spot - a mistake that many people make at least once in their life. In US (and many other countries), the fine for that is a fixed amount. For some people it's pretty much chump change, while for the others it can be the difference between paying a different bill late or not.
Yet others can't pay the ticket at all, and then there's a fine for not doing that. If you're poor enough, you can easily rack up thousands of dollars in debt to the government for something as trivial as parking in a wrong spot, or having a broken taillight (which you don't have money to fix).
Then you get an arrest warrant, and that's when court fees and lawyer fees start piling in - on top of everything you've already accrued.
And, of course, because you can't post bail, they lock you up, and by the time you get out (assuming you're lucky with your public defender and do get out), you have probably lost your job. If you're especially unlucky, you may have also lost your rental, and your things have been thrown out onto the street.
Worse yet, some municipalities have learned the rules of that game, and decided that they want a cut. Ferguson is a prominent example, but it is one among many.
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-fi...
How do you fix it? Well, insofar as fines are meant to be punitive, you scale them to the income of the person being fined, for example.
Because bringing the quality of someone else's defense down does not solve the fundamental problems of the justice system.
The problem is that the justice system is unfair to the poor, PERIOD. And we need to fix that. The problem is not putting more rich kids in jail.
In my opinion, the better change is to remove things like prosecutorial discretion for juries. If the prosecution can't make the case without stacking the deck, he shouldn't be making it.