Aidyn K.

Dodds

Research Methods

Dr. Bell

Class Difference and Social Conflict theory

 Introduction: From the end of WW2 to the start of the early 90s around the world
there was a battle between two conflicting ideals. The ideas of democracy/capitalism and
Communism with state ran economics. These two competing ideas were based upon founding
theoretical ideas about how societies should operate. One of the biggest problems that the
American idea of free market economy, faces today, is the un-deniable trend in the growth of
class difference. Social conflict theories argue that crime in its basic element can be traced back
to how a society structures itself and establishes it’s cultural, social, economic and governmental
principles. This paper takes a look and tries to find the trend and evidence that perhaps Karl
Marx was right and capitalism does indeed lead to a society that protects the rich. White collar
crime is punished much less servilely in the United States. Why is it that poor people who skim
food stamps face harsher sentencing then a hedge fund that de-frauds millions out of investors?
This paper is to give social conflict theory evidence that such things occur because of the
structure of our society and how in a free-market, capitalism wealth growth is a higher priority
than a human life.
When considering social class difference and how a society can operate in ways that
produce criminals, the basic operating principle is a disenfranchisement with how the greater
society treats them. Focusing on social class theory we want to look in particular at the Neo-
Marxist approach. This school of thought believes that most of our laws are passed in ways that
protect the wealthy to encourage capitalistic goals and punish white collar criminals less
(Bystrova, E. G., & Gottschalk, pg.6, 2015). One of the basic studies of Social conflict theory
suggest that the professional, powerful and wealthy represent the elite and ruling class in society.
The theory holds that laws and law enforcement are used by the dominant group to minimize
threats to their interests (Bystrova etc., pg.8, 2015). The justice system is biased and designed to
protect the ruling class. The data set we will be examining from is the Federal Sentencing
database. In the data we hope to find disparities and any irregulars, outlying groups or biases
within how federal cases are sentenced.
We want to first establish a better background for our white collar criminals. We want to
establish a background first for why white collar criminals would be prosecuted in the first place.
We have to establish why they are prosecuted because without establishing why they are
prosecuted it wouldn’t make sense in a society that was perpetuated by Social conflict theory.
For white collar criminals to even be prosecuted in the first place they look to create a research
model that is developed for predictors of white-collar crime prosecution. One of the first
indicators that increases the likelihood of prosecution for white collar crimes is if the crime itself
is stealing from other white collar workers. If it’s the rich stealing from the rich then the threat of
prosecution increases (Bystrova etc., pg.9, 2015). Lack of government influence in the business
sector is also a big indicator that you could be prosecuted, thus when ways are found in heavily
regulated business the government is less likely to prosecute do the service they provide
(Bystrova etc., pg.4, 2015). A good example of this was after the 2008 housing crisis when banks
were knowingly spending huge amounts of liquidity on worthless assets to create short-term
money and when it failed the government had to step in to bail them out. At the same time they
were never prosecuted for the crimes. White collar criminals benefit from prosecution when they
spend their money on deescalating social conflict as in spending money back in to their
communities that they take apart in (Bystrova etc., pg.17, 2015). The benefit of understanding
the reasons why prosecution occurs is to establish why prosecution would occur at all given that
there is a vast majority of white collar criminals who are not punished or who bribe their way
from being punished. The definition of white collar criminals can be applied to a vast number of
different things and often legal ways of making money in Capitalism. It can be seen as a legal
way of making money but in another society it can be seen as a white collar crime. Pay-Day loan
places are a great example of this in how loans are targeted to lower income people in the hope
that they default and more money can be garnished from them but pay-day loan places are legal
business in most of America.

Methods: Social Class difference has in recent years been one of the prominent issues
facing the social-economic sphere of American society. In criminal justice, social class
difference and the punishment of offenders has been a long time issue and controversy of
Americas criminal justice system. The theory we are looking at is the explanation of crime
through the lens of social class difference. The Neo-Marxist approach looks at how society
develops law based upon the society’s greater economic system with how America’s capitalistic
identity could possibly lead to the frustration in white collar crime prosecution. My hypothesis is
that there is indeed a disparity in prosecution when it comes to white collar crimes. More often
than not, eventually it ends up hurting more victims than a violent crime does but gets punished
less severely because of leaning towards not prosecuting business. One thing to keep in mind as
well is that any form of biases found in the data, even if unrelated to the prosecution of white
collar crime, can be considered evidence of Social class biases IF the evidence is showing a
relation in defendants of a lower social-economic background. When considering the federal
sentencing data one important component is the fact that most of the cases differ by so many
different variables that when attempting a categorization of all data, some of the trends won’t be
more easily seen. The data base being used is the monitoring of federal sentences. We are using
this database to be able to focus on sentencing disparity and look at each case on an individual
level. It will be able to test the hypothesis because it looks at the sentencing and also records
important social information such as race, education, type of crime and helps to compare violent
crimes to white collar crimes. The cases in the database are each defendants case record and
outcome. It has certain demographic information and all trial information. The last and most
important information each case has is also its outcome and any fine, restitution or any other
punishment that the defendant received. The cases are very important to talk about. To
understand the analysis of the evidence the research side is at a disadvantaged. In fact, findings
as most articles and research we find are arguing a particular side, it’s hard to take an unbiased
approach when looking at this research. The older the research is then most of it is biased to the
argument that social conflict theory while possible, is not happening in the United States. They
also argue that many of the different concepts that come out of social conflict theory can be
applied to other much simpler definition or theory. We see the demographics broke down for
example in case one a defendant will be displayed with over 100 variables different things that
were recorded in the case. Some of the more stand out ones for example is one case in particular
where the defendant had to pay near 8,000,000 in restitution to the victim(s). Lastly the analysis
of said data will be done primarily through the form of correlations. We want to find and isolate
the variables that affect the outcome of each other and then compare. We want to find any
outliners or cases that don’t fit into the data as well to remove them and avoid skewing our data.
The vast number of cases in the federal database that sits around 65,000 will help show at the
highest level of prosecution if there are un-seen bias that are occurring and eventually we will
see them in the analysis of the dataset and from there we will be able to see a connection to Neo-
Marxism.
Analysis: (Federal Defendant make-up in regards to social class)
Sentencing: Now starting with our foundations in analysis is one of the key factors we
want to look at is sentencing. Sentencing is the core to our data and the one reliable outcome that
can help us differ between the defendants we are looking at. One of the first tests ran was a
simple frequency distribution for how many months if any were offered to the federally
sentenced defendants in accordance with home confinement. According to federal cases, 96% of
the defendants were not granted parole. This shows that there is already a high prejudice interims
of punishment towards federal defendants, but that does not necessarily mean that there is a
relation towards social conflict theory. This essentially means that there to a higher degree of
crime in the federal court system. Part of sentencing is also the related issues to plea deals. We
have talked about the importance and how much of a factor plea deals are in the federal system.
Part of the process in federal cases is determining how much responsibility each individual takes
on. this variable we looked at level of responsibility. Each defendant has the opportunity to take
a plea deal where they accept some form of responsibility and this can be done before the
sentencing portion of the legal process. What the central tendency is showing is that on average,
those who accept their level of responsibility are looking at an average of -2.53 or -3. The
negative 2-3 correlates to the average number of points taken off their case before they are
sentenced hopefully reducing the negative outcome. The biggest take away is that only 4% did
not receive some reduction in points and a lonely 7.3% did not take on responsibility at all. This
indicates that the vast majority of federal cases end in a plea deal. Coming to the conclusion at
how these plea deals end, we can look at the total number of months’ defendants were sentenced
to community service with parol. This means that we also looked at who was sentenced to some
form of federal probation. But also looked at cases where the defendant spent less than a year in
federal custody. The mean average is around three years in prison. The median sits around the
two-year mark. The mode is 0 as there isn’t going to be re-peat in numbers just ones that have a
higher frequency of data. The variance is extremely large as almost each individual case has
different years of sentencing. The range goes from 0 (this is simple probation) all the way up to
our highest case where one individual was sentenced to 590 years in prison. The data shows the
sentence length differs so much for each individual case most sentences occur with a frequency
rate of under 5% however the highest case frequency is federal probation and holds only 11% of
all the federal cases. A possible theory in regards to Neo-Marxism is that we can’t see the data
because so many of the defendants end up taking plea deals we can’t rely determine if the justice
system is unbiased or not. The real problem in the end might not be Social class difference as a
whole but the undeniable fact that the criminal justice system runs and thrives on cases that end
in plea deals.
 Race: The next distinguishing factor that had to be looked at was race. One of the most
prevalent hot topic issues in the American socio-societal influence is race related issues. There
are still deep ties in our country to a horrific past and how some of how our early day laws were
structured to see re-occurrences of by-gone laws that could have serious impact on the lives of
defendants. A common term in criminal justice is DMC or Disproportion Minority
Concentration. That means in comparison to the demographic make-up of American Society
there is a disproportionate amount of minority individuals in prison. Could this “DMC” be seen
at the federal level? An index was made using the races and their correspondence to what Zone
of sentencing they were punished in. Zone A would represent someone who was sentenced at the
lowest or near minimum point of sentencing, Zone D the highest represents someone who was
sentenced at the max or near maximum of their sentencing range. We found that around 60% of
the defendants were sentenced in Zone D meaning they faced near the maximum of their
sentencing guidelines. One correlation that occurred with this test however was the abnormal
amount of Caucasian defendants who were sentenced around Zone A/Zone B meaning that
Caucasian defendants had a disproportionate amount sentenced in the lower guidelines. A
positive correlation here is our first glimpse into evidence providing social conflict theory some
support. Race as a whole that can be seen in the simple frequency distribution of the races. We
see that the vast majority of cases are committed by either Caucasian or Hispanic individuals at a
whopping 76%. The next frequency for Hispanics who make up most of the tried individuals at
the federal level is 52% and behind that is African-Americans who make up 21%. In comparison
to average demographic make-up of the united states, we see that for African-Americans at the
federal level it is pretty equal in comparison to the rest of the population. At the state level
however, the lower percentages shows that there is obvious DMC of African-American
individuals incarcerated. The federal level appears to be fair in the prosecution level of them.
This is different compared to the large number of Hispanics that are prosecuted at this level.
There is a DMC concentrated portion of federal defendants that are of Hispanic background. One
theory that can be used to possibly explain the high number of Hispanic background individuals
is the fact that illegal citizens of the United States would be tried in the federal court system. The
other races make up only a small 2% of the other remaining defendants.
Age: Another consideration is all the ages of the convicted defendants. Even if this
variable couldn’t be used to talk about social class difference or Neo-Marxism, it needs to be
discussed to understand the background of our federal defendants. We analyzed the categories of
age range to get an overall look at the distribution of age ranges that our defendants fall under.
There is a pretty even distribution throughout the ages. The one outlier that is under 21 year olds,
only make up a low 3% of the defendants. Surprisingly the 26-30-year-old category did not take
the highest percent of the defendants even though we could assume that’s the prime age range of
sentencing. The highest category was interestingly, the 41-50 year olds who took up 19.5% of
the sentencing. They represented the highest group sentenced. From ages, 31-35 years old, they
are the second highest group representing roughly 18.1% of those sentenced. As a whole, there is
almost a 50% split between the people under 35 years old and the others that are over 35 years
old for when sentenced. Representing that there is a pretty even distribution of defendants past
the age of twenty-one years old. Age was not necessarily a variable used to either prove or
disprove the hypothesis, however it was used as a good demographic indicator of what
defendants we were dealing with. And to the utmost surprising outcome was perhaps the age
range being 41-50 year olds making up the highest populated age range of years being convicted.
Drugs: For this variable we are looking at the number of drugs involved in the case. Our
first finding is that only 32.4% of the total number of cases involved had drug possession of
some kind. One thing we do not know from this frequency test is if they were apprehended for a
different crime and had drugs on their possession or if their being charged for a drug related
crime what we see is that even though 32.4% of the cases involved drugs, 81.8 only had one drug
leading me to infer that most of the time the drug possession that comes up in the case file is not
attached to the federal charge that they were facing but that they were arrested and when that
occurred they had a drug in their possession. Under 3,000 cases actually had two drugs with their
position and most of the federal related drug charges stemmed as a whole from the position of
more than one drugs. This data best helps to display however that of these federal crimes, drugs
were only a factor in 32.4% of all federal cases. One thing in particular away from demographics
being by how much defendants are fined. Drug related crime that gets to the federal court shows
a positive correlation in amount of money fined if the crime they committed had one or more
drugs involved. The t-test results lead to t=70.919, p < .001. The relationship is significant.
Another statement that was noticed was the fact that a lot of the federal charges were increased
with huge fines if the offender had multiple drugs on their person. This could mean that only
defendants who were charged with a crime that was related to the distribution of drugs and were
charged federally come up in this data set. Drugs were not a reliable indicator for social class
difference or even a glimpse at Neo-Marxism.
Education: The next factor of looking at our defendants is by looking at their education levels.
The education level that the defendants have is a huge indicator to social status. Often times
education is seen as an indicator of success or some level of at least knowing right from wrong.
A simple comparison and measures of association between sentencing and education level
should give indicators to a degree of bias towards higher educated individuals and show a blatant
example of class separation in how the prosecution is operating at the federal level. There is a
positive correlation between higher education and receiving less prison time. This positive
correlation was seen in higher education with a downwards trend towards receiving less prison
time. This one is extremely interesting for this we are looking at levels of education however
finding our central tendency and dispersion. Looking at our three averages we can see that most
of defendants actually do have up to or past a high school education. Our data shows that our
median and mode both equal out to about 12 years of school. Our variance was right around the
0.99 however there are lots of variance in levels of education. This does not mean to much
however as over 30% of the defendants fell in to the category of either G.E.D, Some college, or
graduation of high school. One thing to note that even though there is a positive correlation it
does denote an indication of total evidence as 40-51 age range is often the most common age
range of the federal defendants. The importance of these tests are to look at common
demographics in the hopes of seeing a trend or some form of relation between how these
defendants are being sentenced. Education provided some insight to a possible bias in the federal
level. Knowing that there is a correlation between higher education and lesser crime sentencing
could be an indicator that some form of Neo-Marxist truth that the better educated could be given
less harsh sentences due to their benefit to society. However again we get the problem that there
are too many other explanatory variables for why the crime would occur. We know almost 20%
of the defendants were in the 30’s so perhaps in older population pool of defendants means that
there is just a higher chance of them having some form of higher education. This couldn’t be
considered a strong indicator of Neo-Marxism but a good indicator that there is some bias at the
federal level of some kind.
White collar crime and counter arguments: We also need to look at the background of
our offender and see if there is any undue harshness based on the criminal past. This is important
because in the 1980s under the administration the “three strikes” law was passed. This means
that any three arrest-able offences as long as there was one felony charge in there, on the third
crime the defendant would be sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison. This could be a 15-
year-old who stole a car and then at 17 got a shoplifting charge and then at 23 got another
shoplifting charge and is now facing 30 years in prison. Most of these “three strikes laws” have
been amended but a switch in prosecution mindset takes more than a couple decades. What we
want to see is evidence that the number of counts of conviction that a defendant faces is
correlated towards the criminal history degree that was attributed to them by the prison system
officials. A degree of bias towards criminals with more extensive background of criminal
behavior would be more lily to suffer longer prison sentences. We found that most of the
relationships do not correlate in a significant manner giving cadence to the idea that at the federal
level each case is considered individually and there is little bias that can be massively seen. We
began to look back at the race variable and seeing if there was any cadence to it showing bias.
One of the things we know about the criminal justice system is that it massively favors
individuals who take plea deals. Often times false convictions are attributed to the simple use of
offering a plea deal for no jail time or just probation because of the cost and time it takes to fight
a case in the court system. We compared the race to crosstabs to see if the defendants took a plea
deal, pleaded not guilty and went to trial or if they pleaded guilty-no contest. The results showed
that there was a slight Lambda correlation that race has a slight correlation in relationship with
sentencing. It was about <0.8 significance in regards to the overall relationship.
Further Studies: The evidence that we have is the few variables that somewhat correlate
but there is a multitude of other arguments and even evidence found with SPSS that show there
isn’t strong evidence that mass social class difference has an effect on our criminal justice
system. Most of the criminal actions and criminology behind why these criminals behave the
way they do can be linked to much simpler criminal justice theories (Beirne, pg.116, 1979).
Theories such as operant conditioning or routine activities or any number of other theories that
could explain criminal behavior. One of the biggest problems when looking at a theory like
social conflict or even Neo-Marxism is that they often explain criminal behavior in a broad
overarching way that holds to many people accountable for the same think. The real reality is
however that with a country like America that holds a huge dichotomy of cultures and views, a
sleuth of criminal justice theories to be applied to the populace the vast reality is a lot of things
can be used to help explain crime but if there is any evidence of social class difference then it
can be seen in how sentencing and prosecution works. If there was evidence of biases being
applied at the federal level it would be a strong telling of law at the state level and a good overall
indicator of defendants as a whole. Economic status of the individuals is also an important factor
in how the defendants are prosecuted. Not only do we have to take in to consideration the
economic background of the criminal but we have to take into account the means of the crime
and if they committed it in the hopes of economic gains. Such crimes can be attributed to the
economic mindset at the time and be given a label of crime committed under a Marxist view
(Chambliss, pg.163, 1975). The offender itself is the biggest red flag that can come out of this
research. One of things we try to find in this research is a base for what a white collar criminal is.
We know the acts in itself that can be defined as white collar but we want to be able to find some
form of demographic similarity that shows a bias of protection or maybe prejudice that one
group is being targeted more than the other. Past research has given us a more in-depth picture of
the overall. For us the reality is often times white collar criminals are able to skate the law
between law and legal business practice (Friedrichs,2009). One thing that we often forget when
conducting our analysis is the lack of primary evidence one can draw from to make an argument.
So the way we combat that and are able to draw on some primary research, was evidence that
was collected in 2016 from responses of white collar criminals.

(Fredericks, McComas, Weatherby, Table 4, 2016) This table was able to give a good glimpse of
violent crime when compared to white collar criminals. There is an obvious disconnect between
the two crime areas and their respective prosecution. Most white collar criminals already benefit
from a whopping 30% chance to avoid any form of incarceration. Now proponents would argue
that obviously violent crime should be prosecuted at a higher rate than white collar crime but you
end up forming bias towards how the prosecution of these crimes is going to work. Prosecutors
also have to be able to apply value to a human life when it comes to civil crime that stole
millions of dollars from people then the vast reality is that more people in the end were hurt then
compared to a one on one murder done out of passion. White collar criminals to even be worth
prosecuting have to have done some form of large harm towards people that could potentially
bankrupt or loose people their livelihoods. The early definitions of a white collar crime were
crimes that hurt the labor force (Sutherland, pg.134, 1945). The prosecution would be hesitant or
often times bring lesser charges towards the violators of labor laws in the country. American
labor laws have been a very fluid and changing rule set that only within the last 50 years did it
see massive reforms to worker protections and further more environmental and other safety
regulations. Prosecutors were hesitant to bring such chargers to companies or to white collar
criminals because of the loss of jobs or potential harming to the economic growth of the area.
Prosecutors instead used the civil court to still punish but avoid shutting down large
cooperation’s that supplied jobs to many people. White collar crime has changed however, of
course businesses taking advantage of their employees exist but now massive scams can be run
and non-employees can fall victim to predator businesses. The prosecution of these crimes has
yet to change, they are still fined and not charged criminally in the vast number of cases because
there is not law in place that allows for successful prosecution of the companies.
Conclusion: The evidence we were able to collect from the federal sentencing database did not
confirm our hypothesis that at the federal level there was some form of sentencing disparity or
social class difference. More so under the Neo-Marxist guide that talked about specifically the
cases under white collar crime that could be prosecuted less harshly due to fact that capitalism
pushes for profits over everything else. I don’t think my overall opinion has changed that class
differences have had a profound effect on our criminal justice system. If one were to look at how
states prosecuted their cases that made it to a state level a better national picture would be able to
be made and fully be able to answer our hypothesis. The federal level it seems that most cases
are prosecuted with little bias, even though we were able to fine some biases in the form of
education level and even race. The evidence we found does not do enough to make a strong
argument for Neo-Marxism being the main factor and contributor to crime. The next steps in this
research would to take a moment and look for class difference at the state level. Most of the
federal cases ended in prison time meaning that we are looking at cases that were harsh enough
to require federal prosecution already have a degree of bias towards them due to the nature of the
crimes they committed. My hypothesis being not founded in the end is not necessarily a bad
thing, I can rest easier knowing these large scale biases are for the most part un founded at the
federal level and massive bias weren’t easy to find.
 Works Cited

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