Are there studies aiming to verify if there is a socio economic bias in the judgement of guilt and deserved punishment of crimes? I imagine something like geting a bunch of people, two groups. Tell them about a fictitious crime (told them to be real, maybe). To one group we tell that the criminal is very poor and the victim is middle class or rich; to the other group, the socio-economic class is switched for each role. Then each member of each group would have to write something, preferably alone, without group pondering, stating which punishment would be right for that crime. Perhaps they would chose from a list. Perhaps, yet another group could have no information whatsoever to know or infer on the socio economic classes of the individuals. These would first write which was the proper punishment, and maybe then, only after writing this, answer if he had unconsciously attributed economic classes to the individuals on the narrative, and which classes he attributed. To further exam, perhaps subjects on this group could then receive "real" (arbitrary) attributions of socio economic class, and be told to answer again about the proper penalty for the crime, to see if something changes. Does anyone know if experiments in this sense have been done?
