Inequality and the Legal Order: An Ecological Test of the Conflict Model

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Abstract
Some conflict theorists suspect that differences in economic resources give rise to legal outcomes reflecting the interests of powerful, affluent groups. Because property is one guarantee of the supremacy of an economic elite, I hypothesized that imprisonment for violation of the property codes would be more likely in political systems where unequally distributed resources favor influence by the affluent. States with a more unequal distribution were likely to have high imprisonment ratios for burglary and larceny. When analysis was restricted to areas where patterns of victimization were consistent across income groups, I also obtained results supporting the conflict view. Inequality was related to imprisonment for crimes against property only when higher income groups were most likely to be victimized.

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