The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class and Criminal Justice - Softcover

Reiman, Jeffrey H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0205264875 ISBN 13: 9780205264872

Publisher: Routledge, 1997

Synopsis

Is The Criminal Justice System Biased? Find Out In The Latest Edition Of This Eye-Opening Source! -- Includes updated crime and non-criminal harm statistics. -- Contains new data about the resurgence of heroin use, long thought eclipsed by crack cocaine. -- Comprehensive discussion of law, ideology, and economic bias.Though crime rates have recently begun declining in most major cities around the U.S., the criminal justice system is still failing. While politicians and police chiefs rush to claim credit for the declines, most independent observers credit the declines to factors such as the stabilization of the drug trade and the improving economy. Crime and violence are still extremely prevalent in America higher than those of other modern nations. The basic premise of this book is that the criminal justice system is biased against the poor from start to finish from the definition of crime through the process of arrest, trial, and sentencing. Topics include: law, ideology, and economic bias; the decline of crime rates; the resurgence of heroin usage; how and why the system is failing, and rehabilitation of the system.

About this title

From the Back Cover

What if our criminal justice system is biased against the poor from start to finish - from the definition of what constitutes a crime through the process of arrest, trial, and sentencing?

In this best-selling text, the author argues that actions of well-off people, such as the refusal to make workplaces safe, refusal to curtail deadly pollution, promotion of unnecessary surgery, and prescriptions for unnecessary drugs, cause occupational and environmental hazards to innocent members of the public and produce as much death, destruction, and financial loss as so-called crimes of the poor. However, these crimes of the well-off are rarely treated as severely as those of the poor. Reiman documents the extent of anti-poor bias in arrest, conviction, and sentencing practices and shows that the bias is conjoined with a general refusal to remedy the causes of crime-poverty, lack of education, and discrimination. As a result, the criminal justice system fails to reduce crime. The author uses numerous studies and examples to illustrate his points, and difficult concepts are explained in a non-technical manner. The book provokes thought and discussion, even among people who disagree with its content.

One reviewer describes the text as “one of the most outstanding critiques of the criminal justice process…a book that needed to be written and needs to be published again and again… a text as relevant today as when first published in 1979.”

Synopsis

New edition of a text in which the author, a William Fraser McDowell Professor of Philosophy at American University, maintains that the criminal justice system has failed to protect us, and further, that the poor constitute the majority of those imprisoned for crime. The conclusion sets forth suggestions for revamping the system. At the end of each

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0205264875
• ISBN 13: 9780205264872
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 5
• Number of pages: 288