The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get Prison Analysis

The American Criminal Justice System are sets of agencies and process made by the government to control crime and to penalize those who commit it. The justice system is different based one’s jurisdiction, meaning city, state, federal or tribal government or military installation. The Criminal System is divided into two main parts, the state and the federal. The state portion handles crimes within its state boundaries. The federal portion handles crime committed on Federal property or in two or more states (“Criminal Justice” 1). The American Criminal Justice System needs reform because of its emphasizes on incarceration punishment rather than Rehabilitation. Our justice system especially enforces punishment on blacks and Latinos resulting of overpopulation of prisons like Rikers Island for petty crimes. Also, another reform needed the juvenile cases. For example, juveniles who commit petty crimes shouldn’t be sent to adult prison and shouldn’t be near more dangerous and serious inmates.

currently has the highest imprisonment rate per capita of any country in the world, and although we have about four percent of the global population, we have twenty-two percent of all prisoners. However, it has not always been this way; as only three decades ago our prison population was one eighth of its current size. This unparalleled growth of the prison system has forced America to create a vast prison industry that has become increasingly reliant on private capital. This prison industrial complex has not only turned imprisonment into a profitable business but also reinforced racial disparities in America. The argument that capitalism in this context undermines our democratic values rests of three key points: Firstly, that drug enforcement is racially biased, secondly that private capital has become enmeshed in incarceration industry and thirdly that prison labor is becoming increasingly connected to the United States Economy.

More people have been locked up in the United States than any other country. In the article “Prison Industrial Complex Economics”, it states, “the United States has approximately 6.5 million people under the criminal justice supervision. Incarcerated rate has grown from 176 in 1973 up to 700 in the year of 2000” (Waquant). Incarceration is a big business that feeds into drug violence, corrupted guards, and racism in criminal justice system, taxpayer cost, and racism in the criminal system and through privatization of prisons.

7) In criminological theories, we saw how police activity is largely geared towards minor visible crimes committed by individuals from the lower stratums of society as oppose to “white collar crimes” committed by those of higher stratums (Dubé, CRM 3701, 2011). Abolitionists argue that by severely punishing some of the poor in order to deter society from committing crimes; we are only further contributing to the inequalities in today’s society.

Published in 2014, Matt Taibbi’s The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap explores the topic of income inequality and its relation to the criminal justice system. The Divide is in essence trying to capture the seemingly unwritten rule that different levels of wealth produces different treatment within the criminal justice system. The Divide explores this topic is several ways, first by investigating and exposing the corrupt business practices of investment banks and bankers during the 2008 financial crisis in America and subsequent time periods. The Divide explores the end result of these crimes, which ended up crippling the American economy and defrauding the American people. According to Taibbi, the end result was that a majority of these crimes were treated like administrative violations , as oppose to criminal violations, by the Justice Department and resulted in monetary fines as punishments and almost zero criminal charges filed. On the other hand, Taibbi examines how poor Americans, often Hispanic women or African Americans, are

Jimmy Santiago Baca is a winner of the International Prize for his work in, A Place to Stand. The making of a poet. He writes, “I had no money. There is no way I’m going to make bail” (Baca, 187). In some cases, prisoners are only locked up because they had to get appointed a defense attorney who convinced them to plead to the charges so they would not have to go to trial and risk getting an extended amount of time. District attorneys are elected by the citizens and those people want someone who is tough on crime. If the district attorney is not tough on crime, the people will not reelect him. This can lead to many innocent lives being wasted; For instance, some criminals will sit in a cell for decades for the smallest offense. However, if a prisoner attempts to plead not guilty and the case goes to a trial by jury and they do find him or her guilty, they will be sentenced to an even longer term. It is obvious that our justice system is unfair and against human morals and ethics. They are somehow “innocent until proven guilty” yet they cannot afford to prove themselves innocent. Not only is poverty a reason for the rising increase in the population of inmates, many lack the education needed to understand the law or what they are being accused of.

The book "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison" by Jeffrey H. Reiman provides a very interesting account of how the rich are being treated by the criminal justice system in a more favorable than the poorer and nonviolent criminals who are generally mistreated. Reiman started his book by stating that the recently noted decline in crime rate is skewed. This is clear in the 12th page of his book when he stated that After more than 20 years of telling us that crime was growing out of control and proposing more cops and tougher laws and more prisons, crime rates are now coming down and politicians are jumping to claim credit for the reductions" (Reiman ,p. 12).The book is a well written text that effectively examines the various harmful acts that are committed by the rich in our society. These harmful acts include bribery, medical crimes, and embezzlement of public funds, crime against consumers as well as environmental crimes such as unsafe workplaces as well as pollution among many others. Reiman's book, in its thorough analysis of the various harmful acts noted that there is a particular bias against the poor people within the American criminal justice system.He demonstrated that acts like murder, assault and theft that are committed by the poor people are treated by the criminal justice system as very serious crimes while on the other hand, other harmful acts like bribery, medical crimes, embezzlement of public funds, crime against consumers as well as

In the chapter, "Crime Control in America," Reiman suggests that the system has been designed to fail. Imprisoning drug offenders, for instance, does nothing to reduce the number of drug offenders in society because they are immediately replaced. The decline in violent crime is more attributable to demographic changes than to enforcement efforts. Most of the decline in crime results from forces beyond the control of the criminal justice systems. Reiman also feels that we could reduce crime if we wanted to do so, and that our excuses are not really answers to the problem, but merely excuses to explain why the system fails. We know the causes of crime—poverty, prison, and drugs—yet we do nothing to change how these things operate, such as banning guns and decriminalizing drugs.

Jeffrey Reiman, he is the author of the book the richer get s rich and the poor get prison. He has also written many of the good book, some of his works are critical moral liberalism. The main reason of the book can be identified by its title itself, and this is due to our recent economy system. This book is about the criminal justice system, and the main idea of the book is about the failure in the criminal justice system. Also this book tells how bias is accompanied with a general refusal to remedy the causes of crime poverty and discrimination. This book can be said as critique of criminal justice. Reiman states thesis in his introduction as he claims that the goal of the American criminal justice system is not to eliminate crime or to

White-collar crime poses a vexing problem for the criminal justice system (CJS). It is an

The criminal justice administration today faces various issues and problems thus needing serious reforms. In most cases, many nonviolent offenders go to jail because many prosecutors and district attorneys succumb to political pressure hence become tough on crime. The prisons are always populated and there are minimal resources to ensure there are significant improvements in the system. Some of the key issues facing Criminal justice department today include; wrongful convictions, gangs, racial injustices in the administration, excessive criminalization, socio economic considerations, and problems with

Jeffrey Reiman, author of The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, first published his book in 1979; it is now in its sixth edition, and he has continued to revise it as he keeps up on criminal justice statistics and other trends in the system. Reiman originally wrote his book after teaching for seven years at the School of Justice (formerly the Center for the Administration of Justice), which is a multidisciplinary, criminal justice education program at American University in Washington, D.C. He drew heavily from what he had learned from his colleagues at that university. Reiman is the William Fraser McDowell Professor of Philosophy at American University, where he has taught since 1970. He has written numerous books on political

The judicial system supports the behaviors of making an individual a repeat offender. The prosecution process is flawed when punishing criminals for their crimes. White-collar crimes may not appear to be taken as seriously as other crimes, (i.e., murder, rape, armed robbery, etc.) so the jail sentencing will not be as impactful. This action sends the message to criminals that with softer criminal tactics, they will not do hard time. According to the text, “Jail time does not offer amicable solution, because in most times the intended offense is not prosecuted” (Lilly, Cullen & Ball, 2011).

“Crime is an act committed or omitted in violation of the law (Zastrow, 2014)”. Crime is a serious problem in the United States and the majority feel the criminal justice system is ineffective in slowing it down. Our laws are put into place according to the social norms and values of the time, therefore, they change according to societal changes. Everyone violates laws at different times of their lives, but most people aren’t caught or their violations are minimal. The people most likely to be arrested for crimes are young males, especially men of color, poor people and city residents. This isn’t because these people commit more crimes, they are just more likely to be profiled, stopped, arrested and have charges pursued against them. White collar and organized crime is just as common, but charges and convictions against these criminals is rare, or older, suburban white men would be the most common criminals. It is impossible to collect accurate crime statistics on the amount of crime that takes place since much of it goes unreported and many charges are pled down in court or not prosecuted at all. The police are focused on pursuing specific types of crime and courts spend more time enforcing those cases, making those crimes statistically higher. White collar crimes cause the most financial damage to society and have the largest number of victims, yet police and courts aren’t that interested in enforcing or convicting these criminals. Another

So, we can look at the different people who commit these crimes and why, crime data supports clear tendencies regarding criminal race, gender, education level and class, when one thinks of the word crime we think of crimes committed by the average criminal such has a crime against a person involving bodily harm and threat of bodily harm, or other actions committed against the will of the victim, assaults battery, sexual assault, domestic violence and robbery, other crimes are arson, shoplifting, and drug crimes, when one looks at white collar crime which is associated with crimes committed by someone of a higher level social class, crimes like fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion and money laundering. White collar crime is distinguished from the everyday crime in two important ways, the cases are very difficult to prosecute, white collar crimes are often far more complex than normal crimes. The current criminal justice system is shaped by bias crimes unique to the wealthy are either ignored or treated lightly while the so called common crimes of the poor lead to arrest, charges, convictions and imprisonment. When one looks at the criminal justice system they have created the image that crime is almost exclusively the work off the poor, has they say the rich get richer