The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Prison

This best-selling text examines the premise that the 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.  Also, this text discusses how this bias is accompanied with a general refusal to remedy the causes of crime–poverty, lack of education, and discrimination. One reviewer describes this text as “one of the most outstanding critiques of the criminal justice process…a book that needed to be written and needs to be publishing again and again…a text as relevant today as when first published in 1979.” The author argues that actions of well-off people, such as 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 just as much death, destruction, and financial loss as so-called crimes of the poor. However, these acts of the well-off are rarely treated as crimes, and when they are, they are never treated as severely as crimes of the poor.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Criminal Justice through the Looking Glass, or Winning by Losing Chapter1 Crime Control in America: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure Designed to Fail Three Excuses That Will Not Wash, or How We Could Reduce Crime if We Wanted to Known Sources of CrimeWhat Works to Reduce Crime How Crime Pays: Erikson and Durkheim A Word about Foucault Summary Study Questions Additional Readings Notes   Chapter 2 A Crime by Any Other Name... What’s in a Name? The Carnival Mirror Criminal Justice as Creative Art A Crime by Any Other Name... Work May Be Dangerous to Your Health Health Care May Be Dangerous to Your Health Waging Chemical Warfare against America Poverty Kills Summary Study Questions Additional Readings Notes   Chapter 3 ...and the Poor Get Prison Weeding Out the Wealthy Arrest and Charging Adjudication and Conviction Enron and a Year of Corporate Financial Scandals Sentencing The Savings & Loan Scandal ...and the Poor Get Prison Summary Study Questions Additional Readings Notes   Chapter 4 To the Vanquished Belong the Spoils: Who Is Winning the Losing War against Crime? Why Is the Criminal Justice System Failing? The Poverty of Criminals and the Crime of Poverty The Implicit Ideology of Criminal Justice The Bonus of Bias Ideology, or How to Fool Enough of the People Enough of the Time Summary Study Questions Additional Readings Notes               Conclusion: CriminalJustice             or Criminal Justice The Crime of Justice Rehabilitating Criminal Justice in America Protecting Society Promoting Justice Summary Study Questions Additional Readings Notes             Appendix I: The Marxian Critique of Criminal Justice Marxism and Capitalism Capitalism and Ideology Ideology and Law Law and Ethics Notes   Appendix II: Between Philosophy and Criminology Philosophical Assumptions of Social Science Generally The Special Philosophical Needs of Criminology The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Philosophy Notes