|
Do you need college term papers, essays, book reports, research papers, dissertations, thesis papers, or research proposals? If so, you don't have to look any further! We have thousands of searchable college papers from which you may choose. You can read the summary, page-count, citation-count, bibliography source-count, and year of composition of each paper BEFORE purchasing. We also offer customized research assistance. |
 |
|
|
|
(Book Report) This sample research may not be used, copied, referenced, or printed Copyright 2003. www.term-papers-college.com. All Rights Reserved. Jeffrey Reiman, author 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 the 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 philosophy, criminology, and sociology. He offers his thesis in the Introduction when he states that the goal of the American criminal justice system is not to eliminate crime or even to achieve justice but to project to the people an image of the idea that the threat of crime is a threat from the poor. The system must therefore maintain a large population of poor criminals, and to this end, it must not eliminate the crime that poor people commit of even to reduce the number of those crimes to any great extent. When crime does decline, it is not because of our criminal justice polices but in spite of them. In testing this idea, he had his students construct a correctional system that would maintain a stable and visible group of criminals rather than eliminating or reducing crime, and they suggested the following:
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 rug 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 of all sorts takes place because of forces beyond the control of the criminal justice systems. Reiman also says we could reduce crime if we wanted to do so and that four excuses given are not really answers to the problem at all but merely excuses to explain why the system fails. We know the causes of crimeÑpoverty, prisons, and drugsÑyet we do nothing to change how these things operate, such as banning guns and decriminalizing drugs. In the chapter "A Crime by Any Other Name. . . ," Reiman considers how language is used to identify some actions as crimes and others as not, and he argues that such things as work-place related deaths that could be prevented should be considered crimes as well. As far as the criminal justice system is concerned, the face of crime is young, male, poor, and black. Reiman believes that the criminal justice system helps create this reality, projecting a particular image of crime and hiding the larger reality of social injustice and even white-collar crime. They identify crime as a direct personal assault and s can ignore many other damages caused by carelessness and greed of a different order. Reiman details threats from the workplace, the health care system, the use of chemicals by various companies, and poverty itself, none of which are considered criminal actions. Reiman says the criminal justice system distorts the image of what threatens us. In the chapter ". . . And the Poor Get Prison," Reiman points out what many have notedÑthat the offender in prison is most likely someone from the lowest social and economic groups in the nation. The poor are more likely to be arrested for the same criminal behavior for which wealthier people are only warned. Reiman uses evidence of the differential treatment of blacks as evidence of the differential treatment of members of the lower classes for several reasons: 1) blacks are disproportionately poor; 2) the factors that are most likely to keep an offender out of prison do not apply to poor blacks; 3) blacks and whites in prison come from the same general socio-economic status; 4) race adds to the effects of economic condition; and 5) the economic powers in America could end or reduce racist bias in the criminal justice system if they wanted to do so. Reiman believes they see it as to their economic advantage not to do so. He does not say there are no poor criminals, because there are, only that they are treated differently at all levels of the system than wealthier offenders. Reiman finds that police, prosecutors, and judges all make certain that the more are more likely to go to prison than the well-to-do. This should not be the case given that white-collar crime is costly, widespread, yet rarely punished. Even when arrested and convicted, white -collar criminals do not do the same amount of time as the poor and do not go to the same sorts of prisons. In his chapter "To the Vanquished Belong the Spoils," Reiman considers why the criminal justice system is failing and finds that it is not an accident and is rather an intentional action by the rich and powerful to keep the system operating as it is. He does not say this is a conspiracy and offers reasons why a conspiracy theory does not explain what has happened. One reason the system remains as it is is that the poor are most likely to be the victims as well, and they lack the money or power to change the system in any way. On the other hand, those who are in a position to change the system are not so seriously harmed by it that they will make that change. The criminal justice system is extremely visible in American society and popular culture, and there is an ideology of criminal justice that is implicit and that concentrates on individual wrongdoers and so directs our attention away from social institutions and their actions. This distorts the nature and reality of the problem facing us. Because there is an association between crime and poverty in the popular mind, there is also a bias against the poor. In the concluding chapter, Reiman considers what he calls the Crime of Justice, or the crime society is perpetrating against the poor and powerless by allowing the system to continue as it is structured and to, in effect, create crime rather than reducing it. The goals of protecting society and promoting justice are both ill-served under the current system. Taken as a whole, Reiman's book offers a good argument that the system does not serve the public as it is presently constituted and that one of the proofs of this is not merely in growing or diminishing crime rates but in incorporating a broader concept of social justice into the system itself. Certain specific actions might be taken, such as decriminalizing drugs or reducing the number of guns in circulation, but clearly each of these ideas has massive opposition waiting to stop any such effort. Reiman's concept of social justice is more in keeping with sociological theories that find systemic reasons for crime, which is quite different from the prevailing individual actor theories that are so embedded in the system. Reiman is less convincing in the way he describes the system as being intentionally shaped as it is, for he makes it sound as if it were a conspiracy and then argues that it is not without being that clear about how the system has developed and how it is maintained as much by inertia as by any intent on anyone's part to create the social injustice he sees in it. The book is provocative and has many good ideas in it as well as a thorough analysis of the criminal justice system and how it operates today, with interesting and valuable suggestions on how to change it. Reiman, Jeffrey. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, Sixth Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. |
|
