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

The basic premise of this text is that the criminal justice system is biased against the poor from start to finish - from the definintion of what a crime is through the processes of arrest, trial and sentencing. The author 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 the crime - poverty, poor education and discrimination. The study surveys economic and race bias at different stages in the criminal justice process and provides discussion of law, ideology, and economic bias for beginning criminal justice students. New material reflects current developments - the change in the drug problem from heroin to crack, the recent decline in crime rates, the post-Watergate attempts to treat white-colar crime more seriously and the latest constitutional change to the death penalty.