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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 6 page paper examines Jeffrey Reiman's book, "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison." Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVReimRv.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
They are charged more often than affluent whites, and imprisoned more often as well. Jeffrey Reiman examines this cultural phenomenon in his book, The rich get richer and the poor
get prison, which this paper discusses. Discussion Reimans book is relatively short but very dense, as he seeks to answer the questions that trouble a great many Americans about our
criminal justice system. Reiman begins his discussion with a look at efforts to control crime in America, and specifically the fact that the crime rate in general has fallen (Reiman,
2006). While proponents of such things as the "three-strikes" laws, "get tough on crime" measures and other such policies like to cite them as the reason for the decrease, Reiman
says thats not the case (Reiman, 2006). For example, he looks at the exploding prison population, which so many people-particularly politicians who dont want to appear "soft on crime"-like
to say is the reason crime is dropping, and argues that our huge imprisonment rate actually has had little effect on the crime rate itself (Reiman, 2006). First, because American
judges traditionally imprison violent offenders, "an increase in the rate of imprisonment necessarily means that we are imprisoning more criminals who are less dangerous than the criminals already in prison"
(Reiman, 2006, p. 16). This means that although the overall number of prisoners has increased, the percentage in jail for violent crimes has actually gone down (Reiman, 2006). In addition,
after what Reiman calls a "spate of bad publicity" about crimes committed by paroled prisoners, "parole officers began revoking paroles at a very high rate" (Reiman, 2006). This means that
many of the sentences were actually for parole violations, not new felony convictions, meaning that they had no real impact on the drop in crime. Then too, according to Alfred
...