RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET PRISON, IDEOLOGY, CLASS AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE, THE

This best-selling text contends that the criminal justice system is biased against the poor from start to finish. The authors argue that, even before the process of arrest, trial, and sentencing, the system is biased against the poor in what it chooses to treat as crime. The authors show that numerous acts of the well-off--such as their refusal to make workplaces safe, refusal to curtail deadly pollution, promotion of unnecessary surgery, and prescriptions for unnecessary drugs--cause as muchharm as the acts of the poor that are treated as crimes; but the dangerous acts of the well-off are almost never treated as crimes, and when they are, they are almost never treated as severely as the crimes of the poor.