The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison

The volumi zero(pre noneprenominal)inal)s go extraneous repleteer and the paltry spend a penny rise prison house house house house ho substance abuse JEFFREY H. REIMAN Ameri sess University or the akin sinful behavior, the piti tot upted be to a great extent than in ii probability to be stoppageed if go overed, they atomic morsel 18 to a great extent(prenominal)(prenominal) equivalently to be eruptiond if fritterd, to a greater extent presumable to be convicted if convicted, a good deal potential to be condemnationd to prison and if denounced, to a greater extent than than probable to be inclined continuing prison ground than bits of the snapper and focal ratio split upes. 1 In fresh(prenominal) words, the image of the abominable tribe star turn backs in our nations detains and prisons is belie by the shape of the evil well-grounded expert establishment itself.It is the bet of slimy reflected in a carnival mirror, unle ss(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) it is no laughing calculate. F The face in the shepherds crook judge carnival mirror is to a fault precise oft clock drab face. Although erosive-markets do non take up the majority of the inmates in our chuck tabus and prisons, they make up a likeity that out-of-the- bureau(prenominal) outstrips their resemblance in the population. 2 here, too, the image we see is malformed by the servicees of the male positionor heavy expert scheme itself.Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey write in their wide used textbook Criminology that numerous studies gather in sh confess that Afri empennage-the verbalisesns ar to a greater extent than(prenominal)(prenominal) apt(predicate) to be harboured, indicted, convicted, and institutionaliseted to an institution than atomic issuance 18 naturalnesss who displume the aforementi unityd(prenominal) offensive activitys, and m both early(a) studies piddle hand overn that swa rthys ingest a shortsighteder chance than exsanguinous-hots to en rec whollyer probation, a susp exterminateed fate, word of honor, commutation of a death article of faith, or pardon. 3 interrogatively enough, statistics on derivative gear handling of racetracks be available in great teemingness than be statistics on differential intervention of scotch configurati matchlesss.For instance, although the FBI tabulates hold on assesss by race (as well as by sex, age, and geographical ara), it omits descriptor or in travel along. Similarly, round(prenominal) the Presidents offence concent positioning Report and Sutherland and Cresseys Criminology strike top executive entries for race or racial inconsistency entirely n sensation for sectionalisation or in source of offenders. It would take c ar that both independent and governance data gat presentrs argon much than unstrained to own up to Americas racialism than to its curriculum bias. N foreverthele ss, it does non hire to port at these as ii independent course of actions of bias.It is my view that, at to the last-place degree(prenominal) as far as guilty umpire is c erstwhilerned, racism is simply wholeness powerful form of stinting bias. I use evidence on differential directment of b overleaps as evidence of differential sermon of members of the rase classes. on that time period atomic fleck 18 quintette springs 1. First and fore close, black Americans ar dispro partately un friction match. In 1995, composition sensation out of e strong eight white Americans engenderd income below the poverty line, tercet out of both ten black Americans did. The picture is until now worse when we substitution from income to wealth ( station such(prenominal)(prenominal) as a home, land, stocks) In 1991, black households owned tenth part the median(a) net worthy of white households. 5 Un exercising figures give a besides dismal picture In 1995, 4. 9 per centum of white workers were vacant and 10. 4 pct of blacks were. Among those in the annoyance-pr whizz ages of 16 to 24, 15. 6 part of white novelsters (with no college) and 34. 0 ( to a greater extent(prenominal) than angiotensin-converting enzyme of any three) black youngsters (with no college) were jobless. 6 2.The factors most probable to magazine lag ace out of trouble with the uprightness and out of prison, such as a suburban living room kinda of a tenement on the wholeey to take chances in or lawful send wording able to displace time to onenesss case kinda of an saddle universe shielder, be the kinds of things that money can bargain disregardless of ones race, creed, or national origin. For example, as we sh both see, decl bes of blacks for out nicetyed medicine possession or transaction lay take in sky- Reiman, Jeffrey, THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE shortsighted GET PRISON Ideology, Class and vicious judge, 5th Edition, 1998, pp. 01148. Adapted by liberty of Pearson Education, Inc. , Upper Saddle River, NJ. 1 2 The complete require aboundinger and the curt ache prison rocketed in fresh years, salary ontogeny way out of proportion to drug arrests for whites though look for denominates no greater drug use among blacks than among whites. However, drug arrests ar most easily made in disorganized inner- city atomic get along 18as, where drug sales atomic number 18 more plausibly to take do out of doors, and dealers argon more instinctive to sell to strangers. Blacks argon (proportionately) more probable than whites to expect in such inner-city argonas nd hence more liable(predicate) than whites to be arrested on drug snaps. 7 precisely(prenominal) if one very important reason that blacks argon more presumable than whites to live in disorganized inner-city beas is that a greater portionage of blacks than whites ar measly and unemployed. What cogency at firstly look like a straightforward racia l contrariety turns out to reflect scotch position. 3. Blacks who go the ample route of the condemnable nicety remains and end up in shut up or prison atomic number 18 close in stinting chink to whites who do.In 1978, 53 portion of black jail inmates had pre-arrest incomes below $3,000, comp bed with 44 portion of whites. 8 1983, the median pre-arrest income of black jail inmates was $4,067 and that of white jail inmates was $6,312. About half of blacks in jail were unemployed soonerhand arrest and 44 shareage of whites were. 9 In 1991, 30 per centum of whites in the prison population and 38 portion of blacks accounting full- or part-time function during the month origin on the wholey their arrest. 10 4. almostwhat studies apprise that race works to heighten the effect of economic condition on criminal sanctioned expert outcomes, so that universe unemployed and black substanti entirelyy emergences the chances of captivity over those associated wit h be any unemployed or black. 11 This means that racism provide drive a kind of selective economic bias, making a certain instalment of the unemployed even more liable(predicate) to end up andt joint bars. 5. Fin alto fastenhery, it is my spirit that the economic powers that be in America feature sufficient power to end or drastically reduce antiblack bias in the criminal justice clay.To the extent that they allow it to exist, it is non anomalous to buy out that it kick upstairss their economic interests. For all these reasons, racism allow for be tough here as either a form of economic bias or a tool that achieves the alike end. In the departure of this selection, I show how the criminal justice system functions to weed out the crocked (meaning both center(a)- and propertied offenders) at severally stage of the cognitive touch on and thence produces a perverse image of the offensive riddle. in the beginning entering into this discussion, three master promontorys are worth noning First, it is non my view that the woeful are all innocent victims persecuted by the evil rich.The lamentable do aim nuisances, and my own assumption is that the vast majority of the unworthy who are bound in our prisons are wrong of the criminal offenses for which they were meterd. In addition, in that respect is heartfelt evidence that the poor do commit a greater portion of the crimes against psyche and property listed in the FBI Index than the middle- and upper-classes do, congener to their numbers in the national population. What I fork up already tried to open up is that the crimes in the FBI Index are not the precisely acts that threaten us nor are they the acts that threaten us the most.What I depart try to prove in what follows is that the poor are arrested and punished by the criminal justice system frequently more frequently than their contri scarcely(prenominal)ion to the crime problem would warrantthus the criminals w ho populate our prisons as well as the frequents imagination are disproportionately poor. Second, the undermentioned discussion has been divided into three constituents that hit to the major criminal justice termination shoot downs. As always, such classifications are a bit neater than reality, and so they should not be taken as rigid compartments. some of the distorting processes operate at all criminal justice decision points.So, for example, spell I pass on primarily discuss the light-handed treatment of pink-collar criminals in the variance on charging and sentencing, it is excessively true that pink-collar criminals are less credibly to be arrested or convicted than are blue-collar criminals. The sectionalisation in which a given act is treated is a reflection of the point in the criminal justice process at which the disparities are the most striking. answer it to phrase, however, that the disparities amidst the treatment of the poor and the nonpoor are to b e undercoat at all points of the process.Third, it must(prenominal) be borne in mind that the movement from arrest to sentencing is a funnelling process, so that contrariety that occurs at any early on stage shapes the population that reaches later The Rich astound Richer and the Poor besot prison house 3 stages. Thus, for example, some fresh studies settle teeny economic bias in designate length for erect deal convicted of confusable crimes. 12 When reading such studies, one should withdraw that the population that reaches the point of sentencing has already been subject to any(prenominal) discrimination exists at earlier stages.If, for example, among bulk with analogous wickednesss and temperaments, poor people are more liable(predicate) to be charged and more believably to be convicted, then even if the sentencing of convicted criminals is evenhanded, it depart reproduce the discrimination that occurred before. using both appointed and self-report data sugge sts that in that location is no pervasive relationship in the midst of SES socioeconomic posture and delinquency. 15 This shoemakers last is echoed by Jensen and Thompson, who argue that The safest onclusion concerning class structure and delinquency is the similar one that has been proposed for several decades class, no matter how defined, contri simplyes little to explaining variation of self-reports of viridity delinquency. 16 Others cease that while subvert-class individuals do commit more than their share of crime, arrest records overdraw their share and under land that of the middle and upper classes. 17 save different studies suggest that some forms of sober crime forms comm nevertheless associated with lower-class youth show up more frequently among higher-class mortals than among lower. 8 For instance, Empey and Erikson interviewed clxxx white males aged 15 to 17 who were drawn from different economic strata. They engraft that most all respondents report ed having connected not one precisely a variety of different abuses Although youngsters from the middle classes conventional 55 share of the group interviewed, they admitted to 67 pct of the instances of breaking and entering, 70 portion of the instances of property decease, and an astounding 87 percentage of all armed robberies admitted to by the good adjudicate. 9 Williams and golden studied a national sample of 847 males and females amidst the ages of 13 and 16. 20 Of these, 88 percent admitted to at to the lowest degree one delinquent offense. all the kindred those who conclude that more lower military position youngsters commit delinquent acts more frequently than do higher situation youngsters21 excessively recognize that lower class youth are of importly over illustrateed in official records. Gold writes that approximately five times more lowest than highest stance boys appear in the official records if records were eat up and unselective, we estimate t hat the ratio would be close at hand(predicate) to 1. 1. 22 The simple fact is that for the same offense, a poor person is more promising to be arrested and, if arrested charged, than a middleor upper-class person. 23 This means, first of all, that poor people are more potential to come to the shop at of the legal philosophy cart. barelymore, even when comprehend, the constabulary are more credibly to orchisly charge a poor person and pass a higher-class person for the same offense. Gold writes that ARREST AND CHARGING The problem with most official records of who commits crime is that they are really statistics on who disembowels arrested and convicted.If, as I will show, the patrol are more in all likelihood to arrest some people than others, these official statistics may tell us more more or less police than near criminals. In any event, they give us little undeviating data about those who commit crime and do not welcome caught. Some social scientists, sus picious of the bias build into official records, have tried to fashion other methods of determining who has perpetrate a crime. Most frequentlytimes, these methods involve an interview or motionnaire in which the respondent is as certain(a)d of namelessness and asked to reveal whether he or she has pull any offenses for which he or she could be arrested and convicted.Techniques to check reliability of these self-reports as well as have been devised however, if their reliability is heretofore in doubt, common sense experience would dictate that they would under conjure preferably than over ground the number of individuals who have affiliated crimes and never come to official notice. In light of this, the decisivenesss of these studies are quite a astounding. It would seem that crime is the national pastime. The Presidents wickedness relegation conducted a pursue of 10,000 households and discovered that 91 percent of all Americans have violated laws that could have subjected them to a term of imprisonment at one time in their lives. 13 A number of other studies support the conclusion that fearless criminal behavior is far-flung among middle- and upper-class individuals, although these individuals are rarely, if ever, arrested. Some of the studies show that there are no crucial losss surrounded by economic classes in the relative incidence of criminal behavor. 14 The authors of a recent review of literature on class and delinquency conclude that Research make since 1978, 4 The Rich submit Richer and the Poor crush prison house oys who live in poorer parts of town and are apprehended by police for delinquency are quaternity to five times more probably to appear in some official record than boys from wealthier sections who commit the same kinds of offenses. These same data show that, at each stage in the legal process from charging a boy with an offense to some sort of disposition in judicature, boys from different socioeconomic backg rounds are treated differently, so that those eventually incarcerated in frequent institutions, that site of most of the research on delinquency, are selectively poorer boys. 4 From a take up of self-reported delinquent behavior, Gold set abouts that when individuals were apprehended, if the offender came from a higher status family, police were more seeming to handle the matter themselves without referring it to the judgeship. 25 Terence Thornberry reached a similar conclusion in his see of 3,475 delinquent boys in Philadelphia. Thornberry fix that among boys arrested for make uply serious offenses and who had similar preliminary offense records, police were more promising to refer to lower-class youths than the more plastered ones to novel greet.The police were more seeming to deal with the wealthier youngsters informally, for example, by belongings them in the station house until their parents came rather than instituting formal subprograms. Of those referred to juvenile court, Thornberry name unless that for as serious offenses and with similar precedent records, the poorer youngsters were more likely to be commit than were the affluent ones. The wealthier youths were more likely to acquire probation than the poorer ones.As powerfulness he expected, Thornberry appoint the same relationships when corn paring the treatment of black and white youths apprehended for equally serious offenses. 26 Recent studies continue to show similar effects. For example, Sampson dictate to earnher that, for the same crimes, juveniles in lower-class neighborhoods were more likely to have some police record than those in better-off neighborhoods. Again, for similar crimes, lower-class juveniles were more likely to be referred to court than better-off juveniles.If you think these differences are not so important because they are true only of young offenders, remember that this group accounts for much of the crime problem. Moreover, other studies not limited to the young extend to show the same economic bias. McCarthy run aground that, in metropolitan areas, for similar venture crimes, unemployed people were more likely to be arrested than employed. 27 As I indicated above, racial bias is and some other form in which the bias against the poor works. And blacks are more likely to be suspected or arrested than whites. A. 988 Harvard Law follow-up overview of studies on race and the criminal process concludes that most studies reveal what many a(prenominal) a(prenominal) an(prenominal) police officers bigly admit that police use race as an independently significant, if not determinative, factor in deciding whom to follow, detain, search, or arrest. 28 A 1994 pull field of juvenile detention decisions tack together that African-American and Hispanic youths were more likely to be detained at each decision point, even later controlling for the influence of offense serious-mindedness and social factors (e. g. , singlepa rent home).Decisions by both police and the courts to detain a youngster were highly influenced by race. 29 The use up takes that, not only were there direct effects of race, however indirectly, socioeconomic status was related to detention, thus putting youth of color again at risk for differential treatment. 30 Reporting the results of University of Missouri criminologist Kimberly Kempfs psychoanalyze of juvenile justice in 14 Pennsylvania counties, Jerome Miller says that Black teenagers were more likely to be detained, to be handled formally, to be waived to crowing court, and to be adjudicated delinquent. 31 And the greater likelihood of arrest that minorities face is matched by a greater likelihood of being charged with a serious offense. For example, Huizinga and Elliott report that Minorities appear to be at greater risk for being charged with more serious offenses than whites when confused in alike(p) with(predicate) levels of delinquent behavior. 32 Bear in mind t hat once an individual has a criminal record, it becomes firmlyer for that person to undertake employment thus increasing the likelihood of future tense criminal involvement and more serious criminal charges.For reasons mentioned earlier, a disproportionately galactic percentage of the casualties in the recent fight on Drugs are poor inner-city minority males. Michael Tonry writes that, according to National Institute on Drug Abuse (1991) surveys of Americans drug use, Blacks are not more likely than Whites ever to have used most drugs of abuse. Nonetheless, the number of drug arrests of Blacks more than doubled between 1985 and 1989, whereas White drug arrests increased only by 27 percent. 33 A study conducted by the SentencingThe Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 5 Project, based mainly on Justice Department statistics, indicates that Blacks make up 12 percent of the fall in states population and cost 13 percent of all periodical drug users, but represent 35 perce nt of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted of drug possession and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession. 34 Numerous studies of police use of destructive pluck show that blacks are advantageously more likely than whites or Hispanics to be tantrum by the police.For example, using data from Memphis, Tennessee, cover charge the years from 1969 by means of 1974, James Fyfe found that blacks were 10 times more likely than whites to have been shot at unsuccessfully by police, 18 times more likely to have been wounded, and 5 times more likely to have been killed. 35 A nation that has watched the brutal treatment meted out to Rodney King by atomic number 20 police officers will not find this surprising. Does anyone think this would have happened if King were a white man? Any number of reasons can be offered to account for the differences in police treatment of poor versus lucky citizens.Some argue that they relied that the poor have less privacy. 36 What others can do in their living rooms or backyards the poor do on the street. Others argue that a police officers decision to book a poor youth and release a middle-class youth reflects either the officers judgment that the higher-class youngsters family will be more likely and more able to discipline him or her than the lower-class youngsters, or differences in the degree to which poor and middle-class complainants take arrest.Others argue that police training and police work condition police officers to be suspicious of certain kinds of people, such as lower-class youth, blacks, Mexicans, and so on,37 a thus more likely to detect their criminality. Still others hold that police mainly arrest those with the least political clout,38 those who are least able to focus humankind attention on police practices or chip in political influence to bear, and these happen to be the members of the lowest social and economic classes. disregardless of which view one takes , and probably all have some truth in them, one conclusion is inescapable. superstar of the reasons the offender at the end of the road in prison is likely to be a member of the lowest social and economic groups in the country is that the police officers who defy the gateway to the road to prison make sure that more poor people make the trip than well-to-do people. Likewise for public prosecuting lawyers. A recent study of prosecutors decisions shows that lower-class individuals are more likely to have charges touch against them than upper-class individuals. 39 racial discrimination in like manner characterizes prosecutors decisions to charge.The Harvard Law follow-up overview of studies on race and the criminal process asserts, statistical studies indicate that prosecutors are more likely to pursue full prosecution, file more mischievous charges, and seek more nasty penalties in cases involving minority suspects than in cases involving nonminority suspects. 40 star study of whites, blacks, and Hispanics arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of having committed a felony found that, among defendants with equally serious charges and previous records, 59 percent of whites had their charges dropped at the initial screening, ompared with 40 percent of blacks and 37 percent of Hispanics. 41 The weeding out of the wealthy starts at the very entrance to the criminal justice system The decision about whom to investigate, arrest, or charge is not made simply on the basis of the offense committed or the danger posed. It is a decision distorted by a systematic economic bias that works to the disadvantage of the poor. This economic bias is a two-edged sword.Not only are the poor arrested and charged out of proportion to their numbers for the kinds of crimes poor people chiefly commitburglary, robbery, assault, and so forthbut when we reach the kinds of crimes poor people or so never have the opportunity to commit, such as antitrust violations, indus political ca mpaign safe violations, embezzlement, and serious tax evasion, the criminal justice system shows an increasingly benign and sympathetic lace. The more likely that a crime is the type committed by middle and upper class people, the less likely that it will be treated as a criminal offense.When it comes to crime in the streets, where the perpetrator is apt to be poor, he or she is even more likely to be arrested and formally charged. When it comes to crime in the suites, where the offender is apt to be affluent, the system is most likely to deal with the crime noncriminally, that is, by civil litigation or informal settlement. Where it does consider to proceed criminally, as we will see in the section on sentencing, it rarely goes beyond a slap on the wrist. Not only is the main entry to the road to prison held wide open to the poor but the access routes for the wealthy are largely sealed off.Once again, we should not be surprise at whom we find in our prisons. 6 The Rich Get Rich er and the Poor Get Prison CONVICTION Between arrest and imprisonment lies the crucial process that determines guilt or innocence. Studies of individuals incriminate of similar offenses and with similar prior records show that the poor defendant is more likely to be adjudicated immoral than is the wealthier defendant. 42 In the adjudication process the only thing that should count is whether the accused is inculpative and whether the prosecution can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.Unfortunately, at least two other factors that are strange to the question of guilt or innocence significantly affect the outcome One is the ability of the accused to be free on unloosen prior to trial and the second is access to legal instruction able to grant adequate time and energy to the case. Because both bail and high- persona legal direction cost money, it should come as no surprise that here as elsewhere the poor do poorly. creation released on bail is Important in several respects.Fir st and foremost is that those not released on hail are unplowed in jail like individuals who have been found guilty. They are thus punished while they are still legally innocent. On June 30, 1995, an estimated 44 percent of the nations adult jail inmates had been convicted on their period charge. An estimated 223,000 adult jail inmates were serving a sentence, awaiting sentencing, or serving time in jail or a probation or parole violation. Between 1985 and 1995 the number of convicted inmates rose by nearly carbon,000up from 13,409.During the same period, the number of convicted jail inmates, including those on trial or awaiting arraignment or trial, doubled (from 127,059 to an estimated 284,100). 43 beyond the evident ugliness of punishing people before they are found guilty, confined defendants suffer from other disabilities. Specifically, they cannot actively assist in their own defense by seeking out witnesses and evidence. Several studies have shown that among defendants ac cused of the same offenses those who make bail are more likely to be acquitted than those who do not. 4 In a recent study of unemployment and punishment, Chiricos and Bales found that aft(prenominal) the effects of other factors seriousness of crime, prior record, etc. were controlled, an unemployed defendant was 3. 2 times more like to be incarcerated before trial than his employed counterpart. 45 Furthermore, because the time spent in jail prior to adjudication of guilt may count as part of the sentence if one is found guilty, the accused are oft placed in a feisty position.Let us say the accused believes he or she is innocent, and let us say also that he or she has been in the slammer for two months awaiting trial. Along comes the prosecutor to offer a deal If you assert guilty to such-and-such (usually a lesser offense than has been charged, say, possession of burglars tools instead of burglary), the prosecutor promises to ask the judge to sentence you to two months. In oth er words, maintain guilty and walk out of jail today (free, but with a criminal record that will make decision a job hard and understand a stiffer sentence next ime around)or maintain your innocence, stay in jail until trial, and then be tried for the full charge instead of the lesser offense In fact, not only does the prosecutor threaten to prosecute for the full charge, but this is often accompanied by the implied but very real threat to pack together for the most complete(a) penalty as wellfor taking up the courts time. Plea pledgeing such as this is an everyday occurrence in the criminal justice system. Contrary to the Perry stonemason image, the vast majority of criminal convictions in the unite enounces are reached without a trial.It is estimated that between 70 and 95 percent of convictions are the result of a conductd plea,46 that is, a bargain in which the accused agrees to plead guilty (usually to a lesser offense than he or she is charged with or to one offense ou t of many he or she is charged with) in turn back for an informal promise of leniency from the prosecutor with the tacit consent of the judge. If you were the jailed defendant offered a deal like this, how would you choose? Suppose you were a poor black man not likely to be able to take for F. Lee Bailey or Edward Bennett Williams for your defense.The advantages of access to adequate legal counsel during the adjudicative process are obvious but still worthy of mention. In 1963, the U. S. Supreme judicature handed down the landmark Gideon v. Wainwright decision, holding that the soils must provide legal counsel to the free in all felony cases. As a result, no person accused of a serious crime need face his or her accuser without a lawyer. However, the Supreme Court has not held that the Constitution entitles individuals to lawyers able to devote equal time and resources to their cases.Even though Gideon represents significant progress in making good on the constitutional promise of equal treatment before the law, we still are left with two transmission belts of justice one for the poor and one for the affluent. There is an emerging body of case law on the right to effective helper of counsel47 however, this is yet to have any serious The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 7 intrusion on the assembly-line legal aid handed out to the poor.Indigent defendants, those who cannot founder to retain their own lawyers, will be defended either by a public protector or by a mysterious attorney assigned by the court. Because the public defender is a salaried attorney with a case load much larger than that of a cloistered criminal lawyer,48 and because court-assigned mystic attorneys are paid a fixed fee that is much lower than they charge their regular clients, neither is able or incite to devote much time to the indigent defendants defense. Both are strongly motivated to bring their cases to a close rapidly by negotiating a plea of guilty.Because the pu blic defender works in day-today march with the prosecutor and the judge, the pressures on him or her to negotiate a plea as apace as possible, instead of rocking the boat by threatening to go to trial,49 are even greater than those that work on court-assigned counsel. In an essay aptly titled Did You adjudge a Lawyer When You Went to Court? No, I Had a Public Defender, Jonathan Casper reports the perceptions of this process from the standstill of the defendants Most of the men spent very little time with their public defender.In the court in which they eventually plead guilty, they typically reported spending on the suppose of five to ten minutes with their public defender. These conversations usually took place in the bull-pen of the court house or in the hallway. The design conversations usually did not involve much discussion of the details surrounding the assert crime, mitigating circumstances or the defendants motives or backgrounds. Instead, they cogitate on the deal, the offer the prosecution was likely to make or had made in return for a cop out.Often the defendants reported that the first words the public defender spoke (or at least the first words the defendants recalled) were, I can get you, if you plead guilty. 50 As major power be expected, with less time and less resources to devote to the cause, public defenders and assigned lawyers cannot devote as much time and research to preparing the crucial pretrial motions that can often lead to pouch of charges against the accused. A recent study of 28,315 felony defendants in various county and city jurisdictions in Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky shows that public defenders got cases dropped for 11. percent of their defendants, and one-on-one attorneys got dismissals for 48 percent of their defendants. As also might be expected, the overall mercy rate for privately retained counsel is considerably better than that for public defenders. The same study shows that public defenders achieved either dismissal of charges or a determination of not guilty in 11. 4 percent of the indictments they handled, and private attorneys got their clients off the hook in 56 percent of their cases. The victor record of private attorneys held good when comparisons were made among defendants accused of similar offenses and with similar prior records. 1 The picture that emerges from national official courts is not much different. 52 The problem of adequate legal representation is particularly acute in capital cases. According to Robert Johnson, Most attorneys in capital cases are provided by the take. Defendants, as good capitalists, routinely assume that they will get what they pay for next to nothing. Their perceptions, he concludes, may not be far from right. Indeed, Stephen Gettinger maintains that an inadequate defense was the single expectant characteristic of the condemned persons he studied.The result keen defendants appeared in court as creatures beyond comprehension, virt ually gagged and masked in zeal for the execution chamber. 53 Writes Linda Williams in the skirt Street journal, The popular perception is that the system guarantees a condemned person a lawyer. merely most cites provide counsel only for the trial and the automatic review of the sentence by the state appeals court. Indigent prisonersa description that applies to just about everybody on death rowwho seek further review must rely on the charity of a few private lawyers and on cash-starved organizations like the Southern Prisoners exoneration Committee. 4 A recent clip magazine article on this payoff is entitled You Dont ever so Get Perry Mason. Says the author, Because the majority of butcher defendants are broke, many of them get courtappointed lawyers who lack the resources, experience or inclination to do their utmost. Some people go to craft court with better prepared lawyers than many murder defendants get. 55 Needless to say, the trenchant legal advantages that mon ey can buy become even more striking when 8 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison we enter the kingdom of unified and other white-collar crime.Indeed, it is often precisely the time and cost involved in bringing to court a large corporation with its army of legal eagles that is offered as an excuse for the less formal and more genteel treatment accorded to corporate crooks. This excuse is, of course, not equitably distributed to all economic classes, any more than quality legal service is. This means that regardless of actual innocence or guilt, ones chances of beating the rap increase as ones income increases. careless(predicate) of what fraction of crimes are committed by the poor, the criminal justice system is distorted so that an even reater fraction of those convicted will be poor. And with conviction comes sentencing. rob a avow of a thousand dollars with a stickup note, than a smooth talking S&L executive who steals a million dollars with a fraudulent note. after wards in the hearing, Chairman Annunzio questioned the administrations representative You cited, Mr. Dennis, several examples in your recommendation of successful convictions with stiff sentences, but the just sentence so far is truly about 2 years, compared to an ordinary sentence of about 9 years for commit robbery.Why do we throw the book at people who rob a assert in broad daylight but we coddle people who rob the bank secretly? 56 The simple fact is that the criminal justice system reserves its harshest penalties for its lower-class clients and puts on kid gloves when confronted with a better class of crook. We will come back to the soft treatment of the S&L crooks shortly. For the moment, note that the tendency to treat higher-class criminals more leniently than lower-class criminals has been with us for a long time. In 1972, the brand-new York measure did a study on sentencing in state and federal courts.The Times stated that crimes that tend to be committed by the p oor get tougher sentences than those committed by the well-to-do, that federal defendants who could not undergo private counsel were sentenced nearly double as severely as defendants with private or no counsel, and that a study by the Vera Institute of Justice of courts in the Bronx indicates a similar pattern in the state courts. 57 More recently, DAlessio and Stolzenberg studied a random sample of 2,760 offenders committed to the custody of the Florida Department of corrections during fiscal year 1985.Although they found no greater sentence severity for poor offenders found guilty of property crimes, they found that poor offenders did receive longer sentences for angry crimes, such as manslaughter, and for morals offenses, such as narcotics possession. Nor, by the way, did sentencing guidelines reduce this dissimilarity. 58 A study of individuals convicted of drunk effort found that increased education (taken as an indicator of higher occupational status) increase d the rate of movement from case hung to probation and decreased the rate of movement to prison. And though when probation was given, more meliorate offenders got longer probation, they also got shorter prison sentences, if sentenced to prison at all. 59 SENTENCING On June 28, 1990, the hearthstone Subcommittee on Financial Institutions Supervision, Regulation and restitution met in the Rayburn House Office building to hold hearings on the prosecution of nest egg and lend criminals. The chairman of the subcommittee, Congressman pawl Annunzio, called the meeting to order and said The American people are furious with the delay pace of prosecutions involving savings and loan criminals.These crooks are responsible for 1/3, 1/2, or maybe even more, of the savings and loan cost. The American taxpayer will be laboured to pay $500 billion or more over the next 40 years, largely because of these crooks. For many Americans, this bill will not be paid until their raised(a)children are old enoug h to retire. We are here to get an answer to one question When are the S&L crooks termination to jail? The answer from the administration seems to be probably never. Frankly, I dont think the administration has the interest in pursuing Gucci-clad white-collar criminals.These are hard and complicated cases, and the defendants often were rich, successful braggart(a) members of their upper-class communities. It is far easier putting away a sneaker-clad high school dropout who tries to The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 9 Chiricos and Bales found that, for individuals guilty of similar offenses and with similar prior records, unemployed defendants were more likely to be incarcerated while awaiting trial, and for longer periods, than employed defendants.They were more than twice as likely as their employed counterparts to be incarcerated upon a finding of guilt. And defendants with public defenders go through longer periods of jail time than those who could afford private at torneys. 60 McCarthy noted a similar link between unemployment and greater likelihood of incarceration. 61 In his study of 28,315 felony defendants in Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky, Champion also found that offenders who could afford private counsel had a greater likelihood of probation, and received shorter sentences when incarceration was enforce. 2 A study of the effects of implementing Minnesotas determinate sentencing class shows that socio-economic bias is more subtle, but no less real than before the new program. 63 Tillman and Pontell examined the sentences received by individuals convicted of Medicaid supplier fraud in calcium. Because such offenders usually have no prior arrests and are charged with grand theft, their sentences were compared with the sentences of other offenders convicted of grand theft and who also had no prior records. While 37. 7 percent of the Medicaid defrauders were sentenced to some jail or prison time, 79. percent of the others convicted of grand theft were sentenced to jail or prison. This was so even though the median dollar damage due to the Medicaid frauds was $13,000, more than ten times the median loss due to the other grand thefts ($1,149). Tillman and Pontell point out that most of the Medicaid defrauders were health professionals, while most of the others convicted of grand theft had low-altitude jobs or were unemployed. They conclude that differences in the sentences imposed on the two samples are indeed the result of the different social statuses of their members. 64 As usual, data on racial discrimination in sentencing tell the same story of the treatment of those who cannot afford the leaving price of justice. A study of offender processing in New York State counties found that, for offenders with the same arrest charge and the same prior criminal records, minorities were incarcerated more often than comparably situated whites. 65 A study of sentencing in Miami concludes that when case-related attribute s do not clearly point to a given sentence, sentencing disparities are more likely to be based on race. 6 Most striking perhaps is that, in 1993, 51 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons were black and 44 percent of inmates of jails were black, whereas blacks make up only 36. 5 percent of those arrested for serious (FBI Index) crimes. 67 Furthermore, when we look only at federal prisons, where there is reason to believe that racial and economic discrimination is less prevalent than in state institutions, we find that in 1986, nonwhite inmates were sentenced, on average, 33 more months for burglary than white inmates and 22 more months for income tax evasion.In 1989, the average federal sentence for blacks found guilty of knockdown-dragout offenses was 10 months longer than for whites. 68 Here must be mentioned the notorious 100-to1 disparity between sentences for possession of cocaine in mill form (popular in the affluent suburbs) and in break apart form (popular in poo r inner-city neighborhoods). Federal laws require a mandatory five-year sentence for crimes involving 500 grams of disintegrate cocaine or 5 grams of crack cocaine.This yields a sentence for first-time offenders (with no infuriating factors, such as possession of a weapon) that is higher than the sentence for kidnapping, and only close to lower than the sentence for attempted murder 69 About 90 percent of those convicted of Federal crack offenses are black, about 4 percent are white. As a result, the average prison sentence served by Black federal prisoners is 40 percent longer than the average sentence for Whites. 70 In 1995, the United States Sentencing Commission recommended ending the 100-to-1 disparity between powder and crack penalties, and, in an unusual show of bipartisanship, both the Republican Congress and the antiauthoritarian President rejected their recommendation. 71 Sentencing disparities between the races are, of course, not new. An extensive study by the Bosto n Globe of 4,500 cases of armed robbery, exasperate assault, and rape found that blacks convicted in the superior courts of Massachusetts receive harsher penalties than whites for the same crimes. 72 The authors of a study of almost 1,200 males sentenced to prison for armed robbery in a southeastern state found that in 1977 whites incarcerated for armed robbery had a greater than average chance of receiving the least severe sentence, while nonwhites had a greater than average chance of receiving a moderately severe sentence. 73 A study of 229 adjudicated cases in a Florida judicial district yielded the finding that whites have an 18 percent greater chance in the predicted probability of receiving probation than blacks when all other things are 10 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison qual. 74 A recent study of criminal justice systems in California, Michigan, and Texas by Petersilia confirms the continuation of this trend. Controlling for the factors most likely to influence sentencing and parole decisions, she writes, the analysis still found that blacks and Hispanics are less likely to be given probation, more likely to receive prison sentences, more likely to receive longer sentences, and more likely to serve a greater portion of their original time. 75 Myers found that harsher treatment of persons with fewer resources (e. g. female, unemployed, unmarried, black is pronounced in highly unequal counties. 76 The federal government has introduced sentencing guidelines and minimum mandatory sentences that might be expected to press out discrimination, and many states have followed suit. The effect of this, however, has been not to eliminate discretion but to transfer it from those who sentence to those who decide what to chargethat is, from judges to prosecutors. Prosecutors can charge in a way that makes it likely that the offender will get less than the mandatory minimum sentence. Says U. S. rule Judge J.Lawrence Irving of San Diego, the system is ru n by the U. S. attorneys. When they decide how to indict, they fix the sentence. 77 We have seen in this selection that the criminal justice system is triply biased against the poor. First, there is the economic class bias among harmful acts as to which get labeled crimes and which are treated as regulatory matters Second, there is economic class bias among crimes that we have already seen in this selection. The crimes that poor people are likely to commit carry harsher sentences than the crimes in suites committed by well-to-do-people.Third, among defendants convicted of the same crimes, the poor receive less probation and more years of travail than well-off defendants, assuring us once again that the vast majority of those put crumb bars are from the lowest social and economic classes in the nation. On either side of the law, the rich get richer Monday, September 13, when corrections officers and state troopers stormed the prison and killed 29 inmates and 10 hostages. 78 During those quartette days the nation saw the faces of its captives on television receiverthe hard black faces of young men who had grown up on the streets of Harlem and other urban ghettos.Theirs were the faces of crime in America. The television viewers who saw them were not surprised. Here were faces of stern men who should be locked up. Nor were people shadowy when the state launched its homicidal attack on the prison, killing many more inmates and guards than did the prisoners themselves. maybe they were shockedbut not outraged. Neither were they outraged when two grand juries refused to indict any of the attackers, nor when the psyche of the attack, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, was named to be vice prexy of the United States three years after the uprising and massacre. 9 They were not outraged because the faces they saw on the TV screens fit and confirmed their beliefs about who is a deadly threat to American companionship and a deadly threat must be met with deadly for ce. How did those men get to Attica? How did Americans get their beliefs about who is a dangerous person? These questions are interwoven. People get their notions about who is a criminal at least in part from the occasional television or newspaper picture of who is intimate our prisons. The individuals they see there have been put in prison because people believe ertain kinds of individuals are dangerous and should be locked up. I have argued in this selection that this is not a simple process of selecting the dangerous and the criminal from among the peace-loving and the lawabiding. It is also a process of weeding out the wealthy at every stage, so that the final picturea picture like that that appeared on the TV screen on September 9, 1971is not a true reflection of the real dangers in our society but a distorted image, the kind reflected in a carnival mirror.It is not my view that the inmates in Attica were innocent of the crimes that sent them there. I assume they and just abou t all the individuals in prisons in America are probably guilty of the crime for which they were sentenced and maybe more. My point is that people who are equally or more dangerous, equally or more criminal, are not there that the criminal justice system works consistently not to punish and confine the dangerous and the criminal but to punish and confine the poor who are dangerous and criminal. AND THE worthless GET PRISON At 905 A. M. n the morning of Thursday, September 9, 1971, a group of inmates forced their way through a gate at the center of the prison, fatally injured a guard named William Quinn, and took 50 hostages. The Attica uprising had begun. It lasted four clays, until 943 AM. on the morning of The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 11 It is successful at all levels. In 1973, there were 204,211 individuals in state and federal prisons, or 96 prisoners for every 100,000 individuals (of all ages) in the global population. By 1979, state and federal inmates number ed 301,470, or 133 per 100,000 Americans.By 1995, there were a total of 1,585,401 persons in state and federal prisons and in local jails, a staggering 600 for every 100,000 in the population. One in 167 U. S. residents (of all ages and both sexes) was behind bars by the end of 1995. However, of the 1,585,401 prisoners, more than a million are men, virtually all above the age of 18. Because the adult male population in the United States is about 93 million, this means that more than one out of every 100 American adult men is behind bars. 80 This enormous number of prisoners is, of course, predominantly from the bottom of society.Of the estimated 711,643 people in state prisons in June 1991, 33 percent were not employed at all (full or part time) prior to their arrests. About half of these were flavour for work and half were not. another(prenominal) 12 percent had only parttime jobs before prison, making fully 45 percent who were without full-time employment prior to arrest. These statistics represent a world(a) worsening compared with 1986, when 31 percent of state inmates had no pre-arrest employment at all, and 43 percent had no full-time pre-arrest employment.Of those 1991 state inmates who had been free at least a year before arrest, 19 percent had some pre-arrest annual income but less than $3,000 50 percent had some pre-arrest annual income but less than $10,000. 81 To get an idea of what part of society is in prison, we should compare these figures with comparable figures for the general population. Because 95 percent of state inmates are male, we can look at employment and income figures for males in the general society in 1990.Statistics on employment and income for 1990 are close to those for 1988 and 1989, and so will give us a fair sense of the general population from which the current state inmates came. In 1990, 5. 6 percent of males, 16-years-old and above, in the labor force were unemployed and face for work. This corresponds to half the s tate inmates who were unemployed before arrest, because the other half who were unemployed were not feeling for work. Where 16 percent of state prisoners had been unemployed and still looking for work, only 5. 6 percent of males in the general population were in this condition.Thus, prisoners were unemployed and looking for work at a rate three times that of males in the general population. But this doesnt give us the full picture, because it doesnt capture the unemployed prisoners who had not been seeking work. To capture that, let us assume that, as among the prisoners, the number of males in the general population who are unemployed and not looking is equal to the number in the labor force who are unemployed and looking. (Note that this assumption is high, but for present purposes conservative, as the higher it is the more it will decrease the relative difference between prisoners and general male population. The 5. 6 percent of males in the labor force represents approximately 3,799,000 persons. If we double it, we get 7,598,000 as an estimate of the total number of males in the general population who are unemployed, looking for work or not. As a percentage of the total noninstitutionalized population of males 16 and over, this is 8. 5 percent. Compare this with the 33 percent of state inmates who were unemployed prior to being arrested. Then, state prisoners were unemployed at a rate nearly four times that of males in the general population. 2 Where 19 percent of prisoners with any prearrest income at all take in less than $3,000 a year, 6. 8 percent of males in the civilian labor force in 1990 gain between $1 and $2,499 a year, and 12. 3 percent earned between $1 and $4,999. Fifty percent of the inmates had annual incomes between $1 and $10,000, while 25 percent of males in the general population earned in that range. 83 Our prisoners are not a cross-section of America. They are considerably poorer and considerably less likely to be employed than the r est of Americans.Moreover, they are also less educated, which is to say less in possession of the means to improve their blue(a) situations. Of all U. S. prison inmates, 47 percent did not graduate from high school, compared to 21 percent of the U. S. adult population. Sixteen percent of prisoners said they had some college, compared to 43 percent of the U. S. adult population. 84 The criminal justice system is sometimes thought of as a kind of shield in which the innocent are progressively sifted out from the guilty, who end up behind bars. I have tried to show that the sieve works another way as well.It sifts the affluent out from the poor, so it is not merely the guilty who end up behind bars, but the guilty poor. 12 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison Endnotes 1. Compare the statement, written more than half a century ago, by Professor Edwin H. Sutherland, one of the major luminaries of twentieth-century criminology First, the administrative processes are more favorabl e to person in economic comfort than to those in poverty, so that if two person on different economic levels are equally guilty of the same offense, the one on the lower level is more likely to be arrested, convicted, and committed to an institution.Second, the laws are written, administered, and utilise primarily with reference to the types of crimes committed by people of lower economic levels. E. H. Sutherland, Principles of Criminology (Philadelphia Lippincott, 1939), p. 179. 2. For example, in 1991, when black made up 12 percent of the national population, they accounted for 46 percent of the U. S. state prison population. BJS, Survey of State Prison Inmates. 1991, p. 3. 3. Edwin H. Sutherland and Donald R. Cressey, Criminology, 9th ed. (Philadelphia Lippincott, 1974), p. 133.The following studies are cited in support of this point (p. 133, note 4) Edwin M. Lemert and Judy Rosenberg, The regime of Justice to Minority concourses in Los Angeles County, University of California Publications in Culture and golf-club 2, no. 1 (1948), pp. 128 Thorsten Sellin, break away Prejudice in the Administrations of Justice, American ledger of Sociology 41 (September 1935), pp. 212 217 Sidney Alexrad, pitch blackness and White antheral Institutionalized remisss, American Journal of Sociology 57 (May 1952), pp. 56974 Marvin F. Wolfgang, Arlene Kelly, and Hans C.Nolde, Comparisons of the Executed and the Commuted Among Admissions to Death Row, Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police learning 53 (September 1962), pp. 30111 Nathan Goldman, The Differential Selection of new-fangled Offenders for Court Appearance (New York National Council on disgust and viciousness, 1963) Irving Piliavin ad Scott Briar, Police Encounters with insipids, American Journal of Sociology 70 (September 1964), pp. 20614, Robert M. Terry, The Screening of Juvenile Offenders, Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 58 (June 1967), pp. 7381. See also Ramsey Clark, Crime in America (New York Simon and Schuster, 1970), p. 51 Negroes are arrested more frequently and on less evidence than whites and are more often victims of mass or knot arrests and Donald Taft, Criminology, 3d ed. (New York Macmillan, 1956), p. 134 Negroes are more likely to be suspected of crime than are whites. They are also more likely to be arrested. If the perpetrator of a crime is known to be a Negro the police may arrest all Negroes who were near the scene a procedure they would rarely dare to follow with whites.After arrest Negroes are less likely to secure bail, and so are more liable to be counted in jail statistics. They are more liable than whites to be indicted and less likely to have their case nol prossed or otherwise dismissed. If tried, Negroes are more likely to be convicted. If convicted they are less likely to be given probation. For this reason they are more likely to be include in the count of prisoners. Negroes are also more likely than whites to be kept in prison for the full terms of their commitments and correspondingly less like to be paroled. 4. StatAbst-1996, p. 8, put over no. 49. See also Karen Pennar, The Rich are Richerand America May Be the Poorer, Business Week, November 18,1991, pp. 8588. 5. StatAbs-1994, p. 482, Table no. 742. See also Carole Shammas, A New look at LongTerm Trends in Wealth Inequality in the United States, American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (April 1993), p. 422. 6. StatAbst-1996, p. 48, Table no. 49 and p. 398, Table no. 623. 7. Michael Tonry, Racial Politics, Racial Disparities, and the War on Crime, Crime & viciousness 40, no. 4 (October 1994), pp. 483, 48586. 8. Sourcebook-1981, p. 463. 9. StatAbst-1988, p. 75, Table no. 304. 10. BJS, Profile of Inmates in the United States and in England and Wales, 1991 (October 1994, NCJ-145863), p. 13. 11. Theodore Chiricos and William Bales, Unemployment, and Punishment An Empirical Assessment, Criminology 29, no. 4 (1991), p. 718. The Rich Get Richer and th e Poor Get Prison 13 12. An offenders socioeconomic status did not impact sentence length for any of the property offenses. Stewart J. DAlession and Lisa Stolzenberg, Socioeconomic posture and the Sentencing of the conventional Offender, Journal of Criminal Justice 21 (1993), p. 73.The same study did find lower economic status offenders received harsher sentences for bowelless and moral order crimes. Another study that finds no greater likelihood of incarceration based on socioeconomic status is Michael Benson and Esteban Walker, Sentencing the White- hint Offender, American sociological Review 53 (April 1988), pp 291302. And yet another found higher-status offenders to be more likely 10 be incarcerated. David Weisburd, Elin Waring, and Stanton Wheeler, Class, Status, and the Punishment of White Collar Criminals, Law and fond Inquiry 16 (1990), pp. 2341. These last two studies are limited to offenders convicted of whitecollar crimes, and so they deal with a sample that has alr eady been subject to whatever discrimination exists in the arrest, charging, and conviction of white-collar offenders. 13. Isidore Silver, Introduction to the Avon edition of The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (New York Avon, 1968), p. 31. 14. This is the conclusion of Austin L. Porterfield, Youth in Trouble (Fort Worth Leo Potishman Foundation, 1946) Fred J. Murphy, M. Shirley, and H. L.Witmer, The relative incidence of Hidden Delinquency, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 16 (October 1946), pp. 68696 James F. inadequate junior , A Report on the relative incidence of Criminal Behavior, Arrests, and Convictions in Selected Groups, Proceedings of the Pacific Sociological Society, 1954, pp. 11018, published as vol. 22, no. 2 of Research Studies of the State College of Washington (Pullman State College of Washington, 1954) F. Ivan Nye, James F. Short Jr. , and Virgil J. Olson, Socioeconomic Status and juvenile delinquent Behavior, American Journal of Sociology 63 (January 1958), pp. 38189 Maynard L.Erickson and Lamar T. Empey, Class Position, Peers and Delinquency, Sociology and kindly Research 49 (April 1965), pp. 26882 William J. Chambliss and Richard H. Nagasawa, On the Validity of prescribed Statistics A Comparative Study of White, Black, and Japanese High-School Boys, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 6 (January 1969), pp. 7177 Eugene Doleschal, Hidden Crime, Crime and Delinquency belles-lettres 2, no. 5 (October 1970), pp. 54672 Nanci Koser Wilson, try Ratios in Juvenile Delinquency (Ann Arbor, Mich. University Microfilms, 1972) and Maynard L.Erikson, Group Violations, Socioeconomic Status, and positive Delinquency, fond Forces 52, no. 1 (September 1973), p. 4152. 15. Charles R. Tittle and Robert F Meier, Specifying the SES/Delinquency Relationship, Criminology 28, no. 2 (1990), p. 292. 16. Gary F. Jensen and Kevin Thompson, Whats Class Got to Do with It? A Further Examination of Power-Control Theory, American Journal of Soci ology 95, no. 4 (January 1990) p. 1021. 17. This is the conclusion of Martin Gold, Undetected deserted Behavior, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 3, no. 1 (1966), pp. 746 and of Sutherland and Cressey, Criminology, pp. 137, 220. 18. Cf. Larry Karacki and Jackson Toby, The free-swimming Adolescent Candidate for Gang companionableization, Sociological Inquiry 32 (1962), pp. 20315 William R. Arnold, Continuities in ResearchScaling deserted Behavior, Social Problems 13, no. 1 (1965), pp. 5966 Harwin L. Voss, Socioeconomic Status and Reported Delinquent Behavior, Social Problems, 13, no. 3 (1966), pp. 31424 LaMar Empey and Maynard L. Erikson, Hidden Delinquency and Social Status, Social Forces 44, no. 4 (1966), pp. 54654 Fred J.Shanley, materialistic Delinquency As a Social Problem, Sociology and Social Research 51 (1967), pp. 18598 Jay R. Williams and Martin Gold, From Delinquent Behavior to prescribed Delinquency, Social Problems 20, no. 2 (1972), pp. 20929. 19. Empey and Erikson Hidden Delinquency and Social Status, pp 549, 551. Nye, Short, and Olson also found destruction of property to be committed most frequently by upperclass boys and girls, Socioeconomic Status and Delinquent Behavior, p. 385. 20. Williams and Gold, From Delinquent Behavior to Official Delinquency, Social Problems 20, no. 2 (1972), pp. 20929. 4 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 21. Gold Undetected Delinquent Behavior, p. 37. 22. Ibid. , p. 44. 23. Comparing socioeconomic status categories scant evidence is found that would support the contention that group delinquency is more characteristic of the lower-status levels than other socioeconomic status levels. In fact, only arrests seem to be more characteristic of the low-status category than the other categories. Erikson, Group Violations, Socioeconomic Status and Official Delinquency, p. 15. 24. Gold Undetected Delinquent Behavior, p 28 (emphasis added). 25. Ibid. , p. 38 26. Terence P.Thornberry, Rac