The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get Prison Analysis

I have spent the last four and one half years working in the criminal justice system as a county jailer, jail deputy and currently a police officer. Throughout my short career in law enforcement I had had a front row seat to what many industry insiders call, “The greatest show on earth.” In this class and during my undergraduate years I have studied many theories on why people commit crimes, and all theories have valid points on why people commit crime. During my undergraduate years my main focus was the disenfranchisement and the mass incarceration of African American males. I honestly felt that African American males were targets of a racist criminal justice system that used mass incarceration of African American males to keep the male

I ran across a book called “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison.” I began to talk with some inmates in more detail about their education, job, and living situations. I was astonished to find out that a majority of the inmates I had dealings with only had an eight grade education level. “Pod Bosses” had more formal education beyond an eight grade education level, and were at the hierarchy of the prison economy. In the “Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, Reiman writes, “First poor people are more likely than rich people to be arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced for street crimes (Reiman, 2001:110). Gray writes, “Reiman asserts that white collar crime is more serious than street crime but is punished leniently because the way the crime is defined, and excuses are made for higher class criminals excuses that serve the interest of people in power (Gray

Kozol writes, “Future service workers need a different and, presumably, a lower order of investment than children destined to be corporate executives, physicians, lawyers engineers. Future plumbers, and future scientists requires different schools. Segregated education is not necessarily so unattractive by this reasoning.” (p.75) Kozol also writes, “Besides, a common line of reasoning continues, these bottom-level jobs exist. They need to be done. Somebody’s got to do them. It’s evident, however, who that somebody will be”