The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison

This book of readings can be used stand-alone, or as an accompaniment to the main text. 

The selected 25 articles range from newspaper stories that highlight issues in the book to articles in professional journals.  The editors of the Reader have looked for accessible writing and topics of wide interest beyond academia.  Where appropriate, articles have been edited to keep them at a convenient length for students, and to eliminate material that strays from the main issues.

Articles cover the following topics:

Crime Control in America

A Crime by Any other Name...

...and the Poor get Prison

To the Vanquished belong the Spoils

Criminal Justice or Criminal  Justice 

Professors who use the best-selling book written by Reiman and Leighton, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison , now in a ninth edition, have frequently requested greater depth on various topics in the book, either because of the intrinsic importance of those topics, or because of the role of those topics in a professor’s approach to teaching.  The Reader aims to satisfy this request.  The chapters of the Reader parallel the chapters of The Rich Get Richer.  Each chapter in the Reader  offers a selection of readings that go further into the ideas put forth in the corresponding chapter in The Rich Get Richer. Introductions to each chapter highlight the points made in the articles that support claims made in The Rich Get Richer. 

This book shows students that much that goes on in the criminal justice system violates their own sense of basic fairness, presents evidence that the system malfunctions, and sketches a whole theoretical perspective from which they might understand the failures and evaluate them morally.This book shows students that much that goes on in the criminal justice system violates their own sense of basic fairness, presents evidence that the system malfunctions, and sketches a whole theoretical perspective from which they might understand the failures and evaluate them morally.