Jeffrey Middleton
Dr. Joshua Gold
U.S. Government
29 November 2011
Summary Critique of “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison”
In Jeffrey Reiman’s book, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison he analyzes the
criminal justice system and his main point is that “the criminal justice system serves the
powerful by its failure to reduce crime, not by its success.” Reiman has worked for many years
in an area of the Department of Justice; however, by 1988 he began to hold a full time position
at the Department of Philosophy and Religion and since 1990 is the William Fraser McDowell
Professor of Philosophy. Reiman has always been interested in criminal justice and wrote this
book in order to change some of the many misconceptions that the public holds about the
criminal justice system. In chapter one of his book, his main goals are to: first, discredit the
government’s excuse that greater urbanization and youth have caused an increase in crime.
Second, to discredit the claim that “we [the government] simply are not yet smart enough to
solve the problem,” and lastly, that in reality crime pays and he shows this through the Pyrrhic
defeat theory. Reiman makes many compelling arguments about why the criminal system has
failed and more importantly shows the reader that this topic is not as black and white as the
popular and elite democrats would like the public to believe.
The first critical topic that Reiman argues is, the belief that we have more crime because
of greater urbanization and more youth is a falsehood. Studies have shown that there is in fact
no direct correlation between population density and crime rates in the United States. He
provides the reader with a table that shows how New York, which is the most urbanized city in
the US with 24,089 people per square mile, ranked sixth in overall crime rank and rate. Then,
Kansas City, which has a population density of 1,395 people per square mile ranked third in
overall crime rank and rate in the US. Therefore, this would contradict the statement that
greater urbanization leads to more crime because a city much more urbanized by 22,794
people per square mile should see much more crime, but it does not. Moreover, if urbanization
and industrialization were the cause of such high crime rates then other countries that have
comparable urbanization and industrialization would experience comparable crime rates as the
US does. Once again, Reiman shows the reader that this is not the case. He shows that in
1981-1982, Japan had a homicide rate of one per 100,000 inhabitants and England had a rate of
two, while the US had an impressive rate of 9.1 homicides. Blaming the youth is also a bad
excuse because Reiman argues that the crime rate has increased much more rapidly than the
percent of youth living in the US. For example, from 1973 to 1981 the number of youth in the
US increased by only 10 percent, while in that same period the UCR crime total increased by an
amazing 54 percent. Reiman concludes by saying that he agrees many crimes are committed
by the youth and in the urbanized cities, but because of the disparities in the statistics that have
been shown in this paragraph, these are not the only reasons pointing to an increase of crime in
the US.
The arguments that Reiman uses against greater urbanization and increased amount of
youth being the result of more crime in the US are true. Everything that Reiman said made
sense and the information that he gave the reader made the excuses of the government not
make sense. Elites would definitely make the argument that more urbanization and more
youth lead to more crime because most of the people living in the urbanized areas are poor,
and under educated. Those types of people are a “bewildered herd,” to use a quote from the
book and those people do not have the direction and real ability to act civilly. However, this
contradicts the stat that shows the US having much higher crime rates than other cities and
counties with equal amounts of youth and urbanization. The thing that the government needs
to worry about is why are a more significant percent of youth committing crimes today, than
they were back in 1940. A popular democratic stance would be that we need better education
in urban areas, as well as better job opportunities for the people living there and for the youth
in order to keep them off the streets and give them a better chance at a better life. It would
seem that the government and elites’ make those excuses just in attempt to cover up the real
reason crime is so high.
The second main point that Reiman makes to strengthen his main point is to discredit
what the government says that, “we simply are not yet smart enough to solve the problem.”
Reiman shoots this logic full of holes by stating that although it is true that we cannot pinpoint
all the causes of crime, we can certainly point out some of the main sources of crime. He gives
three main sources of crime that the government does little to fight against that would
drastically reduce crime. The first source is poverty, second, is prison, and the third source of
crime is high drug laws and low gun restrictions. We know that poverty, slums and
unemployment are sources of street crime, yet sadly, the government does little to improve the
living conditions and lives of these people. Reiman states that prisons make better criminals. A
great stat that proves Reiman’s point is that “70 percent of the inmates in the nation’s prisons
are not there for the first time.” He claims that prisoners are not able to handle the hard life
situations once on the outside because the government does very little to rehabilitate criminals
on the inside. Therefore, if better programs were in place recidivism would not be so common.
Reiman speaks extensively on harsh drug laws, especially heroin, that are a source of much
crime in the US. He says that because of strict laws that put drugs sells in the hands of drug
dealers, the drug prices are completely overpriced. This in turn forces the poor who do not
make enough money to buy the drugs, but who are addicted, to steal and commit crimes in
order to make more money to buy the expensive drugs. If the US would be more like Great
Britain and have the government control the selling of drugs, like heroine, for a cheaper price
directly to the addicts, the US would have much less crime committed. He says that what the
US government looks at as the cure to stop drug use is actually having no effect in stopping
drug use and is the cause of more crime. Lastly, Reiman argues that stricter gun laws would
result in a decline of violent crimes committed. Therefore, with all these sources, Reiman
proves that the government really does know how to stop crime, but just does not want to.
Once again, Reiman makes many valid points here in his arguments. It is simple to see
that there are sources where crime springs up. Elites would want to keep the public from
knowing these sources and the elites do a good job at controlling the media in order to lie to
people that they just do not know how to stop crime. They also lie to the public by telling them
through the mass media, only the poor, black and brown people are committing the crimes.
This allows the rich elites to continue to act without integrity as they run their companies in the
ground and force 1000’s to be without jobs while they make nice little million dollar bonuses.
Poverty, Prisons and drugs all add to crime and yet the government will do nothing to correct
these issues. George Jung is the man that set up the cocaine market in the US and he made all
his connections to the Columbia drug cartels in prison. Prison made him a better criminal, and
prisons will continue to do so until the government re-evaluates the way that they rehabilitate
prisoners. To agree with Reiman on the drug issue a good example is Portugal, a country with
very little crime, and has very soft drug laws. Drug laws only give more criminals jobs because
criminals become the people who sell the drugs when the state could sell the drug in a
controlled environment for a fraction of the cost. This would make it so that addicts would not
have to steal in order to get their fix. However, the claim that the US should have stricter gun
laws and that would lead to less violent crimes is false. The criminals who are committing
violent crimes will always be able to get their hands on the guns that they need, restricting guns
would only create a larger black market for gun trade. Instead of anti-guns laws the
government should create better laws so that the users of guns have better training and more
in depth registration.
Reiman’s final point is that the reason that the government has not and will not stop
crime is because the government does not want to stop crime. Crime pays and that is the
bottom line. Reiman brings up some studies done by Kai T. Erikson and Emile Durkheim that
show how some societies may actually believe that crime actually, “serves a needed service to
society by drawing people together in a common posture of anger and indignation.” Therefore,
“a community makes good use of unacceptable behavior [and] it positively needs unacceptable
behavior.” Reiman takes some ideas from the views of Erikson and Durkheim and creates what
he calls the Pyrrhic defeat theory. This theory says that the failure of the criminal justice
system yields such benefits to individuals in positions of power that it amounts to success.
Reiman’s final and greatest argument is this; the system is failing because the government
wants it to fail not because of the excuses that they give us. The people in power make the
laws and define the crimes and the effect of that, is making all the poor take the majority of the
punishment and keeping the eyes and ears off the rich. The criminal justice system serves the
rich and punishes the poor.
Reiman’s Pyrrhic defeat theory is a strong popular democratic view. Elites, who are in
positions of power, are the ones who define what is a crime or not and because of this will
continue to put the poor into prison and not the rich. Reiman’s make a strong case that the
elites do not want to fix the system because they are benefitting too much from the way it is
right now. Elites would like to keep the present social order with all the inequalities and
disparities of wealth and the current criminal system does just that. The current system
without a doubt has its flaws and popular democrats will continue to attempt to fix the current
system in order to hold elites accountable for the crimes that they commit and put them on the
same playing field as the rest of the citizens in America.
The book, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, by Jeffrey Reiman, looks at the
criminal justice system as it really is. He does not believe the excuses of the government that
the US has higher crime because of urbanization and more youth, and surely not because they
just do not know how to stop crime. Instead, he shows that the reason the US has so much
crime is because the government does not want us to stop crime. Crime in the US too strongly
benefits the national elites and therefore, they will not do anything to change the system in
place. The reading was very good and provided very good insights to why the system is the way
it is and how it truly functions. The case made by Reiman is very strong and convincing and
shows just one more way how the elites and the wealthy control the United States.