Race, Class, and Crime

Discuss the role of plea bargaining.

A plea bargain (also plea agreement, plea deal or copping a plea) is any agreement in a criminal case between the prosecutor and defendant whereby the defendant agrees to plead guilty to a particular charge in return for some concession from the prosecutor.

How does the CJS weed out the wealthy?

Criminal Justice System 'weeds out the wealthy' and functions in such a way that the poor are 1.) more likely to be arrested 2.) more likely to be charged 3.) more likely to be convicted and 4.) more likely to be sentenced to longer prison sentences than members of middle and upper classes.

Discuss the sentences for different crimes (i.e., white collar crime and street crime)/

Further, this chapter demonstrates that the kinds of crime that poor people don't have the opportunity to commit are the crimes that the criminal justice system does not treat as criminal, but civil offences, making the middle and upper classes less likely to be arrested, charged or convicted. calculate the cost of white collar crime at $486 billion and argue that white-collar crime 1.) is much more costly than street crimes 2.) is widespread 3.) white-collar criminals are seldom arrested and charged 4.) when they are prosecuted and convicted, sentences are light.

How are Americans really murdered?

Greater chance of being killed by occupational injury, disease, unnecessary surgery, shoddy emergency medical services

What is jury nullification?

Jury nullification occurs when a jury returns a verdict of "Not Guilty" despite its belief that the defendant is guilty of the violation charged. The jury in effect nullifies a law that it believes is either immoral or wrongly applied to the defendant whose fate they are charged with deciding.

Why according to Reiman is the CJS failing?

Let the crime fit the harm and the punishment fit the crime. Reiman is arguing that we must treat all harmful acts in proportion to the actual harm they produce without respect to the class of the criminal.

What is playing the race card?

Playing the race card is an idiomatic phrase that refers to exploitation of either racist or anti-racist attitudes by accusing others of racism.

Discuss the prosecutors charging decision.

Policies on certain crimes, political ambition, what justice requires

Where does Reiman say the system places it attention?

Poor people; drug use.

How are juries selected?

Potential jurors are chosen from a jury pool generated by random selection of citizens' names from lists of registered voters, or combined lists of voters and people with drivers licenses, in the judicial district.

Explain Reiman's discussion of poverty.

Poverty contributes to crime by creating need.

Discuss the issue of to the vanquished belong the spoils.

Reiman discusses the ideology, or message that our criminal justice system conveys that individual criminals bear full responsibility, while inequality and other social conditions that contribute to crime are rendered invisible in the discussions. Reiman also addresses the role of ideology in creating and maintaining this continued failure.

What does Reiman conclude about the CJS?

Reiman wraps up his argument with the assertion that a criminal justice system is a just system only if it equally protects the interests and rights of all and that is equally punishes all who violate these rights or endanger these interests. When it does not, the system is criminal; the biased use of coercive power - police, courts, prisons - is violence. Reiman argues that the criminal justice system violates its own morally justifying ideas of equal protection and fairness. This chapter points out several strategies that must be put in place if our system is to fulfill the goals of protecting society and promoting justice.

Why was there a need for bail reform?

So the defendant does not flee.

Discuss the Scottsboro Boys case.

The Scottsboro Boys were nine African-American teenagers accused in Alabama of raping two White American women on a train in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, a frameup, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is frequently cited as an example of an overall miscarriage of justice in the United States legal system.

What does Reiman say about CJ policy?

The criminal justice system fails to protects us from the well- off by not treating their harmful acts as crimes. The rich are still getting rich and the poor are still getting poorer.

According to Reiman the CJS works to maintain what?

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

How is crime socially created?

The social reality of crime is created by the decisions of (a) legislators about what to define as crime (b) police and prosecutors about whom to arrest and charge (c) judges and juries in conviction (d) sentencing judges about the appropriate punishment (e) the media in what to report as a 'crime' and an 'accident' and (f) all these decisions taken together.

What is the carnival mirror?

We believe that there are real harms, so the criminal law does not create crime from nothing. Instead, the criminal law does not provide an adequate 'mirror' of injurious acts; it seriously distorts the relationship between crime and harm the way a carnival mirror in a fun house distorts the image of people standing in front of it. Street crime gets magnified and white collar crime becomes smaller.

What are the excuses offered by the system? How does Reiman respond to the excuses?

We're too soft: The U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Even when our higher crime rate is figured in, we are at least as likely as other countries to impose a prison sentence, and it is not likely to be more lenient than other countries. The last 30 years has seen increased use of mandatory sentence and increasingly harsher sentences. Modern life: Other highly industrialized countries in the world have lower crime rates. There are also striking differences within the U.S. with respect to the amount of crime and violence. This variation does not depend on the size of the city or the population density (population per square mile) Youth: Young people are more likely to commit crimes, especially violent ones, and a well know phenomenon in criminology is the maturation effect (people 'age out' of crime). But changes in the amount of crime are not only dependent on the size of the youth population. We don't know: Criminologists know that that the criminal justice system can do little to impact crime rates. It responds to crime after it occurs, and most criminals do not believe they will be caught, so harsher sentences have little impact. Research points to a wide variety of factors that produce crime (including the sources of crime discussed below) and a number of important interventions (but few concern the police, courts or prisons - read the quote from FBI Director Freeh).

What is the central question asked by the Reiman book?

Why aren't the tools of the criminal justice system being mobilized to protect Americans from predatory business practices and to punish those who cause widespread harm?

What is a pyrrhic defeat? How does it operate within the CJS?

is the idea that those with the power to change a system, benefit from the way it currently works. The Rich Get Richer turns this around and uses the notion of a pyrrhic defeat to describe a situation where vast resources are spent to secure an objective (reducing crime), but this failure is really a success. The failure results in a persistent high level of street crime, which is a 'victory' for the wealthy and for corporate America who are not seen as being part of the 'crime problem'; they remain free to keep perpetrating a variety of harms on people.

What is the image portrayed in the CJS?

young, poor, black, male, urban