The rich are getting richer and the poor are in prison by Jeffrey ReimanJeffrey Reiman, author of The rich are getting richer and the poor are in prison , first published his book in 1979; it is now in its sixth edition, and he has continued to revise it while staying abreast of criminal justice statistics and other system trends. Reiman originally wrote his book after teaching for seven years at the School of Justice (formerly the Center for the Administration of Justice), a multidisciplinary criminal justice education program at American University in Washington, DC. He drew heavily on what he had learned. of his colleagues at this university. Reiman is the William Fraser McDowell Professor of Philosophy at American University, where he has taught since 1970. He has written numerous books on political philosophy, criminology, and sociology. Reiman sets out his thesis in the introduction. He asserts that the goal of the American criminal justice system is not to eliminate crime – or even to achieve justice – but to project to the people the image that the threat of crime emanates from the poor . The system must “maintain” a large population of poor criminals, and to this end it must not reduce or eliminate crimes committed by the poor. When crime decreases, it is not because of our criminal justice policies, but in spite of them. In testing this idea, Reiman asked his students to build a correctional system that would maintain a stable and visible group of criminals, rather than eliminate or reduce crime, and they suggested the following: enact laws against drug abuse, prostitution and gambling; giving police, prosecutors and judges broad discretion to decide who will be arrested, charged and sentenced to prison;...... middle of paper ...... reducing the drugs or reducing the number of guns in circulation, but clearly each of these ideas faces massive opposition waiting to stop any such effort. Reiman's concept of social justice is more consistent with sociological theories that find systemic reasons for crime, which is very different from the dominant theories of individual actors that are so systemically rooted. Reiman is less convincing in the way he describes the system as intentionally biased, as he makes it seem like an organized conspiracy. This is simply not the case. The book is provocative and contains many good ideas, including an in-depth analysis of the current criminal justice system and how that system could be changed to better represent, serve, and protect ALL Americans. Works Cited Reiman, Jeffrey. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Imprisoned, Sixth Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001.