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Podcast: New Books in Politics and Polemics
Episode: Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton, "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison" (Routledge, 2023)
Description: For 40 years, this classic text has taken the issue of economic inequality seriously and asked: Why are our prisons filled with the poor? Why aren't the tools of the criminal justice system being used to protect Americans from predatory business practices and to punish well-off people who cause widespread harm? This new edition continues to engage readers in important exercises of critical thinking: Why has the U.S. relied so heavily on tough crime policies despite evidence of their limited effectiveness, and how much of the decline in crime rates can be attributed to them? Why does t...