Sociology 8th Edition by Margaret Andersen ,Howard Taylor ,Kim Logio

Exercise 2

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison
Research Question: Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton (2009) have studied U.S. prisons by asking: (1) What goes on in prisons? and (2) What are the perceptions of prisons held by those in society?
Research Method: Reiman and Leighton used field research in prisons to answer these questions
Research Results: The researchers found that the prison system in the United States, instead of serving as a way to rehabilitate criminals, is in effect designed to train and socialize inmates into a career of crime. It is also designed in such a way as to assure the public that crime is a threat primarily from the poor and that it originates at the lower rungs of society. Prisons contain elements that seem designed to accomplish this view.
Conclusions and Implications: One can "construct" a prison that ends up looking like a U.S. prison. First, continue to label as criminal those who engage in crimes that have no unwilling victim, such as prostitution or gambling. Second, give prosecutors and judges broad discretion to arrest, convict, and sentence based on appearance, dress, race, and apparent social class. Third, treat prisoners in a painful and demeaning manner, as one might treat children. Fourth, make certain that prisoners are not trained in a marketable skill that would be useful upon their release. And, finally, assure that prisoners will forever be labeled and stigmatized as different from "decent citizens," even after they have paid their debt to society. Once an ex-con, always an ex-con. One has thus just socially constructed a U.S. prison, an institution that will continue to generate the very thing that it claims to eliminate.
Questions to Consider
How persistent in the coming years do you think this vision of the U.S. prison system will be?