This is just a brief conceptual piece and not fundamentally concerned with empirical claims. It addresses crime and incarceration.
One basic empirical starting point: in the US prisoners are disproportionately low-income and low education. So what are some possible reasons for why our prisons are mostly full of the worst off? There are at least three reasons why those with lower socio-economic status (SES) might be more likely to end up in jail. We can think of them as working hypotheses.
- Lower SES Americans do commit some types of crime at higher rates. For instance, many crimes in America are property crimes. It would not be surprising if the poor commit more property crimes due to entrenched poverty and a lack of alternative options. This is also a plausible hypothesis for homicide. Homicide rates tend to be highest in urban areas with entrenched poverty, collapsed social institutions, and a lack of job prospects. In so far as this is the case, the poor are disproportionately present in jail because they commit some crimes at a higher rate. But this hardly suggests that they do so out of some free “choice” to be criminal—they do so in the face of narrowly circumscribed life opportunities, none of which promise a secure and comfortable middle-class life.
- Enforcement is primarily targeted at the poor. Breaking and entering as well as other forms of material theft are enforced with vigor, whereas white collar property crimes are not. For instance, as a recent piece noted (still trying to place it), if a home or business is broken into, the owner calls the police. If a worker experiences wage theft, who do they call? You can’t call the police and have them arrest the manager of the McDonald’s franchise where you work, let alone the McDonald’s CEO or its Board of Directors who together might be said to incentivize such behavior. But why not? There is no inherent rule that says enforcement has to be this way. Similarly, drug laws appear to be enforced largely in poor areas, particularly in the inner city. On the other hand, in wealthy areas, from the Los Angeles suburbs to the offices and condos of Manhattan, drug laws are virtually non-existent. Again, this is not preordained by nature. It is a consequence of a country that is run by the wealthy. This leads to the third reason.
- In some cases, at least, the laws criminalize the behavior of the poor. It is not only the case that the enforcement of white collar crimes is lax, though this is true. The penalties for such crimes are themselves small or non-existent. The forms of tax evasion that wealthy individuals and corporations engage in are often legal, not by nature but by design. The tax laws are written by and in response to such constituencies. And when their behavior is criminalized the penalties are minor, often ranging from fines to months-long prison sentences. Compare this to the often decades spent in prison for those who rob a bank or convenience store. The in-person theft of the poor is criminalized far more harshly than the out-of-sight, largely online theft of the rich. On another note, in many American cities it is effectively illegal to be homeless. If one cannot secure a shelter bed for the night, they risk being chased out of parks, parking lots, alleys, tent camps, and anywhere else a person seeking shelter might settle down for the night. Satirizing this injustice, Anatole France famously said that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
None of this is necessary. A key goal for a more democratic and egalitarian polity would be precisely to eliminate these disparities.