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"Class Matters" gives needed attention to socioeconomic criminal justice questions

By Douglas A. Berman

Now available via SSRN is this important new piece by Professor Erica J. Hashimoto titled "Class Matters." As its abstract highlights, this piece gives overdue attention to a very important aspect of modern criminal justice realities: Poor people constitute one of the most overrepresented categories of people in the criminal justice system. Why is that so? Unfortunately, we simply do not know, in large part because we have virtually no information that could provide an answer. As a result of that informational vacuum, policymakers either have ignored issues related to socioeconomic class, instead focusing on issues like drug addiction and mental illness as to which there are more data, or have developed fragmented policy that touches on socioeconomic class issues only tangentially...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on April 11, 2010 (boomark / email).