Reiman notes that during last 30 years, more than four billion dollars was spent annually for police, courts, and correctional facilities to fight crime. And, author Reiman estimates more than 74 billion dollars has been spent between 1965 and 1990. So, during this period there was a 360 percent increase in criminal justice spending and yet crime rates rose dramatically (from 4,710,000 crimes a year in the U.S. in 1965 to 14,872,883 crimes a year by 1990) (Reiman, 17). Thus is seems like there is no correlation between the amount of money the government pours into programs that are supposed to reduce crime but are not really effective. Overall, Reiman believes that there are policies which the government could use to reduce crime and tha

Jesse Jackson makes one of the same points that Reiman makes, in general, poor people are more likely to be arrested and sentenced than rich ones. Jackson notes that what we learned from the O. J. Simpson case is that a wealthy defendant is far less likely to be convicted because he can afford a dream team of lawyers and jury consultants (Jackson, 16-17). Reiman shows that wealthy defendants involved in major white collar crimes such as Watergate and the Savings and Loan scandals spent far less time in prison than poor defendants who took far less money (Reiman, 127-135). Thus, it seems like some people believe that crime, or at least those who are convicted of crimes, has more to do with a person's social-economic status than anything else.

Donziger is especially critical of America's prison system. His statistics show that in federal prisons, 89% of the inmates are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes Donziger, 32). He states that more than 1.5 million Americans are in prison and another five million are on parole. Eleven million people are booked in either local, state or federal correctional facilities or jails each year (Donziger, 32-36). There are also six times as many African-Americans in jails as there are whites (Donziger, 37). Also, two percent of our male workforce is behind bars (Donziger, 62). Finally, the author points out that an increased number of people who are incarcerated does not lead to decreased crime rates (Donziger, 38). Hence, it is safe to conclude that our criminal justice system is just not working like it is supposed to.

that Generates Crime and Delinquency

The authors concluded that most of the crimes which resulted in people going to jail were much less serious than most of the population thought (Irwin, 57). They found that 57% of those sent to prison were not engaged in so-called criminal careers. They cited authors Greenwood and Turner, who observed that many crimin