How Americans came to fear street crime too much-and corporate crime
too little
How did the United States go from being a country that tries to
rehabilitate street criminals and prevent white-collar crime to one that
harshly punishes common lawbreakers while at the same time encouraging
corporate crime through a massive deregulation of business? Why do
street criminals get stiff prison sentences, a practice that has led to
the disaster of mass incarceration, while white-collar criminals, who
arguably harm more people, get slaps on the wrist-if they are prosecuted
at all? In Who Are the Criminals?, one of America's leading
criminologists provides new answers to these vitally important questions
by telling how the politicization of crime in the twentieth century
transformed and distorted crime policymaking and led Americans to fear
street crime too much and corporate crime too little.
John Hagan argues that the recent history of American criminal justice
can be divided into two eras--the age of Roosevelt (roughly 1933 to
1973) and the age of Reagan (1974 to 2008). A focus on rehabilitation,
corporate regulation, and the social roots of crime in the earlier
period was dramatically reversed in the later era. In the age of Reagan,
the focus shifted to the harsh treatment of street crimes, especially
drug offenses, which disproportionately affected minorities and the poor
and resulted in wholesale imprisonment. At the same time, a massive
deregulation of business provided new opportunities, incentives, and
even rationalizations for white-collar crime-and helped cause the 2008
financial crisis and subsequent recession.
The time for moving beyond Reagan-era crime policies is long overdue,
Hagan argues. The understanding of crime must be reshaped and we must
reconsider the relative harms and punishments of street and corporate
crimes. In a new afterword, Hagan assesses Obama's policies regarding
the punishment of white-collar and street crimes and debates whether
there is any evidence of a significant change in the way our country
punishes them.
