Poor Justice: Case Studies on Poverty and Punishment

Bruce Western, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

Abstract: Why are criminal courts, jails, and prisons filled overwhelmingly by poor and otherwise vulnerable people? I explore this question through three case studies, each examining a different phase of criminal processing. First, a randomized experiment in a misdemeanor court in Oklahoma provides evidence on the characteristics of people charged with low-level offenses and the effects of fines and fees levied through their criminal cases. Second, an interview study in New York City at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic examines the court obligations and incarceration risks of those processed through arraignment courts. Third, interviews and analysis of prison administrative records shows how punishment within prisons – solitary confinement – disproportionately affects people with mental illness. The case studies suggest how criminal justice involvement vastly exceeds imprisonment, punishment is associated with multidimensional disadvantage that extends beyond race and poverty, and the pains of punishment are greater than the stigma of a criminal record.

Bruce Western is the Bryce Professor of Sociology and Social Justice and Director of the Justice Lab at Columbia University. He studies poverty and socioeconomic inequality with a focus on the U.S. criminal justice system. Current projects include a randomized experiment assessing the effects of criminal justice fines and fees on misdemeanor defendants in Oklahoma City, and a field study of solitary confinement in Pennsylvania state prisons. Western is also the Principal Investigator of the Square One Project that aims to re-imagine the public policy response to violence under conditions of poverty and racial inequality. He is the Co-Chair of a National Academy of Sciences panel on reducing racial inequality in the U.S. criminal justice system. He is the author of Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison (Russell Sage Foundation, 2018), and Punishment and Inequality in America (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Western received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and was born in Canberra, Australia.

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