S. Truett Cathy Character in Leadership - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 7 Words: 2241 Downloads: 2 Date added: 2017/09/20 Category Education Essay Type Argumentative essay Tags: Character Essay Leadership Essay Did you like this example? NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET Learner: Jeffrey L Boyer THIS FORM MUST BE COMPLETELY FILLED IN Please Follow These Procedures: If requested by your mentor, use an assignment cover sheet as the first page of the word processor file. Use â€Å"headers† to indicate your course code, assignment number, and your name on each page of the assignment/homework including this assignment cover sheet. . Keep a Photocopy or Electronic Copy Of Your Assignments: You may need to re-submit assignments if your mentor has indicated that you may or must do so. Academic Integrity: All work submitted in each course must be the Learner’s own. This includes all assignments, exams, term papers, and other projects required by the faculty mentor. The knowing submission of another persons work represented as that of the Learner’s without properly citing the source of the work will be considered plagiarism and will result in an unsatisfactory grade for the work sub mitted or for the entire course, and may result in academic dismissal. OM5015 Dr. Jean Perlman Organizational Behavior Assignment 6 Faculty Use Only Character and Its Influence in Leadership Jeffrey L. Boyer Dr. Jean Perlman North Central University August 5, 2010 Abstract S. Truett Cathy (Truett Cathy) is the founder and CEO of Chick-fil-A, Inc. that currently operates as the second largest quick-serve chicken restaurant in the United States. The goal of this paper is to bring to light the influence, effectiveness and most importantly the character of one of the most endearing CEO’s in the United States. The paper provides a detailed overview of Mr. Cathy’s achievements in business, and provides a personal perspective from Mr. Cathy what he felt were the most important principles for developing a great business. A review of Truett Cathy’s character traits results in a discussion of some of the most important traits in correlation to his success such as, i ntegrity, selflessness, high moral character and others. An examination of charisma and character is also found in the paper with a comparison in leadership characteristics of Mr. Cathy to that of Jack Welsh, former CEO of General Electric. The paper concludes with a short summation of how Mr. Cathy’s leadership principles could influence one’s leadership decisions moving forward. S. Truett Cathy: An Introduction S. Truett Cathy (Truett Cathy) is founder and chairman of Chick-fil-A, Inc. Cathy started the business in 1946, when he and his brother, Ben, opened an Atlanta diner known as The Dwarf Grill (later renamed The Dwarf House). Through the years, the restaurant prospered and led Cathy to further the success of his business. In 1967, Cathy founded and opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta, GA with the company growing to the second-largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States based on annual sales. â€Å"Cathy†. n. d. pa ra. 2) Truett Cathy is widely known as one of the most endearing and selfless entrepreneurs in business. Often described as the man who â€Å"invented the chicken sandwich†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Mr. Cathy would more rather be known to the world for his satisfaction and sense of obligation to the community and its young people. (â€Å"Cathy† n. d. para. 4) Today Chick-fil-A is one of the most popular fast food restaurants, and the principles of the founder are not simply acknowledged, but rather it seams endeared by the employees and the patrons of the restaurant. Truett Cathy built his life and business based on hard work, humility and biblical principles. Based on these principles, all of Chick-fil-A’s restaurants operate with a ‘closed on Sunday’ policy, without exception (â€Å"Cathy. n. d. para. 8) Mr. Cathy adopted this principle at the risk of company profits, but Mr. Cathy wanted to set an example for his employees that family comes before profits. Interes tingly enough one of Mr. Cathy’s favorite quotes comes from the book of Proverbs, which says, â€Å"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold†. Mr. Cathy’s passion for young people has translated significantly to corporate Chick-fil-A, which has now given more than $25 million in scholarships to its employees since 1973. Truett Cathy is one of the most decorated philanthropists in America today. S. Truett Cathy: Reasons for Admiration Growing up in central Pennsylvania in the 90’s did not provide a personal opportunity to see the impact of the Chick-fil-A franchise, but after moving to Lynchburg, VA it was quickly noticed that the food chain was uniquely different than its competitors in the burger industry, excluding the obvious product selection. When visiting a chick-fil-A it would be noticed that the workforce seems to have a joy about their work†¦ trained to use the phrase, â€Å"it ’s my pleasure to serve you† the employees not only make you feel welcome, but rather to make your dining experience a great time. Every Chick-fil-A restaurant personally visited has provided a wait staff in the dining area with a friendly smile asking if they may take your trash for you, or even refill the coffee you purchased while taking exact instructions to how you would like your drink prepared. Where did this come from? Is this just a clever ploy by management, or is the principle of being a servant to others being engrained into the culture of the restaurant by its founder? The answer lies in Truett Cathy’s Five-step recipe for success: 1. Climb with Care and Confidence 2. Create a â€Å"Loyalty Effect† 3. Never Lose a Customer 4. Put Principles and People ahead of Profits 5. Closed on Sunday (â€Å"Cathy†. n. d. Five-step Recipe. ) When visiting Truett Cathy’s personal website you will see the principles in life for which he guard s so dearly. As part of Mr. Cathy’s â€Å"Five-Step Recipe for Business† he is quoted as saying, â€Å"I have found that the most effective way of promoting my business didn’t cost me anything but a little kindness to my customers†. (S. Truett Cathy. n. d. ) As a visionary Mr. Cathy possesses all the traits of a great leader and entrepreneur, but the humanitarian side of this fine gentleman is stamped all over the business processes of his organization. Mr. Cathy’s personal sense of serving others alludes to what can be considered some of the most important character traits desired in leadership. One of the first traits noticed of Mr. Cathy is a compelling sense of modesty and humility. Reasons as to why modesty/humility are important in leadership is supported by Jim Collins (2001), author of the book â€Å"Good to Great†, who submits that many of the best CEO’s in American business operate their companies with an extraordinary sense of humility and modesty. Collins (2001) would argue that humility creates a sense of approachability for those who are following, and allows for open, creative discussion about business processes and ideas. Protecting the vision and name of Chick-fil-A is evident by Mr. Cathy’s business practices, writings and observable character. It is easily understood by corporate practices that Truett Cathy values high ethical and moral standards. The importance of these traits are important not only in creating a trust within a leadership team, but as a key determinant of protecting business interests against corruption and ultimate business failure. Maguad and Krone (2009) would concur with this belief when they wrote, â€Å"the moral leader is more than a person who is conditioned to follow rules or policies. Moral leadership is what one is, as opposed to what one does. ‘What one is’ flows directly from the values he or she possesses† (p. 09) Finally, of all the traits that Mr. Cathy possesses†¦ selflessness seems to be one of the most important to him. Recorded in Mr. Cathy’s five-step recipe for business success he writes, I’d like to be remembered as one who kept my priorities in the right order. We live in a changing world, but we need to be reminded that the important things have not changed. I have always encouraged my restaurant operators and team members to give back to the local community. We should be about more than just selling chicken; we should be a part of our customer’s lives and the communities in which we serve. Selflessness is one of the most endearing personality traits that one can have. It creates an endearment to the one who possesses it and manifests itself though generosity, the willingness to put others needs in front of your own along with the willingness and joy to serve others. It’s a personal belief that the greatest leaders are those who are willing to serve. In rela tion to selflessness, Charles Goodyear once wrote, Life should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents. I am not disposed to complain that I have planted and others have gathered the fruits. A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps. (n. d) Charisma vs. Character In preparing for this research paper, the initial leader of choice with regards to inspiration was to be Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric. Even as popular and admirable that Mr. Welch may be, there were many studies of his leadership traits which pointed out that his strengths in leadership were that of charisma and not those of character. Jack Welch took General Electric (GE) to profit heights it had not seen before, but his leadership many times took the approach that people were expendable much sooner than corporate profits. As a result Jack Welch was perceived by many to not care about what happened to individuals around him so as long as corporate goals were being met. In a study by Sankar (2003), which studied the difference between charisma and character, the author states that charisma, Focuses on personality attributes such as dynamism, style, image, inspiration, symbolic behaviors, impression management, emotional intelligence, extroverted style, self-confidence, etc†¦ but that charismatic leadership may occasionally be more personalized in nature where the leader is self-serving, self-aggrandizing, and exploitative of others. p. 46) Mr. Welch was certainly one of the greatest CEO’s in American history, but it could be debatable that his leadership skills were more of charisma than of character. This begs the question as to whether he should be admired as a great leader if business outcomes were more important that those who served at GE. Character, in contrast to charisma, is viewed by Sankar (2003) as a leader’s moral center which influences his/her vision, goals, self-concept, work ethic, attitude, etc. p. 48 ) Sankar (2003) spends a great deal of time in his research pointing out the significance of integrity with relation to those who have high character. (p. 48) Sankar (2003) defines integrity as a â€Å"state of soundness of and adherence to moral principle† (p. 48). Mr. Sankar (2003) when speaking to the importance of character and its role in business leadership states, The leader plays a critical role in the propagation of an ethical culture within his/her organization. In view of ethical-moral crisis in many occupations it can be deduced that this crisis is indicative of the absence of moral leadership in these organizations†¦ The leader’s character is a strategic source of power for infusing the culture of his/her organization with a code of ethics, moral vision, imagination, and courage. Leadership excellence cannot be evaluated without an assessment of the leader’s character. (Sankar, 2003, p. 55) With regards to Truett Cathy and his qualities as a leader, he can be admired for many leadership traits such as being confident, inspiring, a great motivator and recruiter†¦ however Mr. Cathy seems by all accounts to be a man of great integrity and character which can be argued to far outweigh all other personality traits. Truett Cathy understands the value of â€Å"worthy leadership† which is defined by Thompson, Grahek, Phillips and Fay (2008) as having, â€Å"the ability to guide, direct or influence people in a way that has great merit, character and value† (p. 366). In relation to personal leadership, a detailed study of the life of Mr. Cathy will inspire me to keep life and leadership in perspective. It will be a personal goal in all levels of leadership to truly put principles and people ahead of profits. Regardless of profits and performance, this will provide a sense of accomplishment at the end of life that will far outweigh short-term gains at the cost of others. Clark M, Payne R. Character-Based Determinants of Trust in Leaders. Risk Analysis: An International Journal [serial online]. October 2006;26(5):1161-1173. Available from: Business Source Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed August 3, 2010. References: Collins, J. C. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leapand others dont. New York, NY: HarperBusiness. Kathy, S. Truett. (n. d. ). Retrieved from https://www. ruettcathy. com/default. asp Maguad, B. , Krone, R. (2009). Ethics and moral leadership: Quality linkages. Total Quality Management Business Excellence, 20(2), 209-222. doi:10. 1080/14783360802623043. Maguad, B. , Krone, R. (2009). Ethics and moral leadership: Quality linkages. Total Quality Management Business Excellence, 20(2), 209-222. doi:10. 1080/14783360802623043. Maxwell, John C. (2002). The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc. Maxwell, John C. (2002). Leadership 101. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc. Robbins, S. P. , Judge, T. A. 2009)    Organizationa l behavior, Upper Saddle River, NJ:    Prentice Hall. ISBN: 9780136007173 Robbins, S. P. , Judge, T. A. (2009)    Organizational behavior,    Upper Saddle River, NJ:    Prentice Hall. ISBN: 9780136007173 Sankar, Y. (2003). Character not charisma is the critical measure of leadership excellence. Journal of Leadership Organizational Studies, 9(4), 45-55. doi:10. 1177/107179190300900404. Thompson, A. , Grahek, M. , Phillips, R. , Fay, C. (2008). The search for worthy leadership. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 60(4), 366-382. doi:10. 1037/1065-9293. 60. 4. 366. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "S. Truett Cathy: Character in Leadership" essay for you Create order

Essay On Shakespeare s The Scarlet Letter - 1909 Words

The Role of Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne’s use of Symbolism in the story The Scarlet Letter adds immense depth and meaning to the story. The use of symbols help authors express complex ideas without using as many words. A symbol is an object that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract. Symbols in stories help convey the idea of a story in a more expressive way. They help you to show your story to the readers, instead of just telling it. Themes can sound too preachy and stories can sound too shallow. Symbolism weaves the two together and helps to portray a theme while writing a story. â€Å"The symbol expands and adds to our levels of understanding (Roberts, Edgar).†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦show more content†¦To each of the characters, it had a deeper meaning. It represented the shame in their lives. In this symbol, we can view two different sides of the meaning of shame. The community sees Hester as a fallen, sinful woman and Dimmesdale as a saint. The first example is seen in the way Hester wears her scarlet letter. She wears it on her clothes for everybody around her to see. People see her and look down on her because when they see it, they see her sin. When people look at Hester, their gaze is not on her face and who she is, but it is on the letter on her chest. People no longer know her by her name, but by her sin. She wears her shame and it identifies her wherever she goes. Hawthorne shows us this at one instance in the book. â€Å"When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter, they branded it afresh into Hester’s soul: so that oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain from covering the symbol with her hand.† The word â€Å"branded† develops the idea that the letter is sealed to her soul and is now a part of who she is. Her shame is an outward form of shame, and the cold, criticizing hearts of the people around her are her punishment. Another example of what shame can be is found in another use of symbolism. Dimmesdale suffers from a much different form of shame. He wears his scarlet letter on his chest, not outwardly on his clothing. Nobody knows of the letter except for Dimmesdale

Modern Day Cinderella Story Free Essays

My Modern-Day Cinderella Story P3 Language Arts It was pouring outside. Not just pouring, that word doesn’t suffice how much water was aimlessly falling from the sky and crashing to the ground with every footstep that Ella Kess took on her way home. Today was the day that seven years ago her parents died in a plane crash over the Atlantic Ocean. We will write a custom essay sample on Modern Day Cinderella Story or any similar topic only for you Order Now It was strange, how she had to live on after the death, but she pulled through with the help of her best friend Kylee Lainer. She would have been okay this year too but they were not friends anymore. They had grown up together, friends since age three but when they reached high school Kylee became a different person, got new friends, and left Ella alone. After their breakup as BFFLs, Ella’s so called friends dropped like flies. She figured it was because they liked Kylee not her, but this didn’t bother Ella, she never liked them anyway. She reached her uncles condo right before the thunder started to roar. She dashed in the building and walked right over to the elevator without bothering to say hello to the front desk manager, Gary, who had been her mentor since her parent’s death. He was an older guy, probably in his 70’s, but he knew a lot and told her stories of when he was a child and these things kept her calm. She knew he would understand that she didn’t want to talk. Ella pushed the up button and the elevator doors opened. She walked in and saw Drew Hawthorne. Drew just wasn’t ANY guy, she had liked him ever since he stole her crayons in kindergarten. He threw a lopsided smile in her way and said â€Å"hey†. â€Å"Hi† was the best she could muster. Conversation wasn’t her thing, especially right here, right now. The trip from the lobby up to the penthouse level seemed like it would go on forever. Drew had lived in the other penthouse since about the time her parents died. Ella was convinced that one day they would get married and have three children, two girls and one boy. She had already named them anyway. Her fairytale ended right when the Kylee, knowing that Ella and Drew we’re in the pre-dating stage (in other words, neither of them we’re planning on asking the other out), asked Drew out herself. Kylee and Drew are still going out. The elevator finally made it to the top level of the high end condos and made a stop. â€Å"See you around. , Ella,† Drew said. â€Å"Um, yeah. Have a nice weekend,† Ella replied trying to sound cheerful and happy. Tonight was the fairy queen parade. She never bothered to enter the contest, she just enjoyed watching the catty girls bring each other’s confidence down and argue over what color lipstick looks best on who. This year was going to be even more interesting because her two step-cousins, Regina and Carly, we’re entering. She would have too, but they made it clear that that wasn’t happening anytime soon. She walked past the kitchen and grabbed an apple on the way to her room. Her room was her sanctuary, her favorite place in the whole entire world. It had amazing views of the city, Seattle, and from here she could pretend that she was on top of the world. â€Å"Can you like stop being so depressed, Ella. I swear to god if you ruin this weekend for Regina and me, you will suffer,† Carly hissed at her on the way to her own room. â€Å"Carly, don’t be so mean to her! † Regina snapped. Regina is probably the closest thing to a sister Ella never had. She can be mean, but hey, at least she tries to be her friend. â€Å"Carly, chill. I’m not even entering and even if I was I doubt I would win,† Ella yelled to Carly down the hall. Regina came in and sat on her bed. Ella, I know that you just want to feel like you belong†¦ and you do,† Regina said trying to cover up any of the pain she sees on Ella’s face. â€Å"Yeah, whatever. † She shot back, knowing that she’ll get the signal. Ella didn’t want to talk. As she sat and thought about how much she wanted to enter, the desire got greater. Only one problem†¦ she didn’t have a thing. She decided to go down to the lobby and ask Gary for advice. He would surely know what to do in a situation like this. â€Å"Hey Gary,† she said while trying to decided how to ask about all this without sounding needy. I need†¦ a favor. † â€Å"Hello there dear! Finally decided to enter the contest, eh? I knew you would and that is exactly why old Gary made a couple of calls and got you everything you needed, And remember kid, you go out there and win that thing and Drew will be yours. † It’s like he read her mind. He knew exactly what she needed and why. This is why she liked Gary so much. But how’d he know about Drew? â€Å"Gary, thank you so much. But, how’d you know about Drew? † â€Å"It’s extremely obvious. Now run along! † and with that he handed her a large box. She got back up to her room and with excitement bubbling in her blood she threw open the lid. Her mouth dropped. She reached in and pulled out the most beautiful blue dress her emerald eyes had ever seen. It wasn’t just any dress; it fit her body like a glove. The dark blue satin shined as she walked over to her mirror. The dress was elegant from head to toe. She walked back over to her bed and looked inside the box, discovering the silver heels, diamond necklace, and blue hair pin. This must have been Gary’s wife’s clothing. She died of cancer awhile back†¦ Ella guessed he never really got over it. â€Å"I look like a princess,† Ella thought aloud. She knew it was time to go now or she would miss the whole thing so she grabbed her mom’s silver shawl and headed out. Once she got to the parade, any bit of confidence she might have had, vanished. She didn’t know a thing about being pretty and she sure as heck wasn’t going to start learning now. â€Å"No. I’m not doing this,† Ella said to herself. But it was too late. From across the street she saw Carly and the other girls looking straight at her, the envy clear in their eyes. â€Å"GET OUT OF HERE!!! † screamed Carly. Gasps and awes escaped the mouths of the jealous contestants and Ella knew she needed to leave right then. She turned on her heels and ran, tears streaming down her face. She got so flustered and so panicked that to prevent her from being there any longer, took down her hair and threw her heels and blue hair pen on the sidewalk. She didn’t care who found them. And then she heard a voice. â€Å"Ella! Wait, stop running! † the voice yelled. She immediately recognized it as Drew’s. Her Drew. She looked back, tears now streaming down her face and gave him the best smile she could. And then she was gone. The next morning, Ella woke up to the sound of Carly’s voice drifting in from the kitchen. â€Å"I can’t believe she showed up AND ACTUALLY LOOKED PRETTY! † Carly yelled â€Å"Well, you know it was bound to happen. I saw Drew looking the whole time. I went over there this morning and he said that he found a blue pin and silver shoes. He’s confident they belong to her, after all he went psycho on Facebook messaging almost every girl. † Regina said. â€Å"He was looking for me† Ella thought. The next morning Ella decided to go down to Starbucks. She headed out into the hallway and pushed the down button. And there he was, Drew, leaning calmly against the elevator railing. â€Å"Great,† Ella said under her breath. â€Å"You looked beautiful, Ella. I don’t know why you left,† And with that he pulled out the silver shoes and blue pin from behind his back. â€Å"I believe these are yours, are they not? † Drew said flashing his lopsided smile. â€Å"Uh, yeah thank you† Ella stammered. â€Å"I broke up with Kylee† Drew choked out. And in that moment when they were both staring at each other intently, Drew realized she was his Cinderella and he was her Prince Charming. â€Å"I’ll buy you that drink if you be my girlfriend,† Drew teased. The End How to cite Modern Day Cinderella Story, Essay examples

How to Get in Shape free essay sample

The first step to getting in shape is to find a diet that suits the subjects body type, the second step to getting in shape is to set up a lifting program suitable for the subject’s time and strength, and finally the subject will need to set up a cardio routine that is not too intense for someone to endure. Dieting can be the hardest thing for someone to do. What we put into our bodies is the most essential part of getting in shape. Someone who is already overweight should not be eating high calorie foods. A good caloric intake for one day should be no more than 2,000 calories. The person or persons attempting to diet should first start out in the morning with a low calorie meal or a protein shake to jump start their day. Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. Dieting is not supposed to feel like starvation; in reality a person should feel full all day. We will write a custom essay sample on How to Get in Shape or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The way to maintain the full feeling is eating about six times throughout the day. That does not mean six full course meals either. Breakfast should be eaten around 6:00 a. m. The next 4 meals should be eaten every three hours after breakfast. Those meals should be a very low calorie snack for example tuna and crackers or a salad. The last meal of the day should be a decent sized portion to hold a person over until the morning, keeping in mind that they should not eat after 7:00 p. m. The second step is finding a weight lifting program that fits your lifestyle and body type; this can be very tricky. A personal trainer is highly ecommended for the novice, but if the financial means are not there here are a few quick tips for achieving that perfect physique. First a person should figure out what weights to use and what reps he or she can do with that weight. We should be doing about 8 to 10 reps for sets on each exercise. Monday I always start by doing legs, it pumps testosterone throughout the body naturally and increases the intensity of the workout for the week. Tuesday I usually do chest and a little bit of arm s. Wednesday I do back and another few sets of arms. Thursdays I do some shoulder and trapezoids exercises. Friday is the final but most important day. I usually do a little bit of everything to keep that pumped up feeling throughout the weekend. Saturday and Sundays are rest days from lifting but not from dieting or cardio. Many people get burned out quickly on their workout routines. The key is to find enjoyment in getting in shape and not make it like a job. A person should not overdo it in the beginning because it will only discourage them in the long run. Last but not least a person needs to find a cardio routine that best fits their busy schedules. Before an individual begins a cardio routine they should find out their resting heart rate. This is important because they do not want to over work themselves. A person can find the optimal heart rate for a cardio routine by subtracting their age from 200. Running is one of the most popular cardio routines and in my opinion it is the best. Some people who are more reluctant to run can always ride bikes or do other miscellaneous cardio activities such as rowing and the stair master. Cardio should be done in the morning after breakfast for the best results. It is not necessary to do cardio every day, but it should be done at least 3 times a week for 20 minute sessions. In conclusion getting in shape is not a very complicated process but it does take a lot time and determination. If a person is serious about getting in shape, he or she needs to make it a lifestyle not just a quick fix. In the long run getting in shape needs to be on everyone’s agenda. If something is not done soon, our nation’s health is in serious trouble.

Old Man And The Sea Essays (1465 words) - The Old Man And The Sea

Old Man And The Sea This part of the story has to do with Santiago against nature and the sea. In this part of the story, he goes out and fights nature in the form of terrible forces and dangerous creatures, among them, a marlin, sharks and hunger. He starts the story in a small skiff and moves out in a journey to capture a fish after a long losing streak of eighty-four days. Unfortunately his friend must desert him due to this problem and a greater force, his parents. Santiago must go out into the danger alone. For three harsh days and nights he fights a fish of enormous power. This is the second form of nature he must conquer. Earlier in the story, the first part of nature is himself, for which he must fight off his hunger. This is a harsh part of the story. He manages though to get a few bites in the form of flying fish and dolphin of which he would like to have salt on. This part of the story tells of a cold and harsh sea, that is, one that has value and mystery as well as death and danger. It has commercial value as well as the population of life in it. It is dark and treacherous though, and every day there is a challenge. A similar story tells about a tidal pool with life called `Cannery Road'. This part of the story has to deal with figures of Christ. It mainly deals with Santiago as being a figure of Christ and other characters as props, that is, characters which carry out the form of biblical themes. On the day before he leaves when he wakes up, Manolin, his helper, comes to his aid with food and drink. Also a point that might be good is that he has had bad luck with his goal for a great period of time and is sure it will work this time. Later, though, when Santiago needs him for the quest he sets out to do, Manolin deserts him, although he may not have wanted to at this time. In the novel Santiago comes upon a force bigger than his skiff, the marlin which misleads him out far past his intended reach. This is where he starts to lose his strength against something which seems a greater force. Santiago has a struggle of three days, which is significent because of the three days in Easter, and continues to fight on though his goal may not aquire anything. This is another idea through which Christ did, a struggle to get a goal done even though it may mean certain destruction to himself. This might accomplish nothing but the satisfaction of doing this and also has great risks. Finally he comes upon a painful experience with his hand which is in great pain and won't move. This is useful in the place where Christ loses his physical self and has less to deal with. On the third day, he recovers himself and returns to his home even though his only remaining treasure was a broken skiff, experience, and a torn up marlin. And in the final conclusion, you can see him dragging the mast of his skiff, a cross-like object, in his hand. This story has a certain sequence of events, first it has a hunter vs. his prey. This hunter does respect th e prey. Throughout the book it has this series of events: encounter, battle, defeat, and respect for the prey. This is Hemmingway's `Code of Honor'. This part of the novel has to do with relationships between two characters. The first to discuss are Santiago and Manolin, Manolin being the small follower of the old man named Santiago. Manolin is a small person that follows Santiago and listens to his wisdom. They treat each other unfriendly though for Manolin calls the Santiago 'old man' and he calls Manolin `boy' which seems to be absurd. In that situation I would consider both of them to go see a doctor. The next relationship to talk about would be that between Santiago and the village, which seems to be much better. He is given credit for food and

Music essays

Music essays How do we understand the language of music? Music is not a language to be learned. Rather it is an emotion that must be felt with the soul. Music in all its forms is heard differently by each and every person based on experience, emotion and fantasy. No matter what culture you belong to, every human hears music differently and interprets it that way. Although it is impossible to translate music as we would words, that does not give the emotion any less meaning or relevance. Sometimes it is the music of life that can shape where we will go, how we will express ourselves, what we will feel and how we will relate to the rest of the world. I venture to say, music in the rhythm and emotion of life, without it thered just be words. Every human, whether Caucasian, Native, African, Norwegian or Korean, blind, illiterate, or short, is capable of understanding music. Not only are they capable of creating music in the form of their choice, they are also able to interpret it according to their own emotion. Music is a necessity in our lives and without it, thered be no meaning. Even infants respond to music. From a fetus within the mothers womb, they recognize the beauty in a tune. It would be odd in a case to care for toddlers and not find them commonly humming a song to themselves. Not only do they mimic tunes but they also create their own medleys in their minds and freely express their emotion. You would find toddlers of every culture doing the same thing. You would, however, find that say Chinese toddlers would likely be humming tunes more closely linked to their own societys music being quick, short intervals of tunes. African children would likely be caught singing an up beat tune rather than a Jamaic an child singing somewhat of a Caribbean tune in a syncopated ballad form. Hearing the music is another varied situation. As well as listening to music with our ears, we also hear it with our ...

Things Fall Apart Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Things Fall Apart - Essay Example It is through this maze that Achebe directs his readers, using the Igbo viewpoint, traditions, and lingo to emphasize a harmony of common human values even to those who criticize African cultures of their prejudiced and untold beliefs (Obaze & Momah). Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is perceptive and very opinionated. Achebe has to be credited for his mysterious capacity of writing a novel that not only deals with history, but with the present and future, foreseeing things to emerge.  The novel is educational and conventional as well as biased, sociological, and historical. While its argument is the poisonous collision of Umuofian religion with the introduced foreign government of the colonizers, it also validates that at the same time as African culture, and literature may have been manipulated by European culture, similarly, European culture has also gained from African cultures (Obaze & Momah). Captivating as it is, the novel’s title of Things Fall Apart is confusing, for the reason that Umuofia does not really fall apart. It does not stand with Okonkwo and oppose change with hostilities, but fittingly adjusts for survival. Umuofia people or Igbo tribe are constantly searching the common sense of what they do and why, measuring up to the neighboring communities, and history. In Things Fall Apart, the only thing that falls apart is Okonkwos life, because of his stubbornness to adapt. The Umuofia people adapts and changes with the world, unlike Okonkwo who prefers to stay behind and

Kelly's Contract Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Kelly's Contract - Essay Example l contain a definitive promise providing the other party with an unambiguous option to accept or decline the offer.1 An offer constitutes the starting point of a contract and must be stated with clarity. In other words the person receiving the offer must be able to determine from the offer exactly what it is that is being offered as well as the terms of the offer.2 Kelly’s offer is for the sale of two black limousines for the 15,000 pounds. Kelly’s offer is in the form of an advertisement and typically an advertisement is treated as an â€Å"invitation to treat†particularly since it usually lacks specificity. This is usually the case in advertisements for the sale of goods.3 In Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co Ltd (1893) 1 QB 256 however, it was held that if an advertisement was presented with sufficient clarity it could constitute a valid offer.4 Once an offer with sufficient specificity to purchase the advertised goods is made and that offer is accepted by the vendor it is possible for a legally binding contract to be formed.5 Based on these rulings Kelly’s advertisement constitutes a valid offer, acceptance of which is capable of forming a legally binding contract. The offer made to Sarah via email for the sale of the two limousines is also a valid offer. However, Sarah’s response is problematic for Sarah since it did not mirror the actual offer and by implication represented a counter-offer. Sarah’s insistence that the limousines be sprayed white functions as a rejection of Kelly’s offer. A counter-offer is made when new terms are injected and are required to be accepted.6 Sarah’s counter-offer was made via email. In circumstances where communication of an acceptance is made via an instantaneous method such as an email, the offer is effective at the time of remittance.7 It is not certain that Kelly received the email, but even if she did not receive the email it will not negate communication of the counter-offer. Kelly is deemed to have

History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 3

History - Essay Example Even though well documented sources for this time period are lacking and a lot of the available information is believed to have a mythical and folktale nature, nevertheless, the Vikings were present and have managed to leave their mark on Scotland during this historical period. Also- called the era of the Dark Ages in Europe Vikings were often called Scandinavian warriors or Norse, due to their primary origins. The Vikings nation was known with its polygamy meaning that men had more than one wife (Flow of History, 2007). Thus plenty of children were born and soon enough the nation had to expand. The younger ones were determined to find new lands, in far better and warmer places. Adventure was in their blood. Soon Northern Europe had plenty of Vikings in their lands (Flow of History, 2007). In the early ninth century Vikings occupied, Italy, France and England, later on even Byzantium, they were so brave to travel that even reached North America. Having the best sailing ships, fearless Vikings soon invaded many lands. A remarkable body of Scottish Gaelic oral tradition has survived into the twentieth century, some part of which relates to the Vikings and other Norse themes. Its content cannot, however, be taken at face value as a straightforward form of historical sources material. For instances, the heroic ballads and legends containing a ‘Viking’ element are set within a marvelous and magical world. (Graham-Campbell & Batey 2005, p. 46) In the late 8th century huge ships arrived at the coast of North Britain and Scotland. Viking warriors were said to raid and plunder what is now Edinburgh in the 793 AD (Barett, 2003). Many of the associations with the Vikings include terror and savage. Many preserved paintings from this period depict Vikings and their horrible invasions and attacks which still carry a significant

History of the Selective Service and the Draft

History of the Selective Service and the Draft Albeit with some qualifying distinctions, women have always served in the U.S. Military since the birth of America. Their roles, responsibilities and numbers have steadily increased over the years and their strides in equality have afforded them the same opportunities as men. However, they have never been subject to Selective Service registration or a military draft in America. Women continue fighting towards being considered equals in the eyes of the nation even though U. S. Military policies changed, lifting all restriction on combat roles. Some might say it is time while others might say women should never have to register. Women should be given the same legal obligation as men to register for the Selective Service by their 18th birthday. In 1917, Congress passed the Military Selective Service Act (MSSA) at the end of World War I, which authorized them to draft men as troops. President Roosevelt supported amending the act to draft women as nurses during World War II and the act passed in both the House and Senate just before the end of the war. The country came close to drafting women as nurses during World War II, but a surge of volunteers made it unnecessary. The draft, again, was used during both the Korean and Vietnam Wars and pulled from qualified men only. There was a lot of protest against the Vietnam War and the draft during this time. Nobody wanted to send the nations boys off to fight and die in a senseless war. Many men would find ways to dodge the draft. The drafts immense unpopularity during the Vietnam War saw to its end in 1973 and in 1975, whereupon registration for the Selective Service was no longer required. U. S. Military would now and for the next 40 years be considered an All-Volunteer Force. In 1980, the MSSA was reinstated and, once again, men between the ages 18 and 26 would have to register with the Selective Service. This reinstatement of the Selective Service Act came in response to heightened Russian military action and President Carter wanted to ensure that the nation had the contingence force to meet any possibly threats. Included in the Act was an amendment to consider women for registration and service in the U. S. Military. Congress approved reactivating registration, but declined the amendment due to Department of Defense (DOD) policy excluding women from assignments in combat positions. Even with the reinternment of the MSSA by President Carter, the draft was never enacted after 1973. December of 2015 brought a major shift to the U. S. Military with the announcement that all military jobs were now open to women. Military officials and Senators took this opportunity to reexamine and amend the MSSA to include female registrants. In June of 2016, the Senate passed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that included the amendment as the next logically progressive course of action. The primary reason for the Selective Services exclusion of women relied upon womens restrictions from combat roles. Still, many legislators oppose having the nations daughters, mothers and wives being drafted and forced to fight in a war. There are speculations that Congress had removed the amendment and corroborated a compromised version of the legislation with the Senate. The White House initially opposed women having to register with the Selective Service, but in December of 2016 voiced support for amendment and with women in combat roles. The final decision may not be with the President, Senate, or Congress, but rather with Federal Judicial branch, which may ultimately be the deciding voice on whether this policy is effectuated. Legal case against the Selective Service The MSSA has been legally challenged on severely occasions by citizens and organizations claiming unfair discrimination or unconstitutional merit. The issues are: who is being discriminated against and what rights are being violated? The answer: women for not having the same obligation and opportunities as men to defend our country or men for being singled out and forced to fight in a war in the event of the draft being enacted. In July of 1980, Robert Goldberg filed a lawsuit against Bernard Rostker and the Selective Service System, claiming the MSSA violated the Fifth Amendments due process clause and was unconstitutional. Rostker appealed the decision of the Pennsylvania Federal Court to the Supreme Court when Goldberg won. In the Supreme Court case of Rostker v. Goldberg (453 U.S. 57) of 1981, the court ruled in favor of Rostker stating that the MSSA does not violate the Fifth Amendment due process clause due to current restriction of combat roles on women. Congress concluded the MSSAs purpose relied on drafting combat troops, and restrictions made registering women null. In April of 2013, James Lesmeister and the National Coalition for Men filed a lawsuit against the Selective Service Administration once more claiming that the MSSA was unconstitutional. The Central District of California Court dismissed the case, stating U. S. Military policies still excluded women from combat positions. However, in February of 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the courts dismissal, since the lawsuit had new legitimacy due to combat roles being now opened to women. Women in combat roles Women have societally fought hard to be considered equally qualified for the same positions and opportunities as men, and the U.S. Military is no exception. Since the 1990 and for the next 27 years, women have started to take a more direct role in combat positions and so has their heroism and sacrifices. The nation saw the first of many in the increase of womens roles; U.S. Navy warship and U.S. Air Force fighter squadrons commanders, women fly fighter jets in combat and combat missions off of aircraft carriers, cleared to serve aboard combat ships at sea and aboard submarines, and most recently with two women graduating from the U. S. Armys Ranger School. Army Capitan, Kristen Griest, one of the first women to graduate became the first female infantry officer in U. S. Army history (Kamarck, 2016b, p. 7). Women are now being accepted to many training courses that were once off limits. The U. S. Army has approved female officers for the Infantry and Armor branches and the U. S. Marine Corps approved women as riflemen and machine gunners. Womens heroism and sacrifice The Global War on Terrorism has proven that women being outside of combat roles do not equate women not being involved in combat. Women have earned an overwhelming number awards for valor during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraq Freedom (OIF) than any conflict before. The awards included Silver Stars, Distinguished Flying Crosses, Air Medals, and Bronze Stars the same awards men have received valor in combat roles. U. S. Army Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester became the first female soldier to be awarded the Silver Star since World War II and to be cited for close combat action (Kamarck, 2016b, p. 7). Heroism and sacrifice often intertwine, and women bore witness to sacrifice in combat, just like men. Margaret Cochran Corbin became the first woman to receive a military pension for an injury sustained in defense of Fort Washington during the American Revolutionary War (Kamarck b p1). The nonlinear warfare of the OEF and OIF put women in direct combat engagement, as a result women casualties and wounded then all other military conflicts combined. Women required register In a world of unpredictable political climates, inevitable foreign and domestic threats to our country and its U. S. Military call forth the need for the Selective Service. It serves as a natural deterrent to possible threats, stating that the U. S. Military has the ability to assemble a much larger force in times of crisis. The Selective Service System to as a relatively low-cost insurance policy against potential future threats that may require national mobilization beyond what could be supported by the all-volunteer force (Kamarck, 2016a, p. 24). Having women register for the Selective Service benefits our country twofold as it grants the U. S. Military an equally qualified group of citizens protecting the nation and it shows the U. S. Military has a higher ability to fill its ranks. The nation would truly show women are equal and in a time of national emergence can be called upon. Women not required register The ethical and moral issues arise by excluding women from registering now that military restrictions have been lifted; men would be forced to fight on the front line while women get to choose if the draft is ever enacted, and the MSSA is unconstitutional and discriminatory. Concerns of fairness and equality for men are raised when exemptions for women are currently in place, as men would not have an equal opportunity to opt out of combat assignments. The ability to choose opting from combat may cause its own issues for the Service, as many would choose to avoid combat, especially in the event of a war or national emergency (Kamarck, 2016a, p. 26). Legal cases can now be made against the MSSA being unconstitutional and discriminatory. Previous court roles will have to be re-examined and whether or not the MSSA violate the U.S. Constitutions equal protection clause will have to be addressed. A clear message would be sent throughout the nation regarding womens equality in society and t heir inability to protect the nation, even with the changes in military views (McGuire, 2014, p. 709). Resolving the Selective Service System By resolving the Selective Service, it could potentially increase the possibility of crisis throughout the world. Studies have shown that if the government tried to reintroduce a registration requirement during a time of a national need, there would sufficient challenges fully staffing and optimizing the necessary infrastructure that would be needed to meet the urgent DoD requirements. Enforcing a new registration requirement during time of need would likely result in a very low compliance rates, making difficult to establish a database of eligible individuals. (Kamarck, 2016a, p. 25) Conclusion The desirable outcome for the Selective Service will be with either women having to register or resolving the system all together. The truth is, nobody wants to see their sons or daughters being forced to fight in a war. The draft has been negatively perceived since the Vietnam War. Even the mention of the draft during any military action insets many to protests. The last time the draft was enacted, the overwhelming unpopularity caused it to be resolved. Many men found ways to avoid the draft, some more extreme than others. The Selective Service System has come under legal fire many times, suits claiming unfair discrimination or unconstitutional merit. For far too long, the Selective Service has been gender-exclusionary in regards to U.S Military restriction on combat roles. Now that policies have changed, so should the Selective Service. Regardless of gender, people who meet the required standards should be assigned to roles consistent to their abilities.

College Admissions Essay: My Father was Ten Feet Tall :: College Admissions Essays

My Father was Ten Feet Tall My father is in the upper room. With his passing, in the dog days of the summer, came great sadness and longing. As I flip through the pages of my memory, I don't recall my father being a tall, striking figure. But to a child, he seemed to stand ten feet tall. He commanded all of his children using a sense of respect and pride. With age, my father's eyesight became impaired and his gait was not so steady. However, my father never lost his inner vision or the ability to stand by his word. And on a good day, when I felt the warmth of his embrace, in a fleeting glance he appeared to be the spry youngster of his mid-twenties that ushered mama and me to church every Sunday. As I grew older, I noticed that my father and I basically had the same outlook on life. I'd bounce ideas off him and he'd basically come to the same conclusion about life as I. I loved my father unconditionally, not because he listened to me for hours at a time, but because he believed in me. When I informed my father of my decision to attend college, he was excited. And when I told him that I intended to pursue a degree in journalism he said, "Doreen, be the best that you can be." My father wanted desperately to attend my graduation from college. But he will never have the opportunity to do that. My father was slain on the Chicago lakefront while taking a walk. My fondest memories of my father were of lazy Sunday afternoons. He loved to listen to music and drink tea. My father also loved to take everyone to the rodeo, beach and park. My father never favored one child over another among my siblings. He taught us to share and to love one another. When I travel back to Chicago and throughout the Midwest, it truly touches my heart to see fathers playing on the ballfields with their children.

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison JEFFREY H. REIMAN American University or the same criminal behavior, the poor are more likely to be arrested; if arrested, they are more likely to be charged; if charged, more likely to be convicted; if convicted, more likely to be sentenced to prison; and if sentenced, more likely to be given longer prison terms than members of the middle and upper classes. 1 In other words, the image of the criminal population one sees in our nation’s jails and prisons is distorted by the shape of the criminal justice system itself.It is the face of evil reflected in a carnival mirror, but it is no laughing matter. F The face in the criminal justice carnival mirror is also †¦ very frequently black face. Although blacks do not make up the majority of the inmates in our jails and prisons, they make up a proportion that far outstrips their proportion in the population. 2 Here, too, the image we see is distorted by the processes of the criminal ju stice system itself.Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey write in their widely used textbook Criminology that Numerous studies have shown that African-Americans are more likely to be arrested, indicted, convicted, and committed to an institution than are whites who commit the same offenses, and many other studies have shown that blacks have a poorer chance than whites to receive probation, a suspended sentence, parole, commutation of a death sentence, or pardon. 3 Curiously enough, statistics on differential treatment of races are available in greater abundance than are statistics on differential treatment of economic classes.For instance, although the FBI tabulates arrest rates by race (as well as by sex, age, and geographical area), it omits class or income. Similarly, both the President’s Crime Commission Report and Sutherland and Cressey’s Criminology have index entries for race or racial discrimination but none for class or income of offenders. It would seem that b oth independent and government data gatherers are more willing to own up to America’s racism than to its class bias. Nevertheless, it does not pay to look at these as two independent forms of bias.It is my view that, at least as far as criminal justice is concerned, racism is simply one powerful form of economic bias. I use evidence on differential treatment of blacks as evidence of differential treatment of members of the lower classes. There are five reasons: 1. First and foremost, black Americans are disproportionately poor. In 1995, while one out of every eight white Americans received income below the poverty line, three out of every ten black Americans did. The picture is even worse when we shift from income to wealth (property such as a home, land, stocks): In 1991, black households owned one-tenth the median net worth of white households. 5 Unemployment figures give a similarly dismal picture: In 1995, 4. 9 percent of white workers were unemployed and 10. 4 percent of blacks were. Among those in the crime-prone ages of 16 to 24, 15. 6 percent of white youngsters (with no college) and 34. 0 (more than one of every three) black youngsters (with no college) were jobless. 6 2.The factors most likely to keep one out of trouble with the law and out of prison, such as a suburban living room instead of a tenement alley to gamble in or legal counsel able to devote time to one’s case instead of an overburdened public defender, are the kinds of things that money can buy regardless of one’s race, creed, or national origin. For example, as we shall see, arrests of blacks for illicit drug possession or dealing have sky- Reiman, Jeffrey, THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET PRISON: Ideology, Class and Criminal Justice, 5th Edition,  © 1998, pp. 01–148. Adapted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. , Upper Saddle River, NJ. 1 2 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison rocketed in recent years, rising way out of proportion to drug ar rests for whites— though research shows no greater drug use among blacks than among whites. However, drug arrests are most easily made in â€Å"disorganized inner-city† areas, where drug sales are more likely to take place out of doors, and dealers are more willing to sell to strangers. Blacks are (proportionately) more likely than whites to live in such inner-city areas nd thus more likely than whites to be arrested on drug charges. 7 But one very important reason that blacks are more likely than whites to live in disorganized inner-city areas is that a greater percentage of blacks than whites are poor and unemployed. What might at first look like a straightforward racial disparity turns out to reflect economic status. 3. Blacks who travel the full route of the criminal justice system and end up in jail or prison are close in economic condition to whites who do.In 1978, 53 percent of black jail inmates had pre-arrest incomes below $3,000, compared with 44 percent of w hites. 8 1983, the median pre-arrest income of black jail inmates was $4,067 and that of white jail inmates was $6,312. About half of blacks in jail were unemployed before arrest and 44 percent of whites were. 9 In 1991, 30 percent of whites in the prison population and 38 percent of blacks reported full- or part-time employment during the month before their arrest. 10 4.Some studies suggest that race works to heighten the effects of economic condition on criminal justice outcomes, so that â€Å"being unemployed and black substantially increase[s] the chances of incarceration over those associated with being either unemployed or black. †11 This means that racism will produce a kind of selective economic bias, making a certain segment of the unemployed even more likely to end up behind bars. 5. Finally, it is my belief that the economic powers that be in America have sufficient power to end or drastically reduce racist bias in the criminal justice system.To the extent that the y allow it to exist, it is not unreasonable to assume that it furthers their economic interests. For all these reasons, racism will be treated here as either a form of economic bias or a tool that achieves the same end. In the remainder of this [selection], I show how the criminal justice system functions to weed out the wealthy (meaning both middle- and upper-class offenders) at each stage of the process and thus produces a distorted image of the crime problem. Before entering into this discussion, three points are worth noting: First, it is not my view that the poor are all innocent victims persecuted by the evil rich.The poor do commit crimes, and my own assumption is that the vast majority of the poor who are confined in our prisons are guilty of the crimes for which they were sentenced. In addition, there is good evidence that the poor do commit a greater portion of the crimes against person and property listed in the FBI Index than the middle- and upper-classes do, relative to their numbers in the national population. What I have already tried to prove is that the crimes in the FBI Index are not the only acts that threaten us nor are they the acts that threaten us the most.What I will try to prove in what follows is that the poor are arrested and punished by the criminal justice system much more frequently than their contribution to the crime problem would warrant—thus the criminals who populate our prisons as well as the public’s imagination are disproportionately poor. Second, the following discussion has been divided into three sections that correspond to the major criminal justice decision points. †¦ As always, such classifications are a bit neater than reality, and so they should not be taken as rigid compartments. Many of the distorting processes operate at all criminal justice decision points.So, for example, while I will primarily discuss the light-handed treatment of white-collar criminals in the section on charging and senten cing, it is also true that white-collar criminals are less likely to be arrested or convicted than are blue-collar criminals. The section in which a given issue is treated is a reflection of the point in the criminal justice process at which the disparities are the most striking. Suffice it to say, however, that the disparities between the treatment of the poor and the nonpoor are to be found at all points of the process.Third, it must be borne in mind that the movement from arrest to sentencing is a funnelling process, so that discrimination that occurs at any early stage shapes the population that reaches later The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 3 stages. Thus, for example, some recent studies find little economic bias in sentence length for people convicted of similar crimes. 12 When reading such studies, one should remember that the population that reaches the point of sentencing has already been subject to whatever discrimination exists at earlier stages.If, for exampl e, among people with similar offenses and records, poor people are more likely to be charged and more likely to be convicted, then even if the sentencing of convicted criminals is evenhanded, it will reproduce the discrimination that occurred before. using both official and self-reported data suggests †¦ that there is no pervasive relationship between SES [socioeconomic status] and delinquency. †15 This conclusion is echoed by Jensen and Thompson, who argue that The safest onclusion concerning class structure and delinquency is the same one that has been proposed for several decades: class, no matter how defined, contributes little to explaining variation of self-reports of common delinquency. 16 Others conclude that while lower-class individuals do commit more than their share of crime, arrest records overstate their share and understate that of the middle and upper classes. 17 Still other studies suggest that some forms of serious crime— forms usually associated with lower-class youth— show up more frequently among higher-class persons than among lower. 8 For instance, Empey and Erikson interviewed 180 white males aged 15 to 17 who were drawn from different economic strata. They found that â€Å"virtually all respondents reported having committed not one but a variety of different offenses† Although youngsters from the middle classes constituted 55 percent of the group interviewed, they admitted to 67 percent of the instances of breaking and entering, 70 percent of the instances of property destruction, and an astounding 87 percent of all armed robberies admitted to by the entire sample. 9 Williams and Gold studied a national sample of 847 males and females between the ages of 13 and 16. 20 Of these, 88 percent admitted to at least one delinquent offense. Even those who conclude â€Å"that more lower status youngsters commit delinquent acts more frequently than do higher status youngsters†21 also recognize that lower cl ass youth are significantly overrepresented in official records. Gold writes that â€Å"about five times more lowest than highest status boys appear in the official records; if records were complete and unselective, we estimate that the ratio would be closer to 1. :1. †22 The simple fact is that for the same offense, a poor person is more likely to be arrested and, if arrested charged, than a middleor upper-class person. 23 This means, first of all, that poor people are more likely to come to the attention of the police. Furthermore, even when apprehended, the police are more likely to formally charge a poor person and release a higher-class person for the same offense. Gold writes that ARREST AND CHARGING The problem with most official records of who commits crime is that they are really statistics on who gets arrested and convicted.If, as I will show, the police are more likely to arrest some people than others, these official statistics may tell us more about police than a bout criminals. In any event, they give us little reliable data about those who commit crime and do not get caught. Some social scientists, suspicious of the bias built into official records, have tried to devise other methods of determining who has committed a crime. Most often, these methods involve an interview or questionnaire in which the respondent is assured of anonymity and asked to reveal whether he or she has committed any offenses for which he or she could be arrested and convicted.Techniques to check reliability of these self-reports also have been devised however, if their reliability is still in doubt, common sense would dictate that they would understate rather than overstate the number of individuals who have committed crimes and never come to official notice. In light of this, the conclusions of these studies are rather astounding. It would seem that crime is the national pastime. The President’s Crime Commission conducted a survey of 10,000 households and di scovered that â€Å"91 percent of all Americans have violated laws that could have subjected them to a term of imprisonment at one time in their lives. 13 A number of other studies support the conclusion that serious criminal behavior is widespread among middle- and upper-class individuals, although these individuals are rarely, if ever, arrested. Some of the studies show that there are no significant differences between economic classes in the incidence of criminal behavor. 14 The authors of a recent review of literature on class and delinquency conclude that â€Å"Research published since 1978, 4 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison oys who live in poorer parts of town and are apprehended by police for delinquency are four to five times more likely to appear in some official record than boys from wealthier sections who commit the same kinds of offenses. These same data show that, at each stage in the legal process from charging a boy with an offense to some sort of dispos ition in court, boys from different socioeconomic backgrounds are treated differently, so that those eventually incarcerated in public institutions, that site of most of the research on delinquency, are selectively poorer boys. 4 From a study of self-reported delinquent behavior, Gold finds that when individuals were apprehended, â€Å"if the offender came from a higher status family, police were more likely to handle the matter themselves without referring it to the court. †25 Terence Thornberry reached a similar conclusion in his study of 3,475 delinquent boys in Philadelphia. Thornberry found that among boys arrested for equally serious offenses and who had similar prior offense records, police were more likely to refer to lower-class youths than the more affluent ones to juvenile court.The police were more likely to deal with the wealthier youngsters informally, for example, by holding them in the station house until their parents came rather than instituting formal proce dures. Of those referred to juvenile court, Thornberry found further that for equally serious offenses and with similar prior records, the poorer youngsters were more likely to be institutionalized than were the affluent ones. The wealthier youths were more likely to receive probation than the poorer ones.As might he expected, Thornberry found the same relationships when corn paring the treatment of black and white youths apprehended for equally serious offenses. 26 Recent studies continue to show similar effects. For example, Sampson found that, for the same crimes, juveniles in lower-class neighborhoods were more likely to have some police record than those in better-off neighborhoods. Again, for similar crimes, lower-class juveniles were more likely to be referred to court than better-off juveniles.If you think these differences are not so important because they are true only of young offenders, remember that this group accounts for much of the crime problem. Moreover, other stud ies not limited to the young tend to show the same economic bias. McCarthy found that, in metropolitan areas, for similar suspected crimes, unemployed people were more likely to be arrested than employed. 27 As I indicated above, racial bias is but another form in which the bias against the poor works. And blacks are more likely to be suspected or arrested than whites. A. 988 Harvard Law Review overview of studies on race and the criminal process concludes that â€Å"most studies †¦ reveal what many police officers freely admit: that police use race as an independently significant, if not determinative, factor in deciding whom to follow, detain, search, or arrest. †28 â€Å"A 1994 study of juvenile detention decisions found that African-American and Hispanic youths were more likely to be detained at each decision point, even after controlling for the influence of offense seriousness and social factors (e. g. , singleparent home).Decisions by both police and the courts t o detain a youngster were highly influenced by race. †29 The study states that, â€Å"[n]ot only were there direct effects of race, but indirectly, socioeconomic status was related to detention, thus putting youth of color again at risk for differential treatment. †30 Reporting the results of University of Missouri criminologist Kimberly Kempf’s study of juvenile justice in fourteen Pennsylvania counties, Jerome Miller says that â€Å"Black teenagers were more likely to be detained, to be handled formally, to be waived to adult court, and to be adjudicated delinquent. 31 And the greater likelihood of arrest that minorities face is matched by a greater likelihood of being charged with a serious offense. For example, Huizinga and Elliott report that: â€Å"Minorities appear to be at greater risk for being charged with more serious offenses than whites when involved in comparable levels of delinquent behavior. †32 Bear in mind that once an individual has a c riminal record, it becomes harder for that person to get employment thus increasing the likelihood of future criminal involvement and more serious criminal charges.For reasons mentioned earlier, a disproportionately large percentage of the casualties in the recent War on Drugs are poor inner-city minority males. Michael Tonry writes that, â€Å"according to National Institute on Drug Abuse (1991) surveys of Americans’ drug use, [Blacks] are not more likely than Whites ever to have used most drugs of abuse. Nonetheless, the †¦ number of drug arrests of Blacks more than doubled between 1985 and 1989, whereas White drug arrests increased only by 27 percent. †33 A study conducted by the SentencingThe Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 5 Project, based mainly on Justice Department statistics, indicates that â€Å"Blacks make up 12 percent of the United States’ population and constitute 13 percent of all monthly drug users†¦, but represent 35 percent o f those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted of drug possession and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession. †34 Numerous studies of police use of deadly force show that blacks are considerably more likely than whites or Hispanics to be shot by the police.For example, using data from Memphis, Tennessee, covering the years from 1969 through 1974, James Fyfe found that blacks were 10 times more likely than whites to have been shot at unsuccessfully by police, 18 times more likely to have been wounded, and 5 times more likely to have been killed. †35 A nation that has watched the brutal treatment meted out to Rodney King by California police officers will not find this surprising. Does anyone think this would have happened if King were a white man? Any number of reasons can be offered to account for the differences in police treatment of poor versus well-off citizens.Some argue that they relied that the poor have less privacy. 36 W hat others can do in their living rooms or backyards the poor do on the street. Others argue that a police officers decision to book a poor youth and release a middle-class youth reflects either the officer’s judgment that the higher-class youngster’s family will be more likely and more able to discipline him or her than the lower-class youngster’s, or differences in the degree to which poor and middle-class complainants demand arrest.Others argue that police training and police work condition police officers to be suspicious of certain kinds of people, such as lower-class youth, blacks, Mexicans, and so on,37 a thus more likely to detect their criminality. Still others hold that police mainly arrest those with the least political clout,38 those who are least able to focus public attention on police practices or bring political influence to bear, and these happen to be the members of the lowest social and economic classes. Regardless of which view one takes, and probably all have some truth in them, one conclusion is inescapable.One of the reasons the offender â€Å"at the end of the road in prison is likely to be a member of the lowest social and economic groups in the country† is that the police officers who guard the access to the road to prison make sure that more poor people make the trip than well-to-do people. Likewise for prosecutors. A recent study of prosecutors’ decisions shows that lower-class individuals are more likely to have charges pressed against them than upper-class individuals. 39 Racial discrimination also characterizes prosecutors’ decisions to charge.The Harvard Law Review overview of studies on race and the criminal process asserts, â€Å"Statistical studies indicate that prosecutors are more likely to pursue full prosecution, file more severe charges, and seek more stringent penalties in cases involving minority defendants than in cases involving nonminority defendants. †40 One study of whites, blacks, and Hispanics arrested in Los Angeles on suspicion of having committed a felony found that, among defendants with equally serious charges and prior records, 59 percent of whites had their charges dropped at the initial screening, ompared with 40 percent of blacks and 37 percent of Hispanics. 41 The weeding out of the wealthy starts at the very entrance to the criminal justice system: The decision about whom to investigate, arrest, or charge is not made simply on the basis of the offense committed or the danger posed. It is a decision distorted by a systematic economic bias that works to the disadvantage of the poor. This economic bias is a two-edged sword.Not only are the poor arrested and charged out of proportion to their numbers for the kinds of crimes poor people generally commit—burglary, robbery, assault, and so forth—but when we reach the kinds of crimes poor people almost never have the opportunity to commit, such as antitrust violations, indus trial safety violations, embezzlement, and serious tax evasion, the criminal justice system shows an increasingly benign and merciful lace. The more likely that a crime is the type committed by middle and upper class people, the less likely that it will be treated as a criminal offense.When it comes to crime in the streets, where the perpetrator is apt to be poor, he or she is even more likely to be arrested and formally charged. When it comes to crime in the suites, where the offender is apt to be affluent, the system is most likely to deal with the crime noncriminally, that is, by civil litigation or informal settlement. Where it does choose to proceed criminally, as we will see in the section on sentencing, it rarely goes beyond a slap on the wrist. Not only is the main entry to the road to prison held wide open to the poor but the access routes for the wealthy are largely sealed off.Once again, we should not be surprised at whom we find in our prisons. 6 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison CONVICTION Between arrest and imprisonment lies the crucial process that determines guilt or innocence. Studies of individuals accused of similar offenses and with similar prior records show that the poor defendant is more likely to be adjudicated guilty than is the wealthier defendant. 42 In the adjudication process the only thing that should count is whether the accused is guilty and whether the prosecution can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.Unfortunately, at least two other factors that are irrelevant to the question of guilt or innocence significantly affect the outcome: One is the ability of the accused to be free on bail prior to trial; and the second is access to legal counsel able to devote adequate time and energy to the case. Because both bail and high-quality legal counsel cost money, it should come as no surprise that here as elsewhere the poor do poorly. Being released on bail is Important in several respects.First and foremost is that those not released on hail are kept in jail like individuals who have been found guilty. They are thus punished while they are still legally innocent. â€Å"On June 30, 1995, an estimated 44 percent of the nation’s adult jail inmates had been convicted on their current charge. An estimated 223,000 adult jail inmates were serving a sentence, awaiting sentencing, or serving time in jail [or a probation or parole violation. Between 1985 and 1995 the number of convicted inmates rose by nearly 100,000—up from 13,409.During the same period, the number of convicted jail inmates, including those on trial or awaiting arraignment or trial, doubled (from 127,059 to an estimated 284,100). †43 Beyond the obvious ugliness of punishing people before they are found guilty, confined defendants suffer from other disabilities. Specifically, they cannot actively aid in their own defense by seeking out witnesses and evidence. Several studies have shown that among defendants accused of the sam e offenses those who make bail are more likely to be acquitted than those who do not. 4 In a recent study of unemployment and punishment, Chiricos and Bales found that ‘after the effects of other factors [seriousness of crime, prior record, etc. ] were controlled, an unemployed defendant was 3. 2 times more like to be incarcerated before trial than his employed counterpart. †45 Furthermore, because the time spent in jail prior to adjudication of guilt may count as part of the sentence if one is found guilty, the accused are often placed in a ticklish position.Let us say the accused believes he or she is innocent, and let us say also that he or she has been in the slammer for two months awaiting trial. Along comes the prosecutor to offer a deal: If you plead guilty to such-and-such (usually a lesser offense than has been charged, say, possession of burglar’s tools instead of burglary), the prosecutor promises to ask the judge to sentence you to two months. In other words, plead guilty and walk out of jail today (free, but with a criminal record that will make finding a job hard and insure a stiffer sentence next ime around)—or maintain your innocence, stay in jail until trial, and then be tried for the full charge instead of the lesser offense! In fact, not only does the prosecutor threaten to prosecute for the full charge, but this is often accompanied by the implied but very real threat to press for the most severe penalty as well—for taking up the court’s time. Plea bargaining such as this is an everyday occurrence in the criminal justice system. Contrary to the Perry Mason image, the vast majority of criminal convictions in the United States are reached without a trial.It is estimated that between 70 and 95 percent of convictions are the result of a negotiated plea,46 that is, a bargain in which the accused agrees to plead guilty (usually to a lesser offense than he or she is charged with or to one offense out of many he or she is charged with) in return for an informal promise of leniency from the prosecutor with the tacit consent of the judge. If you were the jailed defendant offered a deal like this, how would you choose? Suppose you were a poor black man not likely to be able to retain F. Lee Bailey or Edward Bennett Williams for your defense.The advantages of access to adequate legal counsel during the adjudicative process are obvious but still worthy of mention. In 1963, the U. S. Supreme Court handed down the landmark Gideon v. Wainwright decision, holding that the states must provide legal counsel to the indigent in all felony cases. As a result, no person accused of a serious crime need face his or her accuser without a lawyer. However, the Supreme Court has not held that the Constitution entitles individuals to lawyers able to devote equal time and resources to their cases.Even though Gideon represents significant progress in making good on the constitutional promise of equal treatment before the law, we still are left with two transmission belts of justice: one for the poor and one for the affluent. There is an emerging body of case law on the right to effective assistance of counsel;47 however, this is yet to have any serious The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 7 impact on the assembly-line legal aid handed out to the poor.Indigent defendants, those who cannot afford to retain their own lawyers, will be defended either by a public defender or by a private attorney assigned by the court. Because the public defender is a salaried attorney with a case load much larger than that of a private criminal lawyer,48 and because court-assigned private attorneys are paid a fixed fee that is much lower than they charge their regular clients, neither is able or motivated to devote much time to the indigent defendant’s defense. Both are strongly motivated to bring their cases to a close quickly by negotiating a plea of guilty.Because the public defender works i n day-today contact with the prosecutor and the judge, the pressures on him or her to negotiate a plea as quickly as possible, instead of rocking the boat by threatening to go to trial,49 are even greater than those that work on court-assigned counsel. In an essay aptly titled â€Å"Did You Have a Lawyer When You Went to Court? No, I Had a Public Defender,† Jonathan Casper reports the perceptions of this process from the standpoint of the defendants: Most of the men spent very little time with their public defender.In the court in which they eventually plead guilty, they typically reported spending on the order of five to ten minutes with their public defender. These conversations usually took place in the bull-pen of the court house or in the hallway. The brief conversations usually did not involve much discussion of the details surrounding the alleged crime, mitigating circumstances or the defendants’ motives or backgrounds. Instead, they focused on the deal, the off er the prosecution was likely to make or had made in return for a cop out.Often the defendants reported that the first words the public defender spoke (or at least the first words the defendants recalled) were, â€Å"I can get you†¦, if you plead guilty. †50 As might be expected, with less time and fewer resources to devote to the cause, public defenders and assigned lawyers cannot devote as much time and research to preparing the crucial pretrial motions that can often lead to dismissal of charges against the accused. A recent study of 28,315 felony defendants in various county and city jurisdictions in Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky shows that public defenders got cases dropped for 11. percent of their defendants, and private attorneys got dismissals for 48 percent of their defendants. As also might be expected, the overall acquittal rate for privately retained counsel is considerably better than that for public defenders. The same study shows that public defenders achieved either dismissal of charges or a finding of not guilty in 11. 4 percent of the indictments they handled, and private attorneys got their clients off the hook in 56 percent of their cases. The superior record of private attorneys held good when comparisons were made among defendants accused of similar offenses and with similar prior records. 1 The picture that emerges from federal courts is not much different. 52 The problem of adequate legal representation is particularly acute in capital cases. According to Robert Johnson, â€Å"Most attorneys in capital cases are provided by the state. Defendants, as good capitalists, routinely assume that they will get what they pay for: next to nothing. † Their perceptions, he concludes, â€Å"may not be far from right. † Indeed, Stephen Gettinger maintains that an inadequate defense was â€Å"the single outstanding characteristic† of the condemned persons he studied.The result: Capital defendants appeared in court as â€Å"creatures beyond comprehension, virtually gagged and masked in preparation for the execution chamber. †53 Writes Linda Williams in the Wall Street Journal, The popular perception is that the system guarantees a condemned person a lawyer. But most states provide counsel only for the trial and the automatic review of the sentence by the state appeals court. Indigent prisoners—a description that applies to just about everybody on death row—who seek further review must rely on the charity of a few private lawyers and on cash-starved organizations like the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee. 4 A recent Time magazine article on this topic is entitled You Don’t Always Get Perry Mason. † Says the author, â€Å"Because the majority of murder defendants are †¦ broke†¦, many of them get courtappointed lawyers who lack the resources, experience or inclination to do their utmost. †¦ Some people go to traffic court with better prepared lawyers than many murder defendants get. †55 Needless to say, the distinct legal advantages that money can buy become even more salient when 8 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison we enter the realm of corporate and other white-collar crime.Indeed, it is often precisely the time and cost involved in bringing to court a large corporation with its army of legal eagles that is offered as an excuse for the less formal and more genteel treatment accorded to corporate crooks. This excuse is, of course, not equitably distributed to all economic classes, any more than quality legal service is. This means that regardless of actual innocence or guilt, one’s chances of beating the rap increase as one’s income increases. Regardless of what fraction of crimes are committed by the poor, the criminal justice system is distorted so that an even reater fraction of those convicted will be poor. And with conviction comes sentencing. rob a bank of a thousand dollars with a st ickup note, than a smooth talking S&L executive who steals a million dollars with a fraudulent note. Later in the hearing, Chairman Annunzio questioned the administration’s representative: You cited, Mr. Dennis, several examples in your testimony of successful convictions with stiff sentences, but the average sentence so far is actually about 2 years, compared to an average sentence of about 9 years for bank robbery.Why do we throw the book at people who rob a bank in broad daylight but we coddle people who †¦ rob the bank secretly? 56 The simple fact is that the criminal justice system reserves its harshest penalties for its lower-class clients and puts on kid gloves when confronted with a better class of crook. We will come back to the soft treatment of the S&L crooks shortly. For the moment, note that the tendency to treat higher-class criminals more leniently than lower-class criminals has been with us for a long time. In 1972, the New York Times did a study on sente ncing in state and federal courts.The Times stated that â€Å"crimes that tend to be committed by the poor get tougher sentences than those committed by the well-to-do,† that federal â€Å"defendants who could not afford private counsel were sentenced nearly twice as severely as defendants with private or no counsel,† and that a â€Å"study by the Vera Institute of Justice of courts in the Bronx indicates a similar pattern in the state courts. †57 More recently, D’Alessio and Stolzenberg studied a random sample of 2,760 offenders committed to the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections during fiscal year 1985.Although they found no greater sentence severity for poor offenders found guilty of property crimes, they found that poor offenders did receive longer sentences for violent crimes, such as manslaughter, and for morals offenses, such as narcotics possession. Nor, by the way, did sentencing guidelines reduce this disparity. 58 A study of indiv iduals convicted of drunk driving found that increased education (taken as an indicator of higher occupational status) â€Å"increase [d] the rate of movement from case hung to probation and decrease[d] the rate of movement to prison. And though when probation was given, more educated offenders got longer probation, they also got shorter prison sentences, if sentenced to prison at all. 59 SENTENCING On June 28, 1990, the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions Supervision, Regulation and Insurance met in the Rayburn House Office Building to hold hearings on the prosecution of savings and loan criminals. The chairman of the subcommittee, Congressman Frank Annunzio, called the meeting to order and said: The American people are furious with the slow pace of prosecutions involving savings and loan criminals.These crooks are responsible for 1/3, 1/2, or maybe even more, of the savings and loan cost. The American taxpayer will be forced to pay $500 billion or more over the next 40 y ears, largely because of these crooks. For many Americans, this bill will not be paid until their grandchildren are old enough to retire. We are here to get an answer to one question: â€Å"When are the S&L crooks going to jail? The answer from the administration seems to be: â€Å"probably never. † Frankly, I don’t think the administration has the interest in pursuing Gucci-clad white-collar criminals.These are hard and complicated cases, and the defendants often were rich, successful prominent members of their upper-class communities. It is far easier putting away a sneaker-clad high school dropout who tries to The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 9 Chiricos and Bales found that, for individuals guilty of similar offenses and with similar prior records, unemployed defendants were more likely to be incarcerated while awaiting trial, and for longer periods, than employed defendants.They were more than twice as likely as their employed counterparts to be incarce rated upon a finding of guilt. And defendants with public defenders experienced longer periods of jail time than those who could afford private attorneys. 60 McCarthy noted a similar link between unemployment and greater likelihood of incarceration. 61 In his study of 28,315 felony defendants in Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky, Champion also found that offenders who could afford private counsel had a greater likelihood of probation, and received shorter sentences when incarceration was imposed. 2 A study of the effects of implementing Minnesota’s determinate sentencing program shows that socio-economic bias is â€Å"more subtle, but no less real† than before the new program. 63 Tillman and Pontell examined the sentences received by individuals convicted of Medicaid provider fraud in California. Because such offenders normally have no prior arrests and are charged with grand theft, their sentences were compared with the sentences of other offenders convicted of grand theft and who also had no prior records. While 37. 7 percent of the Medicaid defrauders were sentenced to some jail or prison time, 79. percent of the others convicted of grand theft were sentenced to jail or prison. This was so even though the median dollar loss due to the Medicaid frauds was $13,000, more than ten times the median loss due to the other grand thefts ($1,149). Tillman and Pontell point out that most of the Medicaid defrauders were health professionals, while most of the others convicted of grand theft had low-level jobs or were unemployed. They conclude that â€Å"differences in the sentences imposed on the two samples are indeed the result of the different social statuses of their members. 64 As usual, data on racial discrimination in sentencing tell the same story of the treatment of those who cannot afford the going price of justice. A study of offender processing in New York State counties found that, for offenders with the same arrest charge and the same prior criminal records, minorities were incarcerated more often than comparably situated whites. 65 A study of sentencing in Miami concludes that when case-related attributes do not clearly point to a given sentence, sentencing disparities are more likely to be based on race. 6 Most striking perhaps is that, in 1993, 51 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons were black and 44 percent of inmates of jails were black, whereas blacks make up only 36. 5 percent of those arrested for serious (FBI Index) crimes. 67 Furthermore, when we look only at federal prisons, where there is reason to believe that racial and economic discrimination is less prevalent than in state institutions, we find that in 1986, nonwhite inmates were sentenced, on average, 33 more months for burglary than white inmates and 22 more months for income tax evasion.In 1989, the average federal sentence for blacks found guilty of violent offenses was 10 months longer than for whites. 68 Here must be mentioned the not orious â€Å"100-to1† disparity between sentences for possession of cocaine in powder form (popular in the affluent suburbs) and in crack form (popular in poor inner-city neighborhoods). Federal laws require a mandatory five-year sentence for crimes involving 500 grams of powder cocaine or 5 grams of crack cocaine.This yields a sentence for first-time offenders (with no aggravating factors, such as possession of a weapon) that is higher than the sentence for kidnapping, and only slightly lower than the sentence for attempted murder! 69 About 90 percent of those convicted of Federal crack offenses are black, about 4 percent are white. â€Å"As a result, the average prison sentence served by Black federal prisoners is 40 percent longer than the average sentence for Whites. 70 In 1995, the United States Sentencing Commission recommended ending the 100-to-1 disparity between powder and crack penalties, and, in an unusual display of bipartisanship, both the Republican Congress an d the Democratic President rejected their recommendation. 71 Sentencing disparities between the races are, of course, not new. An extensive study by the Boston Globe of 4,500 cases of armed robbery, aggravated assault, and rape found that â€Å"blacks convicted in the superior courts of Massachusetts receive harsher penalties than whites for the same crimes. 72 The authors of a study of almost 1,200 males sentenced to prison for armed robbery in a southeastern state found that â€Å"in 1977 whites incarcerated for armed robbery had a greater than average chance of receiving the least severe sentence, while nonwhites had a greater than average chance of receiving a moderately severe sentence. †73 A study of 229 adjudicated cases in a Florida judicial district yielded the finding that â€Å"whites have an 18 percent greater chance in the predicted probability of receiving probation than blacks when all other things are 10 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison qual. â₠¬ 74 A recent study of criminal justice systems in California, Michigan, and Texas by Petersilia confirms the continuation of this trend. â€Å"Controlling for the factors most likely to influence sentencing and parole decisions,† she writes, â€Å"the analysis still found that blacks and Hispanics are less likely to be given probation, more likely to receive prison sentences, more likely to receive longer sentences, and more likely to serve a greater portion of their original time. †75 Myers found that â€Å"harsher treatment of persons with fewer resources (e. g. female, unemployed, unmarried, black is †¦ pronounced in highly unequal counties. †76 The federal government has introduced sentencing guidelines and minimum mandatory sentences that might be expected to eliminate discrimination, and many states have followed suit. The effect of this, however, has been not to eliminate discretion but to transfer it from those who sentence to those who decide wha t to charge—that is, from judges to prosecutors. Prosecutors can charge in a way that makes it likely that the offender will get less than the mandatory minimum sentence. Says U. S. District Judge J.Lawrence Irving of San Diego, â€Å"the system is run by the U. S. attorneys. When they decide how to indict, they fix the sentence. †77 We have seen in this [selection] †¦ that the criminal justice system is triply biased against the poor. First, there is the economic class bias among harmful acts as to which get labeled crimes and which are treated as regulatory matters †¦Second, there is economic class bias among crimes that we have already seen in this [selection]. The crimes that poor people are likely to commit carry harsher sentences than the â€Å"crimes in suites† committed by well-to-do-people.Third, among defendants convicted of the same crimes, the poor receive less probation and more years of confinement than well-off defendants, assuring us on ce again that the vast majority of those put behind bars are from the lowest social and economic classes in the nation. On either side of the law, the rich get richer†¦ Monday, September 13, when corrections officers and state troopers stormed the prison and killed 29 inmates and 10 hostages. 78 During those four days the nation saw the faces of its captives on television—the hard black faces of young men who had grown up on the streets of Harlem and other urban ghettos.Theirs were the faces of crime in America. The television viewers who saw them were not surprised. Here were faces of dangerous men who should be locked up. Nor were people outraged when the state launched its murderous attack on the prison, killing many more inmates and guards than did the prisoners themselves. Maybe they were shocked—but not outraged. Neither were they outraged when two grand juries refused to indict any of the attackers, nor when the mastermind of the attack, New York Gov. Nelso n Rockefeller, was named to be vice president of the United States three years after the uprising and massacre. 9 They were not outraged because the faces they saw on the TV screens fit and confirmed their beliefs about who is a deadly threat to American society and a deadly threat must be met with deadly force. How did those men get to Attica? How did Americans get their beliefs about who is a dangerous person? These questions are interwoven. People get their notions about who is a criminal at least in part from the occasional television or newspaper picture of who is inside our prisons. The individuals they see there have been put in prison because people believe ertain kinds of individuals are dangerous and should be locked up. I have argued in this [selection] that this is not a simple process of selecting the dangerous and the criminal from among the peace-loving and the lawabiding. It is also a process of weeding out the wealthy at every stage, so that the final picture a picture like that that appeared on the TV screen on September 9, 1971—is not a true reflection of the real dangers in our society but a distorted image, the kind reflected in a carnival mirror.It is not my view that the inmates in Attica were innocent of the crimes that sent them there. I assume they and just about all the individuals in prisons in America are probably guilty of the crime for which they were sentenced and maybe more. My point is that people who are equally or more dangerous, equally or more criminal, are not there; that the criminal justice system works systematically not to punish and confine the dangerous and the criminal but to punish and confine the poor who are dangerous and criminal. †¦ AND THE POOR GET PRISON At 9:05 A. M. n the morning of Thursday, September 9, 1971, a group of inmates forced their way through a gate at the center of the prison, fatally injured a guard named William Quinn, and took 50 hostages. The Attica uprising had begun. I t lasted four clays, until 9:43 AM. on the morning of The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 11 It is successful at all levels. In 1973, there were 204,211 individuals in state and federal prisons, or 96 prisoners for every 100,000 individuals (of all ages) in the general population. By 1979, state and federal inmates numbered 301,470, or 133 per 100,000 Americans.By 1995, there were a total of 1,585,401 persons in state and federal prisons and in local jails, a staggering 600 for every 100,000 in the population. One in 167 U. S. residents (of all ages and both sexes) was behind bars by the end of 1995. However, of the 1,585,401 prisoners, more than a million are men, virtually all above the age of 18. Because the adult male population in the United States is about 93 million, this means that more than one out of every 100 American adult men is behind bars. 80 This enormous number of prisoners is, of course, predominantly from the bottom of society.Of the estimated 711,643 peop le in state prisons in June 1991, 33 percent were not employed at all (full or part time) prior to their arrests. About half of these were looking for work and half were not. Another 12 percent had only parttime jobs before prison, making fully 45 percent who were without full-time employment prior to arrest. These statistics represent a general worsening compared with 1986, when 31 percent of state inmates had no pre-arrest employment at all, and 43 percent had no full-time pre-arrest employment.Of those 1991 state inmates who had been free at least a year before arrest, 19 percent had some pre-arrest annual income but less than $3,000 50 percent had some pre-arrest annual income but less than $10,000. 81 To get an idea of what part of society is in prison, we should compare these figures with comparable figures for the general population. Because 95 percent of state inmates are male, we can look at employment and income figures for males in the general society in 1990.Statistics o n employment and income for 1990 are close to those for 1988 and 1989, and so will give us a fair sense of the general population from which the current state inmates came. In 1990, 5. 6 percent of males, 16-years-old and above, in the labor force were unemployed and looking for work. This corresponds to half the state inmates who were unemployed before arrest, because the other half who were unemployed were not looking for work. Where 16 percent of state prisoners had been unemployed and still looking for work, only 5. 6 percent of males in the general population were in this condition.Thus, prisoners were unemployed and looking for work at a rate three times that of males in the general population. But this doesn’t give us the full picture, because it doesn’t capture the unemployed prisoners who had not been seeking work. To capture that, let us assume that, as among the prisoners, the number of males in the general population who are unemployed and not looking is eq ual to the number in the labor force who are unemployed and looking. (Note that this assumption is high, but for present purposes conservative, as the higher it is the more it will decrease the relative difference between prisoners and general male population. The 5. 6 percent of males in the labor force represents approximately 3,799,000 persons. If we double it, we get 7,598,000 as an estimate of the total number of males in the general population who are unemployed, looking for work or not. As a percentage of the total noninstitutionalized population of males 16 and over, this is 8. 5 percent. Compare this with the 33 percent of state inmates who were unemployed prior to being arrested. Then, state prisoners were unemployed at a rate nearly four times that of males in the general population. 2 Where 19 percent of prisoners with any prearrest income at all earned less than $3,000 a year, 6. 8 percent of males in the civilian labor force in 1990 earned between $1 and $2,499 a year, and 12. 3 percent earned between $1 and $4,999. Fifty percent of the inmates had annual incomes between $1 and $10,000, while 25 percent of males in the general population earned in that range. 83 Our prisoners are not a cross-section of America. They are considerably poorer and considerably less likely to be employed than the rest of Americans.Moreover, they are also less educated, which is to say less in possession of the means to improve their sorry situations. Of all U. S. prison inmates, 47 percent did not graduate from high school, compared to 21 percent of the U. S. adult population. Sixteen percent of prisoners said they had some college, compared to 43 percent of the U. S. adult population. 84 The criminal justice system is sometimes thought of as a kind of sieve in which the innocent are progressively sifted out from the guilty, who end up behind bars. I have tried to show that the sieve works another way as well.It sifts the affluent out from the poor, so it is not merel y the guilty who end up behind bars, but the guilty poor. 12 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison Endnotes 1. Compare the statement, written more than half a century ago, by Professor Edwin H. Sutherland, one of the major luminaries of twentieth-century criminology: First, the administrative processes are more favorable to person in economic comfort than to those in poverty, so that if two person on different economic levels are equally guilty of the same offense, the one on the lower level is more likely to be arrested, convicted, and committed to an institution.Second, the laws are written, administered, and implemented primarily with reference to the types of crimes committed by people of lower economic levels. [E. H. Sutherland, Principles of Criminology (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1939), p. 179]. 2. For example, in 1991, when black made up 12 percent of the national population, they accounted for 46 percent of the U. S. state prison population. BJS, Survey of State Prison Inmates. 1991, p. 3. 3. Edwin H. Sutherland and Donald R. Cressey, Criminology, 9th ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1974), p. 133.The following studies are cited in support of this point (p. 133, note 4): Edwin M. Lemert and Judy Rosenberg, â€Å"The Administration of Justice to Minority Groups in Los Angeles County,† University of California Publications in Culture and Society 2, no. 1 (1948), pp. 1–28; Thorsten Sellin, â€Å"Race Prejudice in the Administrations of Justice,† American Journal of Sociology 41 (September 1935), pp. 212– 217; Sidney Alexrad, â€Å"Negro and White Male Institutionalized Delinquents,† American Journal of Sociology 57 (May 1952), pp. 569–74; Marvin F. Wolfgang, Arlene Kelly, and Hans C.Nolde, â€Å"Comparisons of the Executed and the Commuted Among Admissions to Death Row,† Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 53 (September 1962), pp. 301–11; Nathan Goldman, The Differential Sele ction of Juvenile Offenders for Court Appearance (New York National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1963); Irving Piliavin ad Scott Briar, â€Å"Police Encounters with Juveniles,† American Journal of Sociology 70 (September 1964), pp. 206–14, Robert M. Terry, â€Å"The Screening of Juvenile Offenders,† Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 58 (June 1967), pp. 73–81. See also Ramsey Clark, Crime in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), p. 51; â€Å"Negroes are arrested more frequently and on less evidence than whites and are more often victims of mass or sweep arrests†; and Donald Taft, Criminology, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1956), p. 134: Negroes are more likely to be suspected of crime than are whites. They are also more likely to be arrested. If the perpetrator of a crime is known to be a Negro the police may arrest all Negroes who were near the scene— a procedure they would rarely dare to follow with whites .After arrest Negroes are less likely to secure bail, and so are more liable to be counted in jail statistics. They are more liable than whites to be indicted and less likely to have their case nol prossed or otherwise dismissed. If tried, Negroes are more likely to be convicted. If convicted they are less likely to be given probation. For this reason they are more likely to be included in the count of prisoners. Negroes are also more likely than whites to be kept in prison for the full terms of their commitments and correspondingly less like to be paroled. 4. StatAbst-1996, p. 8, Table no. 49. See also Karen Pennar, â€Å"The Rich are Richer—and America May Be the Poorer,† Business Week, November 18,1991, pp. 85–88. 5. StatAbs-1994, p. 482, Table no. 742. See also Carole Shammas, â€Å"A New look at LongTerm Trends in Wealth Inequality in the United States,† American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (April 1993), p. 422. 6. StatAbst-1996, p. 48, Table no. 49; and p. 398, Table no. 623. 7. Michael Tonry, â€Å"Racial Politics, Racial Disparities, and the War on Crime,† Crime & Delinquency 40, no. 4 (October 1994), pp. 483, 485–86. 8. Sourcebook-1981, p. 463. 9. StatAbst-1988, p. 75, Table no. 304. 10. BJS, Profile of Inmates in the United States and in England and Wales, 1991 (October 1994, NCJ-145863), p. 13. 11. Theodore Chiricos and William Bales, â€Å"Unemployment, and Punishment: An Empirical Assessment,† Criminology 29, no. 4 (1991), p. 718. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 13 12. An offender’s socioeconomic status †¦ did not impact sentence length for any of the property offenses. † Stewart J. D’Alession and Lisa Stolzenberg, â€Å"Socioeconomic Status and the Sentencing of the Traditional Offender,† Journal of Criminal Justice 21 (1993), p. 73.The same study did find lower economic status offenders received harsher sentences for violent and moral order crimes. Anoth er study that finds no greater likelihood of incarceration based on socioeconomic status is Michael Benson and Esteban Walker, â€Å"Sentencing the White-Collar Offender,† American Sociological Review 53 (April 1988), pp 291–302. And yet another found higher-status offenders to be more likely 10 be incarcerated. David Weisburd, Elin Waring, and Stanton Wheeler, â€Å"Class, Status, and the Punishment of White Collar Criminals,† Law and Social Inquiry 16 (1990), pp. 23–41. These last two studies are limited to offenders convicted of whitecollar crimes, and so they deal with a sample that has already been subject to whatever discrimination exists in the arrest, charging, and conviction of white-collar offenders. 13. Isidore Silver, â€Å"Introduction† to the Avon edition of The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (New York: Avon, 1968), p. 31. 14. This is the conclusion of Austin L. Porterfield, Youth in Trouble (Fort Worth: Leo Potishman Foundation , 1946); Fred J. Murphy, M. Shirley, and H. L.Witmer, â€Å"The Incidence of Hidden Delinquency,† American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 16 (October 1946), pp. 686–96; James F. Short Jr. , â€Å"A Report on the Incidence of Criminal Behavior, Arrests, and Convictions in Selected Groups,† Proceedings of the Pacific Sociological Society, 1954, pp. 110–18, published as vol. 22, no. 2 of Research Studies of the State College of Washington (Pullman: State College of Washington, 1954); F. Ivan Nye, James F. Short Jr. , and Virgil J. Olson, â€Å"Socioeconomic Status and Delinquent Behavior,† American Journal of Sociology 63 (January 1958), pp. 381–89; Maynard L.Erickson and Lamar T. Empey, â€Å"Class Position, Peers and Delinquency,† Sociology and Social Research 49 (April 1965), pp. 268–82; William J. Chambliss and Richard H. Nagasawa, â€Å"On the Validity of Official Statistics; A Comparative Study of White, Black, and Japanese Hig h-School Boys,† Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 6 (January 1969), pp. 71–77; Eugene Doleschal, â€Å"Hidden Crime,† Crime and Delinquency Literature 2, no. 5 (October 1970), pp. 546–72; Nanci Koser Wilson, Risk Ratios in Juvenile Delinquency (Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms, 1972); and Maynard L.Erikson, â€Å"Group Violations, Socioeconomic Status, and Official Delinquency,† Social Forces 52, no. 1 (September 1973), p. 41–52. 15. Charles R. Tittle and Robert F Meier, â€Å"Specifying the SES/Delinquency Relationship,† Criminology 28, no. 2 (1990), p. 292. 16. Gary F. Jensen and Kevin Thompson, â€Å"What’s Class Got to Do with It? A Further Examination of Power-Control Theory,† American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 4 (January 1990) p. 1021. 17. This is the conclusion of Martin Gold, ‘Undetected Delinquent Behavior,† Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 3, no. 1 (1966), pp. 7†“46; and of Sutherland and Cressey, Criminology, pp. 137, 220. 18. Cf. Larry Karacki and Jackson Toby, â€Å"The Uncommitted Adolescent: Candidate for Gang Socialization,† Sociological Inquiry 32 (1962), pp. 203–15; William R. Arnold, â€Å"Continuities in Research—Scaling Delinquent Behavior,† Social Problems 13, no. 1 (1965), pp. 59–66; Harwin L. Voss, â€Å"Socioeconomic Status and Reported Delinquent Behavior,† Social Problems, 13, no. 3 (1966), pp. 314–24; LaMar Empey and Maynard L. Erikson, â€Å"Hidden Delinquency and Social Status,† Social Forces 44, no. 4 (1966), pp. 546–54; Fred J.Shanley, â€Å"Middle-class Delinquency As a Social Problem,† Sociology and Social Research 51 (1967), pp. 185–98; Jay R. Williams and Martin Gold, â€Å"From Delinquent Behavior to Official Delinquency,† Social Problems 20, no. 2 (1972), pp. 209–29. 19. Empey and Erikson â€Å"Hidden Delinquency and Soc ial Status,† pp 549, 551. Nye, Short, and Olson also found destruction of property to be committed most frequently by upperclass boys and girls, â€Å"Socioeconomic Status and Delinquent Behavior,† p. 385. 20. Williams and Gold, â€Å"From Delinquent Behavior to Official Delinquency,† Social Problems 20, no. 2 (1972), pp. 209–29. 4 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison 21. Gold â€Å"Undetected Delinquent Behavior,† p. 37. 22. Ibid. , p. 44. 23. Comparing socioeconomic status categories ‘scant evidence is found that would support the contention that group delinquency is more characteristic of the lower-status levels than other socioeconomic status levels. In fact, only arrests seem to be more characteristic of the low-status category than the other categories. † Erikson, â€Å"Group Violations, Socioeconomic Status and Official Delinquency,† p. 15. 24. Gold â€Å"Undetected Delinquent Behavior,† p 28 (emphasis added). 25. Ibid. , p. 38 26. Terence P.Thornberry, â€Å"Rac