WP-98-19

Dorothy Roberts

Abstract

How should the criminal justice system address the disproportionate number of poor people who are punished for crime? The answer depends on the nature of the relationship both between poverty and crime and between criminal punishment and social justice. Crimes committed by poor parents often involve three types of associations between indigence and crime: these crimes may be caused by parental poverty, detected because of parental poverty, or defined by parental poverty. Scholarly debate on this issue has focused on the claim that deprivation provides an excuse for crime because it impairs moral responsibility for criminal conduct. Crime, punishment, and poverty are connected in other ways, as well, and these connections also have implications for the culpability of indigent offenders. In this essay, I consider the associations between poverty and the crimes of child abuse and neglect to explore the ethics of punishing indigent lawbreakers and to evaluate approaches to the relationship between poverty and criminal justice. Punishing indigent parents reflects a deep bias in the detection and definition of child maltreatment, and helps to absolve lawmakers of responsibility for eradicating conditions of poverty that harm children.

Dorothy Roberts, School of Law, Northwestern University

Click on the working paper title at the top of this page to download a free pdf of the paper.* If You Need to Order a Hard Copy: Hard copies of IPR working papers cost $5.00 each (international orders are $10 each). We only accept checks drawn on U.S. bank and payable in U.S. funds. Checks or money orders should be made payable to Northwestern University and sent to the following address: Publications Department - WP Orders Institute for Policy Research 2040 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208-4100. For information, call 847-491-8712 or email ipr@northwestern.edu. Please note that we do not accept credit cards. *Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 (or higher) is needed to read the Acrobat pdf. If you need to install Acrobat Reader, click the button below. Once the file has downloaded onto your desktop, run it to install the reader on your hard drive.