Dual Justice

"While America incarcerates its poor and minority citizens at an unparalleled rate, the nation has never developed the capacity to consistently prosecute corporate wrongdoing. This book unearths the intertwined history of these phenomena, revealing that they constitute more than modern hypocrisy. By examining the development of the carceral and regulatory states from 1870 through today, Anthony Grasso shows that America's divergent treatments of street and corporate crime share common and self-reinforcing origins. Their connected roots lie in the Progressive Era, when scholars and lawmakers championed eugenic theories of human difference to justify punitive measures for poor offenders and milder regulatory controls for corporate lawbreakers. These ideas laid the foundation for dual justice systems: criminal justice institutions harshly governing street crime and regulatory institutions governing corporate misconduct. Ever since, the development of the carceral and regulatory states have been related processes that reflect and reinforce common politically constructed understandings about who counts as a criminal. Grasso analyzes intellectual history, policy debates, and institutional change at both the federal and state levels to shed light on how today's racial and class biases have been consolidated across multiple historic eras"--