Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal AusterityWhenever the topic of large jails and public hospitals in urban America is raised, a single idea comes to mind. It is widely believed that because we as a society have dis-invested from public health, the sick and poor now find themselves within the purview of criminal justice institutions. In Redistributing the Poor, ethnographer and historical sociologist Armando Lara-Mill n takes us into the day-to-day operations of running the largest hospital and jail system in the world and argues that such received wisdom is a drastic mischaracterization of the way that states govern urban poverty at the turn of the 21st century. Rather than focus on our underinvestment of health and overinvestment of criminal justice, his idea of "redistributing the poor" draws attention to how state agencies circulate people between different institutional spaces in such a way that generates revenue for some agencies, cuts costs for others, and projects illusions that services have been legally rendered. By centering the state's use of redistribution, Lara-Mill n shows how certain forms of social suffering-the premature death of mainly poor, people of color-are not a result of the state's failure to act, but instead the necessary outcome of so-called successful policy. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
administrative agencies allowed American Angeles County budget Burke California Center claim classification concerns County Online court created crime criminal crisis custody decision demand Department deputies develop downsizing drug early Edelman Emergency ethnography expanded facility federal force funds gang going Health Services healthcare housing individuals inmates institutions intake issue jail Justice kind less limited look medicine Meeting mental health mentally ill moved notes nurse observation officials overcrowding pain patients persons police Politics poor population Prison problem programs Project public hospitals receive record release resolve response risk safety Sheriff’s Sheriff’s Department social space specific staff Supervisors Towers treatment triage understand unit University Press urban waiting welfare York