Mele and Miller offer a timely, insightful analysis of the continuing challenges faced by ex-felons upon re-entry into society. Such penalties include a lifetime ban on receiving welfare and food stamps for individuals convicted of drug felonies as well as barriers to employment, child rearing, and housing opportunities. This much-needed work contains pieces by scholars in law, criminology, and sociology, including: Scott Christianson, Michael Lichter, and Daniel Kanstroom.

Given the increasing diversity of the nation—particularly with respect to its growing Hispanic and Asian populations—why does racial and ethnic difference so often lead to disadvantage? In The Colors of Poverty, a multidisciplinary group of experts provides a breakthrough analysis of the complex mechanisms that connect poverty and race. The Colors of Poverty reframes the debate over the causes of minority poverty by emphasizing the cumulative effects of disadvantage in perpetuating poverty across generations. The contributors consider a kaleidoscope of factors that contribute to widening racial gaps, including education, racial discrimination, social capital, immigration, and incarceration. Michèle Lamont and Mario Small grapple with the theoretical ambiguities of existing cultural explanations for poverty disparities. They argue that culture and structure are not competing explanations for poverty, but rather collaborate to produce disparities. Looking at how attitudes and beliefs exacerbate racial stratification, social psychologist Heather Bullock links the rise of inequality in the United States to an increase in public tolerance for disparity. She suggests that the American ethos of rugged individualism and meritocracy erodes support for antipoverty programs and reinforces the belief that people are responsible for their own poverty. Sociologists Darren Wheelock and Christopher Uggen focus on the collateral consequences of incarceration in exacerbating racial disparities and are the first to propose a link between legislation that blocks former drug felons from obtaining federal aid for higher education and the black/white educational attainment gap. Joe Soss and Sanford Schram argue that the increasingly decentralized and discretionary nature of state welfare programs allows for different treatment of racial groups, even when such policies are touted as "race-neutral." They find that states with more blacks and Hispanics on welfare rolls are consistently more likely to impose lifetime limits, caps on benefits for mothers with children, and stricter sanctions. The Colors of Poverty is a comprehensive and evocative introduction to the dynamics of race and inequality. The research in this landmark volume moves scholarship on inequality beyond a simple black-white paradigm, beyond the search for a single cause of poverty, and beyond the promise of one "magic bullet" solution. A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy

This book presents the results of the latest in a long-running research project using the RIMES instrument, developed by scholars in Spain. Here, RIMES is used to measure the extent of social exclusion resulting from the penal system in comparative perspective. The volume shows the results of the application of the instrument in seven criminal justice systems: Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, England and Wales, California, and New York. Divided into two parts, the first provides a general overview of the RIMES instrument, including a discussion of the theoretical model and the methodology. The second part focuses on the results of the application of RIMES in the seven jurisdictions. The comparative results are organised according to the nine dimensions included in the RIMES instrument: control of public spaces; legal safeguards; sentencing and sanctions systems; harshest penalties; prison rules; preventive intervention; legal and social status of offenders and ex-offenders; police and criminal records; and youth criminal justice. The last chapter summarizes the comparative results and ranks them in terms of the findings on social exclusion. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of Comparative Criminal Justice, Criminology, Criminal Law and Policy.

The Impact of Natural Disasters on Systemic Political and Social Inequities in the U.S. examines how natural disasters impact social inequality in the United States. The contributors cover topics such as criminal justice, demographics, economics, history, political science, and sociology to show how effects of natural disasters vary by social and economic class in the United States. This volumestudies social and political mechanisms in disaster response and relief that enable natural disasters to worsen inequalities in America and offers potential solutions.

Special edition of the Federal Register, containing a codification of documents of general applicability and future effect ... with ancillaries.

The Code of Federal Regulations is the codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government.

By quadrupling the number of people behind bars in two decades, the United States has become the world leader in incarceration. Much has been written on the men who make up the vast majority of the nation’s two million inmates. But what of the women they leave behind? Doing Time Together vividly details the ways that prisons shape and infiltrate the lives of women with husbands, fiancés, and boyfriends on the inside. Megan Comfort spent years getting to know women visiting men at San Quentin State Prison, observing how their romantic relationships drew them into contact with the penitentiary. Tangling with the prison’s intrusive scrutiny and rigid rules turns these women into “quasi-inmates,” eroding the boundary between home and prison and altering their sense of intimacy, love, and justice. Yet Comfort also finds that with social welfare weakened, prisons are the most powerful public institutions available to women struggling to overcome untreated social ills and sustain relationships with marginalized men. As a result, they express great ambivalence about the prison and the control it exerts over their daily lives. An illuminating analysis of women caught in the shadow of America’s massive prison system, Comfort’s book will be essential for anyone concerned with the consequences of our punitive culture.