Throughout history, the powerful have created laws, developed agencies to enforce those laws, and established institutions to punish lawbreakers. Maintaining the social order to their advantage resulted in the systematic repression of disadvantaged groups—the “dangerous classes.” The third edition retains a historical approach to exploring patterns of social control and, through current examples, demonstrates how those strategies continue today. The authors trace the roots of race, class, and gender bias in how laws are written, interpreted, and applied. The management of dangerous classes is not a recent phenomenon; there is a long history of keeping those who derive the least advantage from the status quo (and therefore pose the greatest threat) under control. There was and is one system of justice for the privileged and a very different system for the less privileged. The criminal justice system—from the law to daily operations of the police, courts, and corrections—generally comes down hardest on those with the least amount of power and influence and is the most lenient with those with the most power and influence. The book raises critical questions. What is a crime? What is law? Whose interests are served by the law and the criminal justice system? What patterns are repeated generation after generation? How does the criminal justice system relate to larger issues such as social inequality, social class, race, and gender? Contemplation of these topics contributes to informed public dialogue and careful deliberation about the present state and the future of criminal justice.

This book offers the first detailed study of the essential relationship between thought reform and the "dangerous classes"--The prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other "lumpenproletarians" the Communists saw as a threat to society and the revolution. Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smit.

Marx and Engels’ concept of the “lumpenproletariat,” or underclass (an anglicized, politically neutral term), appears in The Communist Manifesto and other writings. It refers to “the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society,” whose lowly status made its residents potential tools of the capitalists against the working class. Surprisingly, no one has made a substantial study of the lumpenproletariat in Marxist thought until now. Clyde Barrow argues that recent discussions about the downward spiral of the American white working class (“its main problem is that it is not working”) have reactivated the concept of the lumpenproletariat, despite long held belief that it is a term so ill-defined as not to be theoretical. Using techniques from etymology, lexicology, and translation, Barrow brings analytical coherence to the concept of the lumpenproletariat, revealing it to be an inherent component of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the historical origins of capitalism. However, a proletariat that is destined to decay into an underclass may pose insurmountable obstacles to a theory of revolutionary agency in post-industrial capitalism. Barrow thus updates historical discussions of the lumpenproletariat in the context of contemporary American politics and suggests that all post-industrial capitalist societies now confront the choice between communism and dystopia.

New York's Newsboys tells the engaging tale of how social reformer Charles Loring Brace and his colleagues built New York's Children's Aid Society (CAS) in the nineteenth century. Seizing on the idea of using "newsies" -- boys who hawked penny newspapers on the city streets -- to promote his new charity, Brace saw the kids as symbolic of the rapidly increasing population of uneducated immigrant youth roaming the streets, eking out a subsistence living under dire conditions. The newsies were both heralded as shrewd entrepreneurs and feared as potential members of the "dangerous class." To New York's wealthy class, Brace touted the benefits of helping these children while warning of the social and political dangers of neglecting them. Attacked during his life for his dangerous ideas and bold actions, among Brace's earliest experiments was the Newsboys' Lodging House (NBLH), opened in 1853. The NBLH quickly grew beyond providing for the lodgers' basic needs into a well-rounded social service program offering education, vocational training, health care, employment referrals, and other services. Its policies and practices were forged from staff interactions with the earliest lodgers, colorful characters like the Professor, Fatty, Valise, and Dutchy. By 1855, NBLH efforts were yoked to other branches of CAS service, through its Central Office, including the controversial emigration branch (known as the "orphan trains"). Using primary documents and analysis of over 700 original CAS case records, Extra offers a new look at the foundational roots of social work and child welfare in the United States. It makes broad claims about the breadth and depth of CAS efforts, arguing that its significance to the history of the profession, the city of New York, and the country has been under appreciated. Charles Loring Brace laid down the foundations for progressive era reformers in areas as wide ranging as child welfare, juvenile justice, public education, and public health; his efforts hold lessons for today's social justice workers who face challenges similar to those of mid-nineteenth century New York.