Chapter 2: A Crime By Any Other Name, By Reiman

The first reading “Chapter 2: A Crime by Any Other Name…” by Reiman outlines the social factors that lead to the creation of crime, criminals and the criminal justice system, as well as analyzing studies on the real harms to society. Crime is man-made concept, much like race, because people influence its definition through the many institutions the concept is filtered through. Society accepts these interpretations of crime as real-life harms to society when there is in fact greater harms to them, like workplace incidents that lead to higher death tolls but aren’t considered a crime. These workplace incidents injure and kill more people than the violent acts that society interprets as crime, but these workplace incidents carry minimum punishments

The definition of a criminal is also man-made and race plays a role in this definition, the stereotypical criminal is considered young, male, black, poor and residing in an urban area. While this idea of a criminal faces harsher punishment for the injury or death of another, organizations that account for the greatest deaths and injuries of others face up to 6 months in prison as punishment. These organizations that account for the highest levels of death and injury are workplace incidents- like exposure to chemicals or inadequate safety procedures, health care incidents- like unnecessary surgery, mistaken surgery and unnecessary prescriptions to addictive medicine, and chemical explore through pollution, cigarette smoking and food additives that lead to cancer and birth defects or a great portion of society. These deadly forces tend to affect lower socioeconomic classes the most, which the reading attributes to race. As we learned in class it is not race that leads to this inequality but instead the social processes that are unequally applied people based on this socially constructed idea of