Book Review : The Jail: Managing the Underclass in American Society John Irwin University of California Press, 1985, $16.95
| Author | Charles P. Gallmeier |
| DOI | 10.1177/104398628700300309 |
| Published date | 01 August 1987 |
| Date | 01 August 1987 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
71
Book
Review
The
Jail:
Managing
the
Underclass
in
American
Society
John
Irwin
University
of
California
Press,
1985,
$16.95
Jails
have
received
little
scholarly
attention
in
comparison
to
the
various
other
total
institutions
studied
by
criminologists
and
social
scientists
over
the
past
few
decades.
Legally,
jails
differ
from
prisons
in that
the
former
are
locally
(city
or
county)
managed
institutions
intended
to
hold
people
who
have
been
detained
while
awaiting
bail,
arraignment,
or
trial,
or
who
have
been
sentenced
to
relatively
short
terms
of
incarceration
(in
most
cases
less
than
one
year).
Prisons,
by
contrast,
are
state-run
institutions
intended
to
house
sentenced
felons.
John
Irwin,
who
once
served
a
five-year
term
in
prison
and
who
now
is
a
professor
of
sociology
at
San
Francisco
State
University,
has
published
two
previous
books
on
prisons.
In
his
latest
and
most
provocative
book
he
turns
his
attention
to
jails
and
challenges
individual
ignorance
and
perspectives
on
jails,
their
purpose
and
operation
in
society.
His
central
argument
is
that
jails,
whatever
their
legal
definition
or
stated
purpose,
in
fact
recruit
and
confine
&dquo;mostly
detached
and
disreputable
persons
who
are
arrested
more
because
they
are
offensive
than
because
they
have
committed
crimes.&dquo;
The
primary
purpose
of
jails
is
to
manage
what
Irwin
calls
the
&dquo;rabble&dquo;,
a
poignant
and
gripping
label
for
the
underclass
in
our
society.
Irwin
believes
that
since
society
uses
jails
primarily
for the
management
and
control
of
&dquo;rabble&dquo;,
it
inadvertently
increases
their
number
and
worsens
their
lot.
The
author’s
findings
result
from
a
thorough
review
of
the
literature
that
nicely
integrates
theoretical
works
(especially
Goffman’s
Asylums)
with
his
own
observations
acquired
from
jails
in
Los
Angeles,
San
Francisco,
and
rural
California.
His
major
source
of
data
(provided
in
an
Appendix)
is
a
random
sample
of
people
admitted
to
the
San
Francisco
city
and
county
jails;
one-
hundred
arrested
for
felonies
and
one-hundred
arrested
for
misdemeanors.
Most
of
the
latter
were
arrested
for
public
order
offenses,
such
as
public
drunkenness
or
drunk
driving,
traffic
violations
and
the
like.
The
most
common
felony
charge
involved
a
narcotics
violation
(about
a
third
of
the
sample)
or
some
kind
of
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