ABSTRACT
The police, prosecutors, and courts have an insatiable need for offenders in order to justify their existence, and poor minorities bear the brunt of that need. The bureaucratic requirement that police action be designed to maximize rewards and minimize strain for the organization leads to looking for crime among the powerless and ignoring the crimes of the powerful—including the children of the powerful. Just as driving under the influence is treated by law enforcement agencies with greater leniency than possession of illegal drugs, the delinquencies available to upper-middle-class youths are seen as less serious than those available to lower-class youths. If the police treat middle-upper-class delinquents the same way they treat lower-class delinquents, they are asking for trouble from people in power. If, on the other hand, they focus their law enforcement efforts on the lower classes, they are praised and supported by "the community," that is, by the middle- and upper-class white community.
