ABSTRACT
Charles Murray's conservative stance defines an 'underclass' as being composed of a special type of poor, unemployed people. Usually found in neighbourhoods containing high numbers of fatherless families reared by unmarried mothers, 'underclass' poor are those who, having been nurtured by permissive mothers and a supportive welfare state, now refuse to work and instead engage in violent crime. The existence of large numbers of very poor people has perennially been seen as threatening to social order -either because extremes of inequality may call into question the legitimacy of states, or because poverty is seen to be part cause of criminal activity. Prison abolition is the complex long-term objective which should inform any social justice programme seeking to replace prevailing principles of punishment and exclusion with transformative concepts of regulatory intervention such as 'redress' and 'compensation'.
