ABSTRACT
Inequality is visible in criminal justice systems across the world. The over-representation of marginalised populations and indigenous people in prisons is a common theme in criminological theorising on justice and punishment. Inequality in criminal justice epitomises wider inequalities in society. This contribution explores the different faces of inequality in their relationship to the different facets of punishment for Latin American countries in a comparative perspective. Latin America is a test case for the common notion that ‘the rich get richer and the poor get prison’, as inequality and poverty substantively decreased in the region between 1995 and 2015, while incarceration rates exploded and prison conditions deteriorated. It is argued that the missing link in this counter-intuitive finding is the rise of the middle classes in the region: this contributed to both, decreasing inequality and increasing criminal punishment.
