Redistributing the Poor - Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity

In Redistributing the Poor, ethnographer and historical sociologist Armando Lara-Millán takes us into the day-to-day operations of running the largest hospital and jail system in the world. He shows how journalists, academics, and policy makers have drastically misunderstood the rise mental illness in jails as well as the decline of public hospitals in America. Lara-Millán offers a new way to think about how the government makes unsolvable social problems disappear on paper and perpetuates an endless cycle of social suffering.