Criminalizing the Effects of Poverty

Anuj K. Shah, associate professor of behavioral science at Chicago Booth, along with his coauthors, say we’re criminalizing the effects of poverty.

He explains that as a society, we often pathologize things about people who are poor while their study suggests that a lot of things society perceives as problems are, in fact, situational. Those with more means have the mental bandwidth to think more clearly. But there are ways in which we are criminalizing the effects of the lack of bandwidth.