Given the extraordinary costs of prisons, the current political climate which pushes for less government and lowered public spending, and the incapacity of the legal system to carry the entire burden of social control, Pontell argues for reexamination of the criminal justice system from a sociological perspective. Drawing upon data from the 1966-1974 period, Pontell\u27s doctoral study, the basis for the book, searched for ecological relationships among crime rates, expenditures, conviction rates, and demographic features in the California counties under review
