The criminal legal system is a “stratifying institution” insofar as it reflects inequalities by selecting already marginalized people into the system, worsens existing inequalities via a host of criminal punishment and conditions of confinement mechanisms, and creates new inequalities through patterns of isolation for formerly incarcerated people and spillover effects for those close to them. Because it is impossible to separate mass criminalization from the patterns of inequality that precede it and ill-advised to treat inequalities created by mass criminalization as somehow separate from much longer legacies of marginalization and social exclusion, the prospects for criminal justice reform are difficult to predict. This essay suggests that criminal justice reform strategies centered on harm reduction might reasonably reduce how much criminal justice involvement worsens existing inequalities or creates new ones. Dramatically reducing inequalities in initial contacts with the system will be more difficult because that would require significant investments and improvements in other social systems. Moreover, because the criminal legal system is not a system at all, reform efforts must be multi-pronged and target all parts of the system to appreciably reduce inequality.

刑法制度是一个“分层制度”，它通过选择已经被边缘化的人进入制度来反映不平等，通过一系列刑事处罚和条件限制机制加剧现有的不平等，并创造以前被监禁的人的隔离模式和对他们亲近的人的溢出效应导致新的不平等。由于不可能将大规模犯罪化与其之前的不平等模式区分开来，并且将大规模犯罪化造成的不平等与长期边缘化和社会排斥的遗留问题以某种方式分开处理是不明智的，因此刑事司法改革的前景难以预测. 这篇文章表明，以减少伤害为中心的刑事司法改革战略可能会合理地减少刑事司法参与加剧现有不平等或造成的程度新的。在与系统的初始接触中显着减少不平等将更加困难，因为这将需要对其他社会系统进行大量投资和改进。此外，由于刑事法律体系根本不是一个体系，改革工作必须多管齐下，针对体系的各个部分，以显着减少不平等。