It's hard for me to see the exact connection between incarceration and poverty based on what we've learned so far and what's been happening in the news. What I'm seeing instead is that there is a closer relationship between skin color and incarceration than there is between poverty and incarceration. I do think there is a lot of classism in incarceration and policing (consider that the same $500 ticket might be given to someone for the same behavior regardless of whether that person makes $20K a year or $200K per year, or that white-collar criminals seem to get off much easier than blue-collar criminals). However, the statistics we're seeing about rich black people being penalized more than poor white people seem to indicate that incarceration is more about race than poverty.
