1. Elijah Anderson, The Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999), ch. 2.

2. For broad overviews of the spectrum of available positions about the relationship between inequality and criminal responsibility, see From Social Justice to Criminal Justice: Poverty and the Administration of Criminal Law (William Heffernan & John Kleinig eds., 2000) and Justification and Excuse in the Criminal Law (Michael Corrado ed., 1994). Perhaps the three most influential discussions on the topic can be found in Judge David Bazelon's dissenting opinion in United States v. Alexander, 471 F.2d 923, 960–961 (D.C. Cir.), which he later defended in The Morality of the Criminal Law, 49 S. Cal. L. Rev. 385 (1976); Delgado, Richard, “Rotten Social Background”: Should the Criminal Law Recognize a Defense of Severe Environmental Deprivation? , 3 Law & Ineq. 9 (1985)Google Scholar, and Murphy, Jeffrie, Marxism and Retribution , 2 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 217 (1973)Google Scholar.

3. Almost every author who defends a position like mine relies on this premise. See, e.g., Tadros, Victor, Poverty and Criminal Responsibility , 43 J. Value Inquiry 391 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duff, Antony, Blame, Moral Standing and the Legitimacy of the Criminal Trial , 23 Ratio 123, 137–139 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watson, Gary, A Moral Predicament in the Criminal Law , 58 Inquiry 168 (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Perhaps the most frequently cited study defending this idea is Marvin Wolfgang & Franco Ferracuti, The Subculture of Violence: Towards an Integrated Theory in Criminology (1967).

5. Bazelon appeals to this kind of rationale in The Morality of the Criminal Law, supra note 2. Sarah Buss also develops a more philosophically sophisticated version of that view in Justified Wrongdoing, 31 Noûs 337 (1997).

6. Cf. Judge Thurman Arnold's decision in Holloway v. United States, 148 F.2d 665 (D.C. Cir. 1945), 666–667, where he argues, “Our collective conscience does not allow punishment where it cannot impose blame.” David Shoemaker criticizes versions of this view in two recent papers: Shoemaker, David, On Criminal and Moral Responsibility , in 3 Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics (Timmons, Mark ed., 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and David Shoemaker, Blame and Punishment, in Blame: Its Nature and Norms (Justin Coates & Neal Tognazzini eds., 2013), at 100–118.

7. Feinberg, Joel, The Expressive Function of Punishment , 49 The Monist 397, 400 (1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Barbara Fried argues that “enthusiasm for blame mongering” has been a major contributor to the rise of mass incarceration in the United States over the last four decades. If ideas like the ones I defend in this paper were to reduce that enthusiasm, then, following Fried's reasoning, we might expect there to be a shift away from mass incarceration in American crime policy. Barbara Fried, Beyond Blame, Boston Review, June 28, 2013.

9. Shelby, Tommie, Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto , 35 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 126 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Scanlon's discussion of Bill Cosby's “poundcake” speech, in T.M. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, and Blame (2008), at 206–210. Shelby provides a fuller account of both the general requirements of political solidarity and the specific requirements of Black political solidarity in We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (2005).

10. Ghetto residents often cope with the fear of victimization by avoiding contact outside of their own immediate families. See, e.g., Frank Furstenberg, How Families Manage Risk and Opportunity in Dangerous Neighborhoods, in Sociology and the Public Agenda (William J. Wilson ed., 1993), at 231–258. Relatively better-off residents of ghettos try to minimize contact with their poorer neighbors and cultivate more geographically dispersed friendship networks, which no doubt further isolates the least well-off. See, e.g., Elijah Anderson, Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990). According to Bruce Rankin and James Quane, “[t]hese strategies, while functional for individual families, lower the density of obligations and expectations necessary to actuate neighborhood social cohesion.” Neighborhood Poverty and the Social Isolation of Inner-City African American Families, 49 Soc. Forces 139, 142 (2000). For a general, detailed overview of how distrust undermines community cohesiveness among the Black urban poor, see Sandra Smith, Lone Pursuit: Distrust and Defensive Individualism among the Black Poor (2007).

11. There is also a sense in which we sometimes use “blame” to denote a causal relation: for example, we blame the traffic when we are late to work. This paper is not concerned with that causal sense of blame.

12. Some moral theorists argue that people can, and perhaps ought to, blame (or forgive) people for the way they are, in addition to the things they have done. See, e.g., Sher, George, Blame for Traits , 34 Noûs 146 (2002)Google Scholar, and Macalester Bell's related discussion in Forgiving Someone for Who They Are (And Not Just What They've Done), 77 Phil. & Phenomenological Res. 625 (2008). I do not want to take a position on that issue, as the questions in this paper have to do with the norms governing when and how much we ought to blame people for actions (in particular, malum in se crimes), not traits.

13. Strawson, P.F., Freedom and Resentment , 48 Proc. Brit. Acad. 1 (1962)Google Scholar.

14. Miranda Fricker argues that “silent” or “private” blame should be understood as “derivative” of communicative blame. “It is a straightforward feature of communicative acts in general—telling, warning, arguing etc.—that they can be withheld,” she tells us. Fricker, Miranda, What's the Point of Blame? A Paradigm Based Explanation , 50 Noûs 165 (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is somewhat misleading. We cannot argue with one another, nor tell or warn each other about anything, without engaging in outward acts of communication. But we can blame people for decades without ever outwardly communicating anything, sometimes even taking that blame with us to the grave.

15. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1902) (1748), §VIII, pt. II, no. 76.

16. For a notable exception to this post-Humean orthodoxy, see Hieronymi, Pamela, The Force and Fairness of Blame , 18 Phil. Persp. 115 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a pluralist view about the moral psychology of blame that is compatible with both the Humean and post-Humean pictures described here, see Manuel Vargas, Building Better Beings (2013). For a fuller overview of contemporary views about the moral psychology of blame, see Coates, D. Justin & Tognazzini, Neal, The Nature and Ethics of Blame , 7 Phil. Compass 197 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. See, e.g., Strawson, supra note 13; R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (1994); Susan Wolf, Blame, Italian Style, in Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy of T.M Scanlon (R. Jay Wallace, Rahul Kumar & Samuel Freeman eds., 2011), at 332–347; Cohen, Stephen, Distinctions Among Blame Concepts , 38 Phil. & Phenomenological Res. 149 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Scanlon, supra note 9, at 127–128.

19. George Sher, In Praise of Blame (2006), at 112.

20. Hawthorne, John & Stanley, Jason, Knowledge and Action , 105 J. Phil. 571 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hawthorne and Stanley's coauthored paper focuses on the relationship between knowledge and action, but in an earlier book he wrote alone, Hawthorne endorses the slightly broader principle that “one ought only to use that which one knows as a premise in one's deliberations.” John Hawthorne, Knowledge and Lotteries (2004), at 30.

21. I use the term “belief” to refer to cognitive attitudes in general here, for the sake of simplicity, though there is a range of cognitive attitudes that fall below the threshold of belief. See Gendler, Tamar, Alief and Belief , 105 J. Phil 634 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Ram Neta, for example, presents a complicated challenge to Hawthorne and Stanley's Knowledge-Action principle based around cases where an agent justifiably (but falsely) believes that she knows she has a good basis for acting. Neta, Ram, Treating Something as a Reason for Action , 43 Noûs 684 (2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Cf., e.g., G.A. Cohen, Finding Oneself in the Other (2012), chs. 6–7; Scanlon, supra note 9, at 175–178, and Wallace, R. Jay, Hypocrisy, Moral Address, and the Equal Standing of Persons , 38 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 307 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Macalester Bell, The Standing to Blame: A Critique, in Blame: Its Nature and Norms (Justin Coates & Neal Tognazzini eds., 2012), at 263–281.

25. Id. at 277.

26. Id. at 265.

27. Bell could have in mind an account of action individuation where intentional content is built into moral permissibility—so there would be no such thing as “doing the right thing for the wrong reason”; but that is not the most obvious way to interpret her.

28. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001), at 58–61.

29. See, e.g., Amartya Sen, Equality of What? in Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Sterling McMurrin ed., 1982); Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (2000).

30. See, e.g., Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (1998).

31. See Bertrand, Marianne & Mullainathan, Sendhil, Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination , 94 Am. Econ. Rev. 991 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (2010), §1.3.

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34. See, e.g., Massey & Denton, supra note 30.

35. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (1993).

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37. Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (2009).

38. See, e.g., Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (2011).

39. For a recent overview of some of the various empirical approaches to measuring police profiling, see Farrell, Amy & McDevitt, Jack, Identifying and Measuring Racial Profiling by the Police , 4 Soc. Compass 77 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Some legal scholars argue that the nonadversarial relationship of public defenders to judges and prosecutors undermines the strength of legal representation for their clients; these court-appointed attorneys are motivated to make sure cases move through the system efficiently, rather than to represent their clients well. See, e.g., Bowen, Deidre, Calling Your Bluff: How Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys Adapt Plea Bargaining Strategies to Increase Formalization , 26 Just. Q. 2 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a critical perspective on this view, see Hartley, Richard et al., Do You Get What You Pay For? Type of Council and Its Effect on Criminal Court Outcomes , 38 J. Crim. Just. 1063 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. White jurors may be less likely to manifest racial bias against Black defendants in criminal trials where “blatantly” racial issues are absent, though in other trials racial bias is prevalent. See Sommers, Samuel & Ellsworth, Phoebe, White Juror Bias , 7 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. 201 (2001)Google Scholar. Studies also show that residents of lower income and in predominantly non-White neighborhoods are less likely to be selected for jury duty. See, e.g., Taylor, Ralph et al., Roles of Neighborhood Race and Status in the Middle Stages of Juror Selection , 5 J. Crim. Just. 391 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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43. See, e.g., Plato, The Republic (2000) (380 B.C.).

44. Elijah Anderson documents the pervasiveness of this phenomenon in The Code of the Street, supra note 1, ch. 2.

45. Petit, Becky & Western, Bruce, Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration , 69 Am. Soc. Rev. 151, 162 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Western notes, for example, that “[b]lack men are much more likely than whites to be arrested for a drug offense, and go to prison if arrested, even though they are no more likely to use drugs than whites.” Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (2007), at 50. Nonetheless, he tells us, “[c]riminologists estimate that about 80 percent of black-white difference in imprisonment rates is due simply to the high involvement of black men in crime.” Id. These factors seem to have grown progressively more prevalent over the last several decades. See Blumstein, Alfred, On the Racial Disproportionality of United States’ Prison Populations , 73 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1259 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blumstein, Alfred, Racial Disproportionality of U.S. Prison Populations Revisited , 64 U. Colo. L. Rev. 734 (1993)Google Scholar; Michael Tonry & Matthew Melewski, The Malign Effects of Drug and Crime Control Policy on Black Americans, in Crime and Justice: A Review of Research (Michael Tonry ed., 2008), at 1–44. The degree to which factors other than crime rates influence incarceration trends has been found to vary from state to state in the United States. See, e.g., Crutchfield, Robert et al., Analytical and Aggregation Biases in Analyses of Imprisonment: Reconciling Discrepancies in Studies of Racial Disparity , 31 J. Res. Crime & Delinq. 166 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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48. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, 2007 (2008).

49. There were over 300,000 arrests for the sale or manufacturing of drugs that year, and many more for possession of drugs that may have been good proxies for distribution. Id. It is important to note, however, that these statistics are likely to greatly underestimate the prevalence of rape and sexual assault, given the well-known problem of underreporting for those crimes.

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52. Cf. e.g., Gohara, Miriam, Grace Notes: A Case for Making Mitigation the Heart of Noncapital Sentencing , 41 Am. J. Crim. L. 41 (2013)Google Scholar.

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55. See, e.g., Ball-Rokeach, Sandra, Values and Violence: A Test of the Subculture of Violence Thesis , 38 Am. Sociol. Rev. 736 (1973)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Cao, Liqun et al., A Test of the Black Subculture of Violence Thesis: A Research Note , 35 Criminology 67 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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57. Some social scientists and philosophers of social science argue that the only way social norms can persist over time is if at least some of the parties to any given norm have a substantive attachment to the contents of that norm. See, e.g., Anderson, Elizabeth, Beyond Homo Economicus: New Developments in Theories of Social Norms , 29 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 170 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herbert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving (2000). If that is true, then theories of crime that explain group differences in criminality by appealing to social norms may be only partly compatible with the arguments I made in Section II. Gerry Mackie argues that some social norms, including footbinding in China and infibulation (female genital mutilation) in parts of Africa are “self-enforcing conventions,” the contents of which none of the parties to the norms need have any substantive attachment to. Mackie, Gerry, Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account , 61 Am. Soc. Rev. 999 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58. Chau, Peter makes an argument that is structurally similar to the idea here, though he does not explicitly rely on a “cultural” model of criminality, in Temptations, Social Deprivation and Punishment , 30 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 775 (2010), especially §5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Wolfgang & Ferracuti, supra note 4, at 163.

60. Cf., e.g., Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation (2004).

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62. Anderson, supra note 1.

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65. The recent work of political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page might be taken to throw this premise into doubt. They show that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” Martin Gilens & Benjamin Page, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, 12 Persp. Pol. 564 (2014). But the social structure cannot be understood solely in terms of public policy, and there are clearly aspects of the social structure that “average” citizens do exert control over. For example, public policy may have influenced the racial residential segregation that resulted from “White flight,” but White flight still required a specific set of residential choices on the part of average White citizens. Daria Roithmayr discusses a variety of other mechanisms through which this occurs in Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock in White Advantage (2014).

66. Cf. Tadros, Duff, and Watson, all supra note 3.

67. George Vuoso argues that only an offender's socioeconomic circumstances, not his background, can mitigate his responsibility for a crime in Background, Responsibility, and Excuse, 96 Yale L. J. 1661 (1987). Vuoso's discussion of responsibility is related to, but not completely analogous with, my discussion of the justification of blame here.

68. Andrews, Dan & Leigh, Andrew, More Inequality, Less Social Mobility , 16 Applied Econ. Letters 1489 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To be clear, I do not claim that socioeconomic inequality causes social immobility, an argument that is somewhat more controversial. See, e.g., Yaish, Meir & Andersen, Robert, Social Mobility in 20 Modern Societies: The Role of Economic and Political Context , 41 Soc. Sci. Res. 527 (2012)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

69. Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2013 (2012).

70. See Blum, Lawrence, White Privilege: A Mild Critique , 6 Theory & Research Educ. 309 (2008)Google Scholar.

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73. See Chiricos, Ted et al., Racial Typification of Crime and Support for Punitive Measures , 42 Criminology 359 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74. Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies (2014).

75. Strawson, supra note 13.

76. Fried, supra note 8.