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Title details for Not a Crime to Be Poor by Peter Edelman - Available

Not a Crime to Be Poor

The Criminalization of Poverty in America

by Peter Edelman
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available
Awarded "Special Recognition" by the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism Awards
Finalist for the American Bar Association's 2018 Silver Gavel Book Award
Named one of the "10 books to read after you've read Evicted" by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the demands of social justice in America."—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

Winner of a special Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the book that Evicted author Matthew Desmond calls "a powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty . . . lucid and troubling"
In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn't just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city's poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors' prisons of the twenty-first century. The anti-tax revolution that began with the Reagan era led state and local governments, starved for revenues, to squeeze ordinary people, collect fines and fees to the tune of 10 million people who now owe $50 billion.
Nor is the criminalization of poverty confined to money. Schoolchildren are sent to court for playground skirmishes that previously sent them to the principal's office. Women are evicted from their homes for calling the police too often to ask for protection from domestic violence. The homeless are arrested for sleeping in the park or urinating in public.
A former aide to Robert F. Kennedy and senior official in the Clinton administration, Peter Edelman has devoted his life to understanding the causes of poverty. As Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy has said, "No one has been more committed to struggles against impoverishment and its cruel consequences than Peter Edelman." And former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes, "If there is one essential book on the great tragedy of poverty and inequality in America, this is it."

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 2, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781620975534
      • File size: 525 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781620975534
      • File size: 525 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      August 15, 2017
      How poor people are being punished for their poverty.Supported by compelling evidence of endemic injustice, Edelman (Law and Public Policy/Georgetown Univ. Law Center; So Rich, So Poor: Why It's So Hard to End Poverty in America, 2012, etc.), faculty director of Georgetown's Center on Poverty and Inequality, presents a hard-hitting argument for reform. Joining critiques offered by writers such as Chris Hayes (A Colony in a Nation), Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow), and Matthew Desmond (Evicted), Edelman underscores the ways in which impoverished individuals are victimized by the criminal justice system. "Low income people are arrested for minor violations that are only annoyances for people with means," he writes, and they face penalties they cannot afford to pay. Failure to pay results in additional fines, repeated driver's license suspensions, and incarceration. Shockingly, 43 states charge for having a public defender. In addition, to accrue revenue, states have increased fines for minor infractions. Fines for speeding tickets have soared to $300 or more. Students who commit low-level offenses often are sent into the criminal system rather than to the principal's office. To monitor probation, 13 states employ for-profit companies that impose high fees, and 44 states charge offenders for the costs of their own probation or parole, which include fees for electronic bracelets, drug testing, alcohol monitoring, driving classes, and home supervision. Mentally ill inmates receive no treatment or at best minimal attention; Edelman cites Corizon, "the largest for-profit mental health provider in the country for prisons, jails and detention centers," as particularly egregious. After documenting case after shocking case in the first part of the book, Edelman proposes that the real solution to injustice lies in ending poverty: "prenatal care for all, child development for all children, first-class education for all, decent jobs and effective work supports, affordable housing, health and mental health, lawyers as needed, safe neighborhoods," healthy communities, and "social, racial and gender justice." He presents case histories of achievements in several communities, fueling his optimism. An impassioned call for an "overarching movement" for justice.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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