ISBN:
B07BVP51FT
Title: Punishment Without Crime Pdf How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
A revelatory account of the misdemeanor machine that unjustly brands millions of Americans as criminals
Punishment Without Crime offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massive petty offense system that produces over 13 million cases each year. People arrested for minor crimes are swept through courts where defendants often lack lawyers, judges process cases in mere minutes, and nearly everyone pleads guilty. This misdemeanor machine starts punishing people long before they are convicted; it punishes the innocent; and it punishes conduct that never should have been a crime. As a result, vast numbers of Americans -- most of them poor and people of color -- are stigmatized as criminals, impoverished through fines and fees, and stripped of drivers' licenses, jobs, and housing.
For too long, misdemeanors have been ignored. But they are crucial to understanding our punitive criminal system and our widening economic and racial divides.
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018
Important Work I often like to start the year reading something light and positive, but this year I did the opposite. Reading [book:Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal|39834671], I felt that I was reading something important, which I hope will get people thinking about ways to improve our misdemeanor system. As [author:Alexandra Natapoff|3001070] states:"Misdemeanors .....are the chump change of the criminal system. They are labeled “minor,” “low-level,” and “petty.” Sometimes they go by innocuous names like “infraction” or “violation.” Because the crimes are small and the punishments relatively light in comparison to felonies, this world of low-level offenses has not gotten much attention. But it is enormous, powerful, and surprisingly harsh. Every year, approximately 13 million people are charged with crimes as minor as littering or as serious as domestic violence.3 Those 13 million misdemeanors make up the vast majority, around 80 percent, of the nation’s criminal dockets. Most arrests in this country are for misdemeanors. Most convictions are misdemeanors."I have recently been hearing about people being jailed for failure to pay fines and thought to myself "this can't be right we don't have debtors prisons in this country." So when I saw that Punishment Without Crime was being released and critics were acclaiming it, I thought that I should read it as well and get down to the bottom of the story. It was indeed eye-opening as I confess to being quite ignorant of the whole misdemeanor system which is enormous and according to Natapoff anything but just:"As legal scholar Jonathan Simon puts it, “The whole structure of misdemeanor justice… seems intended to subject the urban poor to a series of petty but cumulative blows to their dignity as citizens of equal standing.”38"Natapoff has done her homework. This work has been thoroughly researched and is annotated throughout. She is also clear in her descriptions and explanations so that a lay person can understand the law and what is happening easily.Natapoff explains how the misdemeanor system effects the disparities of race and wealth, how it frequently tramples our constitution, how it has become privatized, and causes negative life changing impacts. In the final chapter she cautiously lays out how it could be changed for the better.I will admit to being pretty ignorant of this part of our justice system and am happy to have read this book.distressing and revelatory Exposes the self-serving practices of our predatory criminal court systems.Finally someone understands This system has been in place my entire life and I am 65. I have been to jail and prison several times in my life back in the 70's and 80's and the system was unequally applied then and it is now. Poor minorities, and even back then the people I was in jail with schooled me that it was all about the money. I remember being 20 years old and in the county jail wondering why everyone coming is with pathetic crimes like speeding or failing to appear on a parking ticket were not able to bail out. I just didn't understand what it meant to be poor. All my crimes were possession of drugs crimes, and I didn't realize how many people were simply dirt poor. It's just another kind of debtors prison. Probation is another money maker for the government. The whole thing is predatory. And the poor are the prey.
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