Not a Crime to Be Poor : The Criminalization of Poverty in America

Most Americans Believe Debtors' Prisons Are A Thing Of The Past. Yet Today, People Are In Jail By The Thousands For No Other Reason Than That They Are Poor. As The Justice Department Found When It Investigated Police Practices In Ferguson, Missouri, Massive Fines And Fees Are Levied For Minor Crimes Such As Broken Taillights And Rolling Through Stop Signs, And When The Poor Cannot Pay, The Result Is An Epidemic Of Repeated Stays In Jail. Bail Is Routinely Set Without Consideration Of A Defendant's Ability To Pay, Resulting In One Kind Of Justice System For Those Who Can Buy Their Way Out And Another Harshly Punitive One For Those Who Can't. In Not A Crime To Be Poor, Georgetown Law Professor Peter Edelman Argues That Ferguson Is Everywhere In America Today.^ Through Money Bail Systems, Fees And Fines, Drivers License Suspensions By The Millions, Strictly Enforced Laws Against Behavior Including Vagrancy And Public Urination That Largely Affect The Homeless, And The Substitution Of Prisons And Jails For The Mental Hospitals That Have Traditionally Served The Impoverished, One Of The Richest Countries On Earth Has Effectively Criminalized Poverty. Edelman, Who Famously Resigned From The Administration Of Bill Clinton Over Welfare Reform, Connects The Dots Between Disciplinary Policies That Disproportionately Send African American And Latino Schoolchildren To Court For Minor Misbehavior, Child Support Policies That Send Penniless Fathers To Jail, Public Housing Rules That Bar Ex-offenders, The Eviction Of Women Who Call 911 To Get Protection Against Domestic Violence, And The Threat Of Fraud Charges Against Public Benefit Recipients To Paint A Picture Of A Mean-spirited System That Turns Daily Struggles Into Inescapable Poverty.^ Tracing This Trend Back To The So-called Tax Revolution When Voters Insisted That Politicians Cut Taxes Drastically, Forcing Cities And States To Look To Alternative Ways Of Raising Money, Edelman Shows That We Still Live In A Country Where, To Our Great Shame, It Is A Crime To Be Poor.--jacket Flap. Introduction -- The Criminalization Of Poverty -- Ferguson Is Everywhere : Twenty-first-century Century Debtors' Prisons -- Fighting Back : The Advocates And Their Work -- Money Bail -- The Criminalization Of Mental Illness -- Child Support : Criminalizing Poor Fathers -- Criminalizing Public Benefits -- Poverty, Race, And Discipline In Schools : Go Directly To Jail -- Crime-free Housing Ordinances And The Criminalization Of Homelessness -- The Real Solution: End Poverty -- Taking Criminal Justice Reform Seriously -- Turning The Coin Over : Ending Poverty As We Know It -- Acknowledgments. Peter Edelman. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 253-276) And Index. 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." 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 "A powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty. . . . Lucid and troubling." -- Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted , in The Chronicle of Higher Education A nationally known expert on poverty shows how not having money has been criminalized and shines a light on lawyers, activists, and policy makers working for a more humane approach In addition to exposing racially biased policing, the Justice Department's Ferguson Report exposed to the world a system of fines and fees levied for minor crimes in Ferguson, Missouri, that, when they proved too expensive for Ferguson's largely poor, African American population, resulted in jail sentences for thousands of people. As former staffer to Robert F. Kennedy and current Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor , Ferguson is everywhere in America today. Through money bail systems, fees and fines, strictly enforced laws and regulations against behavior including trespassing and public urination that largely affect the homeless, and the substitution of prisons and jails for the mental hospitals that have traditionally served the impoverished, in one of the richest countries on Earth we have effectively made it a crime to be poor. Edelman, who famously resigned from the administration of Bill Clinton over welfare "reform," connects the dots between these policies and others including school discipline in poor communities, child support policies affecting the poor, public housing ordinances, addiction treatment, and the specter of public benefits fraud to paint a picture of a mean-spirited, retributive system that seals whole communities into inescapable cycles of poverty.