| Description |
xix, 293 pages ; 22 cm. |
| Contents |
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. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Summary |
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. |
| Subject |
Criminal justice, Administration of -- United States.
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Poverty -- Government policy -- United States.
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Poor -- Government policy -- United States.
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| Added Title |
Criminalization of poverty in America |
| ISBN |
9781620971635 (hc : alk. paper) |
|
1620971631 (hc : alk. paper) |
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