Title: Punishment Without Crime Pdf How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
must read/listen I spent half the time yelling at the book "Oh my GOD NO WAY!, NO WHY!!" I am enraged about the state of our misdemeanor system in the US. Bail, fines, fees overworked public defenders are all part of this massive problem. I am glad we have been exposed to this information so we can be more active in the community about changing it.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.The Price is Right The United States has a well deserved international reputation for mass incarceration of its citizens, especially poor people, minorities and increasingly anyone who police identify as "a problem". This is the result of a byzantine, draconian punishment regime, incorporating elements of racism and compounded by a web of nefarious incentives favoring jail, prison and remunerative supervised parole oftentimes by private, for-profit corporations. As French novelist Céline put it, "Nearly all a poor bastard's desires are punishable by jail."Most investigative reports and legal scholarship concentrates on the felony system, but the seemingly all-pervasive and elastically defined "misdemeanor" criminal justice enterprise dwarfs the state and federal felony system both in scope and socio-economic and legal consequences. In this comprehensive, interesting, informative and well-resourced non-fiction book, law professor Alexandra Natapoff describes the less well known but all pervasive deceptively inconsequential misdemeanor legal system, one which will ensnare around 40% of white men and about half of African American men, all for quotidian, normal activities such as loitering and jaywalking.According to Natapoff, the misdemeanor system is a simultaneously a means of social control and a flexible control mechanism for enforcement of racist, classist hierarchies. Plus, she claims it is an opaque means of covert and undemocratic taxation, entrapping at least 13 million citizens in a vortex of inescapable debt and social encumbrances.Natopoff asserts that her book is the first to analyze and systematically catalogue the misdemeanor "criminal justice" enterprise in the US. She describes a system that is rushed, haphazard, capricious, voracious and rapacious. It constitutes an industrial scale miasma of thousands of "courts" (some of which have non-lawyers in the role of "judges") and enterprising profiteers. Bizarrely and incredibly, it may have police officers simultaneously serving as judge, jury and "advocate" for the accused. It's processes are dehumanizing, degrading and assembly line. Disregard for evidentiary standards and due process are necessitated by virtue of the need to "process" hordes of accused.When available (and legal representation is by no means assured by the Constitution and the various states), overworked and underpaid public defenders cannot possibly provide adequate council. The author notes that an attorney is not guaranteed by law for non-jailable offenses, even though various fees and traps oftentimes result in jail time for both the accused and the convicted. In short, Natopoff asserts (and documents) that the misdemeanor system is racist, profit driven, and ultimately socially irresponsible. It permanently stigmatizes and disadvantages the over 13 million convictions Americans suffer annually: it's a disaster.Leo Tolstoy wrote, "No one knows the kind of government he is living under who has never been to jail." What though about the experiences of those running afoul of the US judicial system who don't end up in jail? Natapoff, by deft use of anecdotes, convincingly conveys the baleful consequences for those simply accused and those who suffer conviction. For a significant percentage of all Americans (especially pre-targeted ones) will incur lifetime disadvantage.Take for example first-contact citizen-police interactions. These require little or no objective justification yet they are court sanctioned. Consider the subjectivity of so-called, "Terry Stops" (more commonly known as "stop and frisk") , the "Whren" decision (legal justification for pretextual stops of motorists), and the many and diverse other legal decisions that underpin law enforcement's ability to set the stage for an arrest based essentially on police suspicion or "contempt of cop" by an aggravated citizen.Once accused by the police, the defendant suffers the indignity of arrest, potential jail time (up to 48 hours before a judge is required to act), and - if the accused can afford it - cash bail: if not, jailing is always an option. This is a de facto "debtor's prison".Citizens can be arrested for jaywalking, loitering, spitting; a veritable universe of normal behavior, and all justified as "maintaining order". This masquerades as preemptive intervention and relies on the contentious "Broken Windows" hypothesis. Arrests of this sort are financially incentivized: for-profit jails and post-release "supervision" or "monitored probation"; fines bankrolling salaries and courts; promotions or bonuses for police. Public defenders have insurmountable caseloads and are under tremendous pressure to negotiate "plea bargains" (i.e., admissions to guilt, whether factually supported or not).While debtor prisons are illegal, placing fees (by private enterprise, the courts and various other potential profiteers) along with geometrically increasing non-payment penalties are not. Failure to discharge these can result in jail. Thus, the burgeoning carceral state for "miscreants" of various stripes thrives in America.All citizens - and statistically these are mostly minorities and the poor - will face a lifetime of disadvantage as the result of a single arrest for what amounts to a non-criminal crime. This creates a perpetual underclass, since a misdemeanor infraction can interfere with employment, renting an apartment, securing a loan or student assistance and so on. It's almost tantamount to Tsarist Russian internal exile.Natopoff's book is comprehensive in that it surveys, compiles and interprets much new data. Various elements have appeared elsewhere (e.g., various reports from advocacy groups, investigative reporting entities and in legal journals). The author relentlessly (and therefore repetitively) catalogues arrest consequences in each chapter. The book is well organized, referenced and clearly written. Some abbreviations are non-standard (AOC, LGO) and are used repetitively. Yet, they were only defined once and appear in the index written in full with the abbreviation in parenthesis following the entry. These are very minor criticisms. Natopoff, when giving opinions, does so in each chapter and they are often repetitious but worthy of emphasis. The judgements are backed by fact and, while occasionally categorical, the are not dogmatic nor does the book read as a polemic. It is, however, an unabashed advocacy piece. The concluding chapter offers correctives, some of which are bromides and most of which are aspirational. While it's certainly true that advances have been made in curtailing abuses in certain jurisdictions, the prospects for significantly curtailing the police-industrial complex are likely grim. There's too much money "supplying the tools of the trade" to quote Country Joe McDonald.It's myopic to deny or minimize social realities. "Law and order" advocates exaggerate and exploit public fear to maintain the socially destructive American criminal justice system. Citizens have the right to expect that whatever level of legal punishment (provided that's democratically decided and "transparent"will be enforced fairly, equally and in favor of social justice. Failing that the judicial structure and its law enforcement system will not only appear to be illegitimate: it will become so if that hasn't already happened.Natopoff's book shows that, for "The Establishment", "The Price is Right". The criminal justice system provides handsome payoffs in terms of social control and financial benefit. "Punishment Without Crime" provides a single-source for both the understanding and insight necessary to begin prompt corrective action. It's certainly wretched as it stands now.
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