Punishment Without Crime
How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
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Punishment Without Crime
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Narrated by:
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Janina Edwards
About this listen
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
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 Alexandra Natapoff (P)2018 Basic BooksCritic Reviews
"Natapoff's presentation of her meticulously researched data is impressive.... A searing, groundbreaking study of criminology and sociology." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
"Intelligently written, tightly argued, and often heartbreaking, Natapoff's account is a worthy companion to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
"This important book completely upends the criminal justice conversation. Natapoff documents dark truths about the misdemeanor process - how it forces the innocent to plead guilty, how it disregards basic legal rights, and how it inflicts deep injustice. Her insights inspire both outrage and innovation. Punishment Without Crime provides a terrific new understanding of a flawed criminal system, and it offers a much-needed path toward the fair and just criminal system America deserves. A necessary book for our times." (Barry Scheck, cofounder of the Innocence Project)