Punishment With out Crime: How Our Huge Misdemeanor System Traps the Harmless and Makes America Extra Unequal

Punishment With out Crime affords an pressing new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by inspecting the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Primarily based on in depth authentic analysis, authorized scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inside workings of a large petty offense system that produces over 13 million circumstances annually. Folks arrested for minor crimes are swept by way of courts the place defendants typically lack legal professionals, judges course of circumstances in mere minutes, and practically everybody pleads responsible. This misdemeanor machine begins punishing folks lengthy earlier than they’re convicted; it punishes the harmless; and it punishes conduct that by no means ought to have been a criminal offense. In consequence, huge numbers of Individuals — most of them poor and folks of colour — are stigmatized as criminals, impoverished by way of fines and costs, and stripped of drivers’ licenses, jobs, and housing.

For too lengthy, misdemeanors have been ignored. However they’re essential to understanding our punitive legal system and our widening financial and racial divides.

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