{"product_id":"9781620971642","title":"Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America","description":"\u003cb\u003eNamed one of the “10 books to read after you've read \u003ci\u003eEvicted\u003c\/i\u003e” by the \u003ci\u003eMilwaukee Journal Sentinal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“A powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty. . . . Lucid and troubling.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cstrong\u003eMatthew Desmond, author of \u003cem\u003eEvicted\u003c\/em\u003e, in \u003cem\u003eThe Chronicle of Higher Education\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA 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\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn addition to exposing racially biased policing, the Justice Department’s \u003cem\u003eFerguson Report\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs former staffer to Robert F. Kennedy and current Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman explains in \u003cem\u003eNot a Crime to Be Poor\u003c\/em\u003e, 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEdelman, 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.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"New Press, The","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47134479352048,"sku":"9781620971642","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781620971642_p0.jpg?v=1763858254","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781620971642","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}