Legal Plunder

“Page and Soss have produced a chilling and fact-based portrait of the American criminal justice system. They show us how a predatory system of fees, fines, and brutality has become institutionalized, spreading through cash-strapped state and local governments.” – Frances Fox Piven | Graduate Center of the City University of New York“For decades, scholars have pondered whether profit-seeking or the politics of punitiveness was the truest explanation for American mass incarceration. Legal Plunder demonstrates with astounding precision the perfect merger of these goals in a system of ruthless resource extraction that can both warehouse people and make them a productive source of wealth. As the authors show, this is a criminal legal system that deserves the alarming metaphor of ‘predation.’” – Jonathan Simon | University of California-Berkeley“In this thoroughly researched and expertly argued account, Page and Soss describe the vast instruments of race-targeted plunder that convert the needs of vulnerable groups into a means of revenue for corporate and government entities. Shining a light on these relations, Legal Plunder will become one of the most authoritative analyses of the criminal legal system by mapping its predatory dimensions and, thus, revealing why and how predatory governance emerged, trapped whole communities in its operations, and how to build a more just democracy.” – Vesla Mae Weaver | Johns Hopkins University

Joshua Page is the Beverly and Richard Fink Professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officer Unions in California and coauthor of Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle over Criminal Justice.

Joe Soss is the inaugural Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service at the University of Minnesota. He is coauthor of Disciplining the Poor and a member of the University of Minnesota Academy of Distinguished Teachers.