Predatory criminal legal practices have dramatically expanded since the 1980s, extracting billions of dollars from working-class Americans every year. In this workshop, Professors Joshua Page and Joe Soss will discuss their recently published book, Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice. Together, we’ll discover how and why such practices became increasingly financialized over time and discuss some of the devastating consequences that practices such as asset forfeiture, commercial bail, carceral profiteering, and police-and-court fines and fees have for communities, families, and individuals’ lives. We’ll also explore some of the ways that organizations like Debt Collective can fight to abolish criminal justice predation and promote justice and equality.

Joshua Page is Professor of Sociology, Law, and Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He’s the author of The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California; and co-author of Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle over Criminal Justice and Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice. 

Joe Soss is the Cowles Professor for the Study of Public Service in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. His books include Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race, Unwanted Claims: The Politics of Participation in the U.S. Welfare System, and Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice.