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Legal Plunder
The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice
Brief Description
A searing, historically rich account of how US policing and punishment have been retrofitted over the last four decades to extract public and private revenues from America's poorest and most vulnerable communities. Alongside the rise of mass incarceration, a second profound and equally disturbing development has...
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Description
A searing, historically rich account of how US policing and punishment have been retrofitted over the last four decades to extract public and private revenues from America's poorest and most vulnerable communities.
Alongside the rise of mass incarceration, a second profound and equally disturbing development has transpired. Since the 1980s, US policing and punishment have been remade into tools for stripping resources from the nation's most oppressed communities and turning them into public and private revenues. Legal Plunder analyses this development's origins, operations, consequences, and the political struggles that it has created.
Drawing on historical and contemporary evidence, including original ethnographic research, Joshua Page and Joe Soss examine the predatory dimensions of criminal legal governance to show how practices that criminalise, police, and punish have been retrofitted to siphon resources from subordinated groups, subsidise governments, and generate corporate profits. As tax burdens have declined for the affluent, this financial extractionβnow a core function of the country's sprawling criminal legal apparatusβfurther compounds race, class, and gender inequalities and injustices. Legal Plunder shows that we can no longer afford to overlook legal plunder or the efforts to dismantle it.
Series: Chicago Studies in American Politics
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Legal Plunder
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780226841168
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 12 August 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Audience: Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 28.0mm
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 626g
Pages: 448
About the Author
Joshua Page is the Beverly and Richard Fink Professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Minnesota. He is the author ofΒ The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officer Unions in CaliforniaΒ and coauthor ofΒ 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.
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