Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221080698 |
| Author | Matthew Clair |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
Note
1. This book was published in 2019 the same year the important Timbs v. Indiana case occurred.
The court held “The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is an incorporated protection
applicable to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”Timbs
v. Indiana, 139 s. Ct. 682 (2019). Since this decision important legal and policy deliberations
have begun to engage with notions of what “excessive”is and how courts should interpret
and apply (Colgan and McLean, 2020).
Alexes Harris
University of Washington
Alexes Harris, Sociology, University of Washington, Box 353340, Seattle, WA 98195.
Email: yharris@uw.edu
References
Colgan B and McLean NM (2020) Financial hardship and the excessive fines clause: asses-
sing the severity of property forfeitures after Timbs.Yale Law Journal Forum 129: 430–
449.
Harris A (2016) A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor. NY:
Russell Sage Foundation.
Harris A, Pattillo M and Sykes B (2022) Studying the system of monetary sa nctions;
Introduction to state monetary sanctions and the costs of the criminal legal system. RSF:
The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Vl 8(1): 1–33. https://doi.
org/10.7758/RSF.2022.8.1.0
Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive
Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More
Unequal. Basic Books: New York, NY, 2018; 352 pages (index included).
ISBN-13: 9780465093793, $30 (Hardcover)
In Punishment Without Crime, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff provides a comprehensive
account of the misdemeanor system in the United States. The misdemeanor system consists
of the “thousands of interlocking offices, players, and practices”(p. 12) that manage, punish,
and extract resources from people accused of committing petty and more-serious offenses
typically punishable by no more than a year in jail. Petty offenses encompass criminalized
behaviors like jaywalking and resisting arrest, whereas more serious offenses in the misde-
meanor system include driving under the influence or assault. Among scholars documenting
the causes and consequences of mass incarceration, misdemeanors have only recently begun
to be scrutinized. Natapoff reveals how the misdemeanor process feeds mass incarceration
through the jailing of defendants pretrial and the generation of criminal records that can cast
a long shadow in the felony system. She also argues that the misdemeanor system should
itself be understood as a central organizing institution in society that has profound implica-
tions for racial inequality, poverty governance, and American democracy.
Book reviews 1151
To continue reading
Request your trial