Not a Crime to be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America
Date & time
Location
Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.
About the book:
In addition to exposing racially biased policing, the Justice Department’s Ferguson Report 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.
As former staffer to Robert F. Kennedy and current Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, 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.
For more information, please visit the publisher's website: https://thenewpress.com/books/not-crime-be-poor-0
About the speaker:
Peter Edelman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown Law Center. On the faculty since 1982, he has also served in all three branches of government. During President Clinton’s first term he was Counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Earlier in his career he was a Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Issues Director for Senator Edward Kennedy's 1980 Presidential campaign. He also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and was Special Assistant to Assistant Attorney General John Douglas in the Department of Justice. Mr. Edelman’s most previous book was So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America, and of course we are here to celebrate Not a Crime to Be Poor.
This event is hosted by Poverty Solutions and co-sponsored by the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.