Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor

by Daniel L. Hatcher

Overview

An unflinching exposé of how the family, juvenile, and criminal justice systems monetize the communities they purport to serve and trap them in crushing poverty
 
Injustice, Inc. exposes the ways in which justice systems exploit America's history of racial and economic inequality to generate revenue on a massive scale. With searing legal analysis, Daniel L. Hatcher uncovers how courts, prosecutors, police, probation departments, and detention facilities are abandoning ethics to churn vulnerable children and adults into unconstitutional factory-like operations.
 
Hatcher reveals stark details of revenue schemes and reflects on the systemic racialized harm of the injustice enterprise. He details how these corporatized institutions enter contracts to make money removing children from their homes, extort fines and fees, collaborate with debt collectors, seize property, incentivize arrests and evictions, enforce unpaid child labor, maximize occupancy in detention and "treatment" centers, and more. Injustice, Inc. underscores the need to unravel these predatory operations, which have escaped public scrutiny for too long.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520396050
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/21/2023
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	505,455
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Daniel L. Hatcher is Professor of Law in the University of Baltimore's Civil Advocacy Clinic and author of The Poverty Industry: The Exploitation of America's Most Vulnerable Citizens. A former Maryland Legal Aid and Children's Defense Fund attorney, he has long been a scholar, advocate, and teacher on poverty and justice.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments 

Introduction 

1. Crumbling Foundations of Justice 
2. Juvenile Courts Monetizing Child Removals 
3. Judicial Child Support Factory 
4. Prosecuting the Poor for Profit 
5. The Probation Business 
6. Policing and Profiting from the Poor 
7. Bodies in the Beds: The Business of Jailing Children and the Poor 
8. Racialized Harm of the Injustice Enterprise 
Conclusion 

Notes 
Selected Bibliography 
Index

Editorial Reviews

Daniel L. Hatcher, in his book Injustice, Inc., describes in detail a frankly apartheid system finely designed to milk every source of revenue from poor children.. He describes ‘factory-like operations’, ‘industrialization of harm’, ‘child support mercenaries’. He quotes official contracts that describe foster children as ‘units’, children as ‘data match algorithms’ for ‘predictive analytics’, and children as a ‘revenue generating mechanism.’ Paraphrasing poet Walt Whitman: ‘Out of the cradle endlessly rocking … [to] death, death, death, death.’

Counterpunch

"Daniel L. Hatcher, in his book Injustice, Inc., describes in detail a frankly apartheid system finely designed to milk every source of revenue from poor children.. He describes 'factory-like operations', 'industrialization of harm', 'child support mercenaries'. He quotes official contracts that describe foster children as 'units', children as 'data match algorithms' for 'predictive analytics', and children as a 'revenue generating mechanism.' Paraphrasing poet Walt Whitman: 'Out of the cradle endlessly rocking ... [to] death, death, death, death.'"-- "Counterpunch"

"Hatcher's Injustice, Inc. provides an entirely new line of inquiry examining the hidden internal juvenile legal practices that center on capturing money-- from federal funds to individuals' income and assets. This book provides a dizzying eye opening deep dive into the juvenile legal system to highlight the strategies and practices which courts, police, prosecutors, probation offices, and confinement institutions use to generate revenue for state and local jurisdictions and even for personal profit."-- "Social Forces"

"Hatcher meticulously reveals a nefarious, unethical operation within juvenile and criminal justice systems. . . . This book will serve as a valuable contribution to many fields and provides an insightful resource for educators, families, and communities." -- "CHOICE"

"Hatcher, a professor of law and advocate for social justice, delivers a well-researched, scholarly, disturbing synthesis of social history and legal treatise, tracking the long-term monetization of the justice system. . . . A useful, bleak exposé of a little-understood legal labyrinth constructed to harm the most vulnerable."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

From the Publisher

2023-01-21
A disheartening exposé of how state and local judicial systems focus on privatization and profit.

Hatcher, a professor of law and advocate for social justice, delivers a well-researched, scholarly, disturbing synthesis of social history and legal treatise, tracking the long-term monetization of the justice system. “Racial and economic inequalities are inextricably intertwined in the profiteering used by each of our foundational institutions of justice,” he writes, offering an ominous reminder: “If justice falls, all else falls with it.” These quiet developments cause immense harm in vulnerable communities, and they contradict both due process and ethical requirements. As Hatcher asserts, “financial incentives must not be part of the justice equation.” In clearly organized chapters, the author delineates a harsh landscape where institutions such as child services, probation, local and state courts, and policing find ways to profit from increasingly punitive, fee-driven law enforcement, a system that frames poverty as a series of costly personal failings. Hatcher unearths distressing narratives from Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, and other states as various agencies collude with private interests to create fee-gathering structures directed toward the poor, many of whom can never climb out of the destructive cycle of debt. “This all seems confusing because it is,” writes Hatcher. “But what is clear is that the revenue strategy violates the separation of powers and judicial independence.” The child support system, notes the author, is no longer about helping children but “has been traded for revenue operations, with vulnerable children and their families being pulled into an industrialization of harm.” The final chapter reiterates the ongoing “racialized commodification” of for-profit justice. Regarding the obvious harmfulness of these machinations, Hatcher concludes, “this concern has largely been ignored because there is significant money to be made.” He writes with justifiable passion, but the discussion is often technical, paraphrasing cases rather than relying on varied evidence, so readership may be limited to specialists.

A useful, bleak exposé of a little-understood legal labyrinth constructed to harm the most vulnerable.

Kirkus Reviews

"Hatcher’s Injustice, Inc. provides an entirely new line of inquiry examining the hidden internal juvenile legal practices that center on capturing money— from federal funds to individuals’ income and assets. This book provides a dizzying eye opening deep dive into the juvenile legal system to highlight the strategies and practices which courts, police, prosecutors, probation offices, and confinement institutions use to generate revenue for state and local jurisdictions and even for personal profit."

Social Forces

"Hatcher meticulously reveals a nefarious, unethical operation within juvenile and criminal justice systems. . . . This book will serve as a valuable contribution to many fields and provides an insightful resource for educators, families, and communities." 

CHOICE