Profit and Punishment

How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice

By: Tony Messenger

Narrated by: Karen Chilton

In Profit and Punishment, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished.

“Intimate, raw, and utterly scathing” — Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water
“Crucial evidence that the justice system is broken and has to be fixed. Please read this book.” —James Patterson, #1 New York Times bestselling author

As a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony Messenger has spent years in county and municipal courthouses documenting how poor Americans are convicted of minor crimes and then saddled with exorbitant fines and fees. If they are unable to pay, they are often sent to prison, where they are then charged a pay-to-stay bill, in a cycle that soon creates a mountain of debt that can take years to pay off. These insidious penalties are used to raise money for broken local and state budgets, often overseen by for-profit companies, and it is one of the central issues of the criminal justice reform movement.

In the tradition of Evicted and The New Jim Crow, Messenger has written a call to arms, shining a light on a two-tiered system invisible to most Americans. He introduces readers to three single mothers caught up in this system: living in poverty in Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, whose lives are upended when minor offenses become monumental financial and personal catastrophes. As these women struggle to clear their debt and move on with their lives, readers meet the dogged civil rights advocates and lawmakers fighting by their side to create a more equitable and fair court of justice. In this remarkable feat of reporting, Tony Messenger exposes injustice that is agonizing and infuriating in its mundane cruelty, as he champions the rights and dignity of some of the most vulnerable Americans.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

A must read for all Americans.

This is an excellent analysis of the vicious cycle that grips millions, upon millions of impoverished Americans. The outline of this group of greed mongering scum that build a for-profit system hinging on increasing the suffering of others is alarming. An important and awakening work.

Should be required reading for lawyers judges and legislators

As a Missouri lawyer and former legislator o thought I understood the issues this book deal with. I did not. My new hobbies will be asking legal and political colleagues what they think of it

Powerful!

I became aware of back door fees on offenders in Missouri during the Ferguson riots , and how it unfairly affects them if they are unable to pay often for the rest of their lives. This book greatly expands on that, describing a cruel, corrupt system . A must read if you care about fairness and justice.

Politically motived and bias

The info presented is terrible because it happens in this country. There shouldn’t be laws or practices allowing the debtor prisons to happen or put people in jail because they can’t pay the over the top court cost. There needs to be change.

The problem I have with this book and the reason for the low stars is the bias the author has and pure distain for Trump and republicans. These practices have been in place according to the author for years and decades, to have so much pent up hatred for a man that held 4 years of office in ridiculous. Clearly the author is a far left leaning journalist but didn’t hear any talk about Obama not addressing these issue or much talk about democrat run states. Was hoping to learn something I knew nothing about, which I did to a point but got a repetitive look at liberals and their hatred for anything to do with republicans. If I had know this was going to be a political dumpster fire I would have avoided it.

The performance was horrible. Sounded like she was just mad the entire time she read the book but was clear it was the overall context of the book.