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Profit and Punishment
- How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
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Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Messenger offers the first humane, journalistic expose of an American tragedy: modern-day debtor's prisons and how they've destroyed the lives of poor Americans.
"His Pulitzer Prize winning series on debtors' prisons in Missouri made a serious difference in real people's lives and his book will be a must read for a nation seeking a bipartisan path forward on criminal justice reform." (Claire McCaskill, former US senator and analyst for MSNBC)
Profit and Punishment is the most comprehensive look at the criminalization of poverty in the US, joining a growing and popular genre that is making a difference. It is Charged meets Evicted, focusing on that touchstone issue of the criminal justice reform movement: the insidious use of fines and fees to raise money for broken government budgets off the backs of the poor, and the partnership those governments have formed with for-profit companies that are getting rich on the backs of people incarcerated for minor crimes.
In a feat of exceptional reporting, Profit and Punishment reveals a familiar reality to the nation's poor, anchored by the stories of three single mothers living in poverty, one in Oklahoma, one in Missouri, and one in South Carolina, who are abused by a judicial system more focused on debt collection than public safety.
All over the country, similar schemes are criminalizing the vulnerable and the poor, with the full support of politicians in both parties. The geography is Missouri, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. The story is American.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.
“When Tony Messenger writes about social justice issues, he is relentless in his pursuit of truth, particularly when the victims of a broken criminal justice system are disproportionately people of color.” (DeRay McKesson, host of Pod Save the People and author of On the Other Side of Freedom)
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In the depths of the Great Recession, a cancer nurse, a car dealership worker, and an insurance fraud specialist helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history - a scandal that implicated dozens of major executives on Wall Street. They called it foreclosure fraud: Millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose.
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Capital Corruption and Greed
- By Anthony Freyberg on 07-30-16
By: David Dayen
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Gideon's Trumpet
- How One Man, a Poor Prisoner, Took His Case to the Supreme Court - and Changed the Law of the United States
- By: Anthony Lewis
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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A history of the landmark case of Clarence Earl Gideon's fight for the right to legal counsel.
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best book on the subject
- By J.B. Price on 06-12-18
By: Anthony Lewis
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Bushwhacked
- Life in George W. Bush's America
- By: Molly Ivins, Lou Dubose
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In their second book on our current White House occupant, Ivins and Dubose take the wire brush to the Bush presidency and show how he has applied the same flawed strategies he used in governing Texas to running the largest superpower in the world.
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Richly informative & entertaining...
- By Native Texan on 10-29-03
By: Molly Ivins, and others
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Locking Up Our Own
- Crime and Punishment in Black America
- By: James Forman Jr.
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics - and their impact on people of color - are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime.
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Outstanding Book
- By Andrew on 12-13-17
By: James Forman Jr.
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Con Job
- How Democrats Gave Us Crime, Sanctuary Cities, Abortion Profiteering, and Racial Division
- By: Crystal Wright
- Narrated by: Crystal Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Black voters have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party for the last fifty years - and for their loyalty, black Americans have been rewarded with worsening schools, collapsed families, skyrocketed incarceration rates, disappearing jobs, and rising crime. Crystal Wright, editor of the blog Conservative Black Chick, exposes how the Democratic Party has systematically betrayed black voters.
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Awesome!
- By Tracy on 05-11-16
By: Crystal Wright
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The Quiet Don
- The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino
- By: Matt Birkbeck
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Secretive - even reclusive - Russell Bufalino quietly built his organized crime empire in the decades between Prohibition and the Carter presidency. His reach extended far beyond the coal country of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and quaint Amish farms near Lancaster. Bufalino had a hand in global, national, and local politics of the largest American cities, many of its major industries, and controlled the powerful Teamsters Union. His influence also reached the highest levels of Pennsylvania government and halls of Congress, and his legacy left a culture of corruption that continues to this day.
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Important But Edited By Lawyers?
- By Ted on 04-03-14
By: Matt Birkbeck
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Lies the Government Told You
- Myth, Power, and Deception in American History
- By: Andrew P. Napolitano
- Narrated by: Andrew Napolitano
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Lies the Government Told You, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano reveals how America's freedom, as guaranteed by the US Constitution, has been forfeited by a government more protective of its own power than its obligations to preserve our individual liberties.
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A Must Read America 🇺🇸
- By Jamie Schaible on 05-30-23
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Injustices
- The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted
- By: Ian Millhiser
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law.
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Is It HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY ? It Depends !
- By James on 04-01-15
By: Ian Millhiser
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Fight Back and Win
- My 30-Year Fight Against Injustice and How You Can Win Your Own Battles
- By: Gloria Allred
- Narrated by: Gloria Allred
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Abridged
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Fearless lawyer, feminist, activist, television and radio commentator, warrior, advocate, and winner, Gloria Allred is all of these things and more. Voted by her peers as one of the best lawyers in America, and described by Time as "one of the nation's most effective advocates of family rights and feminist causes", Allred has devoted her career to fighting for civil rights across boundaries of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and social class.
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Amazing book, amazing woman.
- By Hope on 04-05-12
By: Gloria Allred
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Alabama v. King
- Martin Luther King Jr. and the Criminal Trial That Launched the Civil Rights Movement
- By: David Fisher - contributor, Dan Abrams, Fred D. Gray
- Narrated by: Fred D. Gray, Korey Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The forgotten story of a criminal trial that brought national attention to a young defendant named Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as told by Fred D. Gray, Dr. King’s lawyer and friend, along with New York Times bestselling authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher. The audiobook concludes with an exclusive conversation between Fred Gray and Dan Abrams.
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Great History Lesson and Story
- By bnieman on 09-22-23
By: David Fisher - contributor, and others
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Being Oscar
- From Mob Lawyer to Mayor of Las Vegas
- By: Oscar Goodman, George Anastasia
- Narrated by: Oscar Goodman
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In Being Oscar,one of America’s most celebrated criminal defense attorneys recounts the stories and cases of his epic life. The Mafia’s go-to defender, he has tried an estimated 300 criminal cases, and won most of them. His roster of clients reads like a history of organized crime: Meyer Lansky, Nicky Scarfo, and "Lefty" Rosenthal, as well as Mike Tyson and boxing promoter Don King, along with a midget, a dentist, and a federal judge. After 35 years as a defender, he ran for mayor of Las Vegas, and America’s greatest Mob lawyer became the mayor of its sexiest city.
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Not as good as I expected
- By Eric Schurr on 11-16-14
By: Oscar Goodman, and others
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We Are Not Yet Equal
- Understanding Our Racial Divide
- By: Carol Anderson, Tonya Bolden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Carol Anderson's White Rage took the world by storm, landing on the New York Times best seller list and best book of the year lists from New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Chicago Review of Books. It launched her as an in-demand commentator on contemporary race issues for national print and television media and garnered her an invitation to speak to the Democratic Congressional Caucus. This compelling young adult adaptation brings her ideas to a new audience.
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Great
- By JD on 07-06-20
By: Carol Anderson, and others
What listeners say about Profit and Punishment
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- G. Thomas
- 01-27-22
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.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-22-21
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
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- Carol Calvert
- 12-30-21
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.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-07-22
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.
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