A revelatory account of the misdemeanor machine that unjustly brands millions of Americans as criminals. Punishment Without Crime offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massive petty offense system that produces over 13 million cases each year. People arrested for minor crimes are swept through courts where defendants often lack lawyers, judges process cases in mere minutes, and nearly everyone pleads guilty. This misdemeanor machine starts punishing people long before they are convicted; it punishes the innocent; and it punishes conduct that never should have been a crime. As a result, vast numbers of Americans -- most of them poor and people of color -- are stigmatized as criminals, impoverished through fines and fees, and stripped of drivers' licenses, jobs, and housing. For too long, misdemeanors have been ignored. But they are crucial to understanding our punitive criminal system and our widening economic and racial divides. A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018

On the streets of South Philly, Nathan "Sadat" White made a name for himself. There were accolades associated with the mention of his name. When people heard Sadat was around, they immediately knew he was to be feared, but not the kind of fear most drug dealers had. He commanded respect. Sadat was fair and deliberately deadly at the same time. How else was he to survive in the streets? In the business world, Nathan later came into his own. With the help and understanding of his brother, other close family members, a select few friends, and, of course, God's unending mercy, he is now a succeeding as a business-owner. Becoming an African-American business-owner did not come with ease. Nathan had to first overcome the stigma that followed him from his sordid criminal past - but he arrived before it was too late to turn back from death's grip. The lesson taught in this gripping life story is: CRIME DOESN'T PAY!

Awarded "Special Recognition" by the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism Awards Finalist for the American Bar Association's 2018 Silver Gavel Book Award Named one of the "10 books to read after you've read Evicted" by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the demands of social justice in America."—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy Winner of a special Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the book that Evicted author Matthew Desmond calls "a powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty . . . lucid and troubling" In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn't just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city's poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors' prisons of the twenty-first century. The anti-tax revolution that began with the Reagan era led state and local governments, starved for revenues, to squeeze ordinary people, collect fines and fees to the tune of 10 million people who now owe $50 billion. Nor is the criminalization of poverty confined to money. Schoolchildren are sent to court for playground skirmishes that previously sent them to the principal's office. Women are evicted from their homes for calling the police too often to ask for protection from domestic violence. The homeless are arrested for sleeping in the park or urinating in public. A former aide to Robert F. Kennedy and senior official in the Clinton administration, Peter Edelman has devoted his life to understanding the causes of poverty. As Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy has said, "No one has been more committed to struggles against impoverishment and its cruel consequences than Peter Edelman." And former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes, "If there is one essential book on the great tragedy of poverty and inequality in America, this is it."

Crime Does Not Pay is an American comic book series published between 1942 and 1955 by Lev Gleason Publications. Edited and chiefly written by Charles Biro, the title launched the crime comics genre and was the first "true crime" comic book series.

Our latest collection—including every uncensored page from Crime Does Not Pay issues #54 to #57—is brimming with razor-sharp work by artists George Tuska, Fred Guardineer, Dan Barry, Charles Biro, and others! This volume also features a new foreword by crime and comics storytelling all-star Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition, King of the Weeds)! * Featuring pre-Code work by Tuska, Biro, Guardineer, and others!

Uncut and uncensored, the infamous precode Crime Does Not Pay comics are finally collected into a series of archival collections! With brutal, realistic tales focusing on vile criminals, Crime Does Not Pay was one of the most popular comics of the 1940s. The series was a favorite target of Dr. Fredric Wertham and other censors and is partially responsible for the creation of the stifling Comics Code Authority. Now revered and mythic, this collection of the first four hardtofind Crime Does Not Pay comics features a fine roster of Golden Age creators and a new introduction by Matt Fraction (Iron Man, Casanova)!