Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Joe Soss
Date and Time
Location
Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice
Joe Soss, Cowles Professor of the Study of Public Service, Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota
Abstract: Over the past 40 years, public and private actors have turned U.S. criminal justice institutions into a vast network of revenue-generating operations. Today, practices such as fines, fees, forfeitures, prison charges, and bail premiums transfer billions of dollars from race-class subjugated communities to governments and corporations. Based on collaborative research with Joshua Page, Joe Soss will discuss the origins, operations, and consequences of this development. Criminal legal governance in the U.S. today operates as a regime of legal plunder, organized by the intersections of race, class, and gender. To understand it, one must locate it in the longer histories of racial capitalism, predatory uses of the state, and political resistance.
Joe Soss is the Cowles Professor for the Study of Public Service in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, where he also holds affiliate positions in Political Science and Sociology. He is co-author of numerous books and articles, including Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race and the newly published Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice.
Due to building access restrictions, if you do not have a Harvard ID and wish to attend, you must email inequality@hks.harvard.edu to receive permission.