INJUSTICE, INC.

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.