by Jocelyn Simonson
New Press
8/15/2023, hardcover
SKU: 9781620977446
An original argument that the answer to mass incarceration lies not with experts and pundits, but with ordinary people taking extraordinary actions together--written by a leading authority on bail reform and social movements
From reading books on mass incarceration, one might conclude that the way out of our overly punitive, racially disparate criminal system is to put things in the hands of experts, technocrats able to think their way out of the problem. But, as Jocelyn Simonson points out in her groundbreaking new book, the problems posed by the American carceral state are not just technical puzzles; they present profound moral questions for our time.
Radical Acts of Justice tells the stories of ordinary people joining together in collective acts of resistance: paying bail for a stranger, using social media to let the public know what everyday courtroom proceedings are like, making a video about someone's life for a criminal court judge, presenting a budget proposal to the city council. When people join together to contest received ideas of justice and safety, they challenge the ideas that prosecutions and prisons make us safer; that public officials charged with maintaining "law and order" are carrying out the will of the people; and that justice requires putting people in cages. Through collective action, these groups live out new and more radical ideas of what justice can look like.
In a book that will be essential reading for those who believe our current systems of policing, criminal law, and prisons are untenable, Jocelyn Simonson shows how to shift power away from the elite actors at the front of the courtroom and toward the swelling collective in the back.
Reviews:
"Jocelyn Simonson is one of the great up-and-coming legal intellectuals. But this book is much more than something very smart and well-written. It is an exploration of an essential new shift in forms of participatory democracy, and everyone should read it and then get involved in their local community with these new forms of community empowerment--the significance of which she so expertly explains to a wider audience." -- Alec Karakatsanis, founder and executive director of Civil Rights Corps and author of Usual Cruelty
"Simonson provides a much-needed description and analysis of the national movement to redefine safety and justice through grassroots collective action--showing us that even in a time of 'law and order' backlash, communities are winning concrete victories in dialing back the system of mass criminalization." -- Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing
About the Author:
Jocelyn Simonson is a former public defender, professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, and the leading national authority on community bail funds. Her work has been cited by the Supreme Court and discussed in The Atlantic, the New Yorker, and the Associated Press, and she has written for the New York Times, The Nation, n+1, the Washington Post, and others. Radical Acts of Justice is her first book. She lives in New York City.