"Most Americans believe debtors' prisons are a thing of the past. Yet today, people are in jail by the thousands for no other reason than that they are poor. As the Justice Department found when it investigated police practices in Ferguson, Missouri, massive fines and fees are levied for minor crimes such as broken taillights and rolling through stop signs, and when the poor cannot pay, the result is an epidemic of repeated stays in jail. Bail is routinely set without consideration of a defendant's ability to pay, resulting in one kind of justice system for those who can buy their way out and another harshly punitive one for those who can't. In Not a Crime to Be Poor, Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman argues that Ferguson is everywhere in America today. Through money bail systems, fees and fines, drivers license suspensions by the millions, strictly enforced laws against behavior including vagrancy and public urination that largely affect the homeless, and the substitution of prisons and jails for the mental hospitals that have traditionally served the impoverished, one of the richest countries on Earth has effectively criminalized poverty. Edelman, who famously resigned from the administration of Bill Clinton over welfare "reform," connects the dots between disciplinary policies that disproportionately send African American and Latino schoolchildren to court for minor misbehavior, child support policies that send penniless fathers to jail, public housing rules that bar ex-offenders, the eviction of women who call 911 to get protection against domestic violence, and the threat of fraud charges against public benefit recipients to paint a picture of a mean-spirited system that turns daily struggles into inescapable poverty. Tracing this trend back to the so-called tax revolution when voters insisted that politicians cut taxes drastically, forcing cities and states to look to alternative ways of raising money, Edelman shows that we still live in a country where, to our great shame, it is a crime to be poor."--Jacket flap

By several recent counts, the United States is home to 2 to 3 million youth age 16 through 24 who are out of school and out of work Much has been written on disadvantaged youth, and government policy has gone through many incarnations, yet questions remain unanswered. Why are so many young people “disconnected,” and what can public policy do about it? And why has disconnection become more common for young men—particularly African-American men and low-income men—than for young women? In Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men, Edelman, Holzer, and Offner offer analysis and policy prescriptions to solve this growing crisis. They carefully examine field programs and research studies and recommend specific strategies to enhance education, training, and employment opportunities for disadvantaged youth; to improve the incentives of less-skilled young workers to accept employment; and to address the severe barriers and disincentives faced by some youth, such as ex-offenders and noncustodial fathers. The result is a clear guidebook for policymakers, and an important distillation for anyone interested in the plight of today’s disconnected youth. With a foreword by Hugh Price, former President and CEO, National Urban League