Harrison 1

Jazzmin Harrison

Dr Joshua Weiss

English 101

9 October 2017

Annotated Bibliography

Harris, Alexes. Drawing Blood from Stone: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the

Contemporary United States. The University of Chicago, 2010.

Alexes Harris, Sociology professor at The University Of Washington, discusses the effects of

penal expansion in the United States on the political, demographic, and economic level. The

United States Penal System, according to Harris, disadvantages the people whose lives are

mainly touched by it, which agree with his findings. Such as, the less fortunate, the

unemployed, the mentally impaired, and the incarcerated. This reading offers data that

analyzes the social consequences of having legal debt such as reducing family income and

limiting access to resources such as housing. Harris highlights how monetary sanctions are

permanent punishments for people who can not afford monthly payments. I find this text to

be informative because it provides reliable data that analyzes the effects on people, mainly

poor people, who suffer the burdensome of having legal debts. This text also offers reasoning

behind how criminal justice debts is one of the causes of poverty. Harriss findings are

imperative to my inquiry topic, the effects of legal debts on poverty.

Sobol, Neil. Charging the Poor: Criminal Justice Debts and Modern Day Debtors Prison.

Maryland Law Review, February 2016.

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Neil Sobol, Associate Professor of Law, argues that debtors prisons should no longer exist

because the United States abolished the act of incarcerating people to collect debts. This text

focuses on the relationship between criminal justice debts and the use of incarceration for

failure to pay them. Sobol attempts to define what legal financial obligations are and how

they affect budgetary concerns in the United States. In this article, Sobol explains why

indigent people who owe criminal debts distrust the legal system because they fear unfair

treatment and incarceration. According to Sobol, the impact of criminal justice debts are

more severe on minorities than on any other race. This article highlights the shocking

geographic findings of debtor prisons. Alleging debtors prisons are located in Alabama,

Georgia, Mississippi, and Colorado. I find this reading to be supportive to my research. From

this text I can provide my readers with information as to why the mass incarceration rates are

increasing. I can also revisit the history of debtors prisons and explain the causes for their

abolition.

Stacey, Christopher. Looking Beyond Re-offending: Criminal Records and Poverty. Criminal

Justice Matters Journal, March 2015.

Christopher Stacey, an advocate for people with convictions, suggests that there is a link

between criminal records and poverty. He reports that the stigma of imprisonment is linked

to a wage gap thus serving as a disadvantage for people with a criminal record. Stacey then

begins to answer whether it is conviction or imprisonment that has a greater impact on

poverty. Stacey defines the two as income penalties, which agrees with the Centre for Crime

and Justice Studies definition. He elaborates on the discrimination against former prisons and
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calls for action that should take place. Stacey urges that job applications should not ask about

conviction history because it allows employers to judge the applicant before the interview.

This text can assist me in aiding my readers with another example of how imprisonment is

linked to poverty. I can provide statistics pertaining to employment, child care, and

rehabilitation and how they are linked to a wage gap.

Hampson, Christopher. The New American Debtors Prisons. American Journal of Criminal

Law, 2016.

Christopher Hampson, editor in the Harvard Law Review, shares stories from Keilee Fant,

Roelif Carter, Harriet Cleveland, and many more about how they were arrested for having

monetary obligations owed to the state. Some of these people were arrested at work and

when dropping their children off to school. Hampson compares the institutions used to

imprison people with legal debts to the nineteenth-century debtors prisons. He argues that

todays institutions violate state constitutions bans. Hampson continues by providing

reasoning as to why modern-day debtors prisons should be abolished: mass incarceration

rates are rapidly increasing. Next Hampson lists the three reason for the abolishment of

debtors prisons in the nineteenth-century and why those reasons should be taken into

account today. Lastly, Hampson suggest that current laws can be used to stop debtors

prisons from being active. I can use this source to compare other authors suggestions

pertaining to what should happen to modern-day debtors prisons. This will allow me to

develop strong opposing arguments about if poverty and crime are linked.
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Birckhead, Tamar. The Racialization of Juvenile Justice and the Role of Defense Attorney.

Boston College Law Review, March 2017.

Tamar Birckhead, an attorney who represents youth charged with criminal offenses, focuses

this article on how young people are perceived within the American society. He goes inside

of the courtroom and tries to answer questions that he has developed. Questions such as,

Does race-based stereotypes influence decision making in the juvenile justice system?

Birckhead begins this article by defining various definition of a good kid. He then explores

the meaning behind good black kid, a phrase used by his third year law student in court.

The first portion of this article is dedicated to providing the reasoning as to why poor

children of color find themselves in the scene of a courtroom. The second portion of this

article focuses on the challenges of defending youth charged with crime. Birckhead describes

multiple examples of how some rhetoric used by attorneys in court can devalue adolescents

of color. Birckhead concludes this article with a call to diversify court culture to ensure fair

lawyering. This article can assist me in adding another aspect of how crime affects people in

poverty on an adolescent level. I can also provided examples of how attorneys rhetoric can be

racist and stereotypical.