We are All Criminals

Front Cover
We Are All Criminals, 2017 - Law - 279 pages
One in four people in the US has a criminal record; four in four have a criminal history. These are their stories.We Are All Criminals combines criminal justice statistics and statutes with compelling photography and first-person narrative to personalize the destruction caused by decades of mass criminalization, while leaving the reader with a sense of hope and inspiration to affect change.From the pediatrician who blew up a porta potty to the chiefs of police who burglarized a liquor warehouse to the countless students who smoked and sold pot, this 279 page photo-packed book is filled with stories of people who got away with crimes--and parallel stories of people laboring under the stigma of a criminal record. It's an examination of criminality, privilege, punishment, and second chances. Woven throughout is incisive commentary on the havoc our carceral state has wreaked upon the nation; the disparate impact of our legal system on poor communities and communities of color; and the exploration of innumerable life barriers created by criminal and juvenile records.

About the author (2017)

Emily Baxter is the founder and executive director of We Are All Criminals. She has served as the director of advocacy and public policy at the Council on Crime and Justice in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and as an assistant public defender at the Regional Native Public Defense Corporation, where she represented indigent members of the Leech Lake and White Earth Bands of Ojibwe charged with crimes in state court. Emily is a former Fellow at the University of Minnesota Law School's Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. She began developing We Are All Criminals through a Bush Fellowship in 2012.

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