Review by Booklist Review
Brooklyn Law School professor and former public defender Simonson gives an overview of the guiding purpose, methods, and outcomes of grassroots movements challenging the criminal-justice status quo. Condemning the frequent courtroom use of the term "the People" to refer to prosecutors, she asks readers to consider who it excludes: namely, those who are accused of crimes and the groups mobilizing across the country to provide them with support. By focusing on members of these groups and the practical, concrete actions in which they are engaged, Simonson offers a different perspective on what it means to seek justice. Court watchers show up in court and track what they see. Bail funds provide bail and support services. Participatory defense supplies defendants with material support. The individuals driving these radical interventions are often directly impacted by the criminal-justice system. They believe in different paths to secure, safe communities. As Simonson tells their stories, she uses her experience and knowledge of the criminal-justice system to provide broader perspectives on, and context for, their work.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Former New York City public defender Simonson debuts with an enlightening examination of how ordinary people are "resisting mass incarceration in their neighborhoods" using tactics such as bail funds, courtwatching, and participatory defense. Citing studies that show people who are "held in jail pretrial are more likely to be sentenced to prison time, and to serve longer prison sentences, than people who are released," Simonson explains how community bail funds (usually collected from hundreds of small donations) "interrupt this process." Regarding the practice of courtwatching, in which members of the community observe criminal proceedings at the courthouse and then "share their observations and analysis with the larger public," Simonson notes that when courtwatchers enter the courtroom "as a visible collective" in order to "watch all" of the cases instead of one, they "disrupt the routine of forced, casual submission." Participatory defense groups--community members who get together to work on a case, such as by helping "dissect discovery documents"--"demand entry into legal spaces that are designed to be exclusionary," according to Simonson. Drawing on case studies and firsthand experience, Simonson persuasively shows how engaging in "collective work" enables communities to challenge a seemingly implacable system. This is a must-read for justice system reform advocates. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Simonson (Brooklyn Law Sch.) offers a well-written survey of groups pushing for change in the criminal justice system. Drawing on five years as a public defender in the Bronx and from extensive interviews, Simonson decries mass incarceration of people of color as a means of control. The book presents several ways in which social action groups have worked to reform the system. For example, the Community Bail Fund posts bail for strangers accused of a crime to blunt the effects of pretrial incarceration and helps restore their lives. The groups involved in participatory defense present a defendant's full story to the court and public. To break the prison pipeline, the People's Budget redirects funds from the criminal justice system to neglected neighborhoods. Courtroom watching is another way for the public to understand, document, and disassemble harmful court practices. The author argues that prosecutors shouldn't be able to call themselves "the People"; the real People are the communities harmed by mass incarceration. Simonson proposes a replacement for incarceration: provide housing, health care, and other support to people of color and poor people. VERDICT Criminal-reform advocates will enjoy this primer.--Harry Charles
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Impassioned account of grassroots responses to mass incarceration. In her debut book, Brooklyn Law School professor Simonson builds on her study of community bail fund networks, one facet of the evolving response to selectively punitive law enforcement in marginalized communities. "As a public defender in the Bronx," she writes, "I fought for five years against a system that I believed was profoundly immoral." The author tracks several responses to the segregationist excesses of policing and incarceration in multiple locales. She focuses on intervention strategies of bail funds, court-watching, participatory defense, and alternative budgeting (often simplified as "Defunding the police"), all set against a larger interrogation of what really constitutes community "safety" and whether the state speaks for "the people." Throughout the text, Simonson provides valuable historical context. "For hundreds of years," she writes, "people have gathered together to free people from the violence of the state," but the movement "has grown exponentially since 2014, both in geographical reach and in public engagement." She narrates how entities like the Philadelphia Bail Fund coalesced out of necessity to counter "the intractable hold of the criminal court system on their neighbors and communities" and tracks how they have grown into "permanent, sustainable organizations." By 2018, the author notes, the umbrella National Bail Fund Network encompassed 33. The court-watching movement has also become increasingly visible, represented by outreach organizations from Baton Rouge to New York City. Both religious and secular activists view courtroom procedure as often plagued by racist policies, and state economies are "seemingly dependent on the carceral state." Similar autonomy is promoted by "Participatory Defense," a looser approach to community-based investigation in which "people are regaining control over their own narratives in court." Simonson is attuned to the challenges faced by marginalized communities, and her writing is deft and well informed. The discussion elides some complexities related to victims' rights and the realities of street violence, which may lead to conservative-leaning readers remaining unconvinced. A notable contribution to debates about policing and prosecution bias. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
