Simple Politics with Guest Dan Hatcher

@simplepoliticswithkimwehle8756 interviews Professor Dan Hatcher.

“Rather than providing vulnerable populations with equal justice, the institutions are mining them, using commodification tools strengthened and modernized through time and technology."

Hatcher's latest book "Injustice, Inc.How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor" is an an unflinching exposé of how the family, juvenile, and criminal justice systems monetize the communities they purport to serve and trap them in crushing poverty.

In this interview, Hatcher describes the ways that courts, prosecutors, police and probation officers take advantage of this system to earn money at the expense of the poor, and often Black, people caught in the middle of it. It details how juvenile courts push children into foster care and prosecutors pursue families for court fines and fees.

Hatcher's scholarship has addressed the conflicts between state agencies' revenue maximization strategies and the agencies' core missions to serve low-income children and families – including the practice of state foster care agencies converting foster children's Social Security benefits into state revenue, Medicaid maximization and diversion practices, welfare cost recovery policies in the TANF program, and foster care cost recovery through child support enforcement. His scholarship has attracted national attention, including significant press coverage, congressional testimony, citation in multiple Congressional Research Service reports, requests to draft legislation, and continued participation in national policy reform efforts.

Follow Dan Hatcher here