Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice
Over the past 40 years, public and private actors have turned U.S. criminal legal institutions into a vast network of revenue-generating operations. Today, practices such as fines, fees, forfeitures, prison charges, and bail premiums transfer billions of dollars from race-class subjugated communities to governments and corporations. Based on collaborative research with Joe Soss, Joshua Page will discuss the origins, operations, and consequences of this development.
SocSci Hub
Date: Wednesday 11 March 2026
Time: 15:30 - 17:00
Venue: Adam Smith Building, Room 487
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Joshua Page, University of Minnesota
This event has been co-organised between the University of Glasgow's Division of Sociological and Cultural Studies and the Scottish Centre for the Crime and Justice Research.
Over the past 40 years, public and private actors have turned U.S. criminal legal institutions into a vast network of revenue-generating operations. Today, practices such as fines, fees, forfeitures, prison charges, and bail premiums transfer billions of dollars from race-class subjugated communities to governments and corporations. Based on collaborative research with Joe Soss, Joshua Page will discuss the origins, operations, and consequences of this development.
Criminal legal governance in the U.S. today operates as a regime of legal plunder, organized by the intersections of race, class, and gender. To understand it, one must locate it in the longer histories of race and capitalism, predatory uses of the state, and political resistance.
Bio: Joshua Page is the Beverly and Richard Fink Professor of Sociology, Law, and Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
NB: There is no need to register to attend this in-person event. All are welcome to attend.