Alexandra Natapoff > Quotes

“[O]ffenses like disorderly conduct, obstruction, and resisting arrest are easily alleged, they effectively give police the power to arrest based on violations of their own sense of authority.”
― Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal

“Once people understood that wrongful convictions were occurring regularly in homicide and rape cases, a widespread consensus developed that innocent people should not be convicted of serious crimes. Dozens of innocence projects sprang up around the country, while some prosecutors’ offices established conviction integrity units to identify and prevent wrongful convictions. But that consensus does not yet extend to petty offenses. Many individual judges and lawyers already realize that innocent people are routinely pleading guilty to petty crimes, but the system nevertheless proceeds apace. Innocence projects almost never take misdemeanor cases, and there are scarcely any exonerations. All this even though the risks to accuracy are obvious and extreme. We know that innocent people are being convicted. It is an essential and defining aspect of misdemeanor culture that almost no one cares.”
― Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal