RADICAL ACTS OF JUSTICE

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.