This book would not exist without Diane Wachtell and all of the great people at The New Press.
That one was easy. After that it gets complicated because so many helped in so many ways. There are the friends who read the draft at various stages, the people who have been treated unfairly and the people who have been helped, the lawyers, judges, public officials, journalists, organizers, and others who are fighting back, the many who help families and build stronger communities, the students at various law schools who took notes as I visited around the country, and the wonderful research assistants at Georgetown Law Center. Thank you to all. And a special thank-you to Dean Bill Treanor for the sabbatical year that made an enormous difference.
The readers: David Birenbaum, Jeff Shesol, Allegra McLeod, Mark Angney, Mark Greenberg, David Super, Jonah Edelman, and Betsy Kuhn.
The lawyers and other advocates, the public officials and judges, the journalists, and the resistance: Sharon Dietrich, Danny Engelberg, Adrienne Watt, Alec Karakatsanis, Thomas Harvey, Jonathan Smith, Sarah Geraghty, Sam Brooke, Jack Muse, Rebecca Vallas, Luke Shaefer, Kate Walz, Annie Lee, Ji Seon Song, Jon Wool, Judge Steven Teske, Jill Webb, Mike Herald, Senator Robert Hertzberg, Los Angeles Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Sandra Park, Nusrat Choudhury, Myron Orfield Jr., Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Marc Schindler, Tim Murray, Deborah Fowler, Elisa Della-Piana, Susannah Karlsson, Steve Gray, Nina Revoyr, Rosa Bay, Vicki Turetsky, Chris Albin-Lackey, Rachel Cicurel, Teresa Nelson, Maria Foscarinis, Hallie Ryan, Vanessa Hernandez, Mike Brickner, Joe Shapiro, Kate Rabb, Hannah Benton, Kate Weisburd, Carrie Graf, Maren Hulden, Miriam Aukerman, Rick McHugh, John Philo, David Socolow, Andrea Marsh, Jenny Egan, and Mary Bauer.
The community and family builders: Steven Dow, Rosanne Haggerty, Sondra Samuels, Dixon Slingerland, Megan Smith, Nancy Aardema, Ralph Silber, and all of their colleagues.
My terrific research assistants: Ben Shaw, Joshua Gillerman, Olivia Jerjian, Lauren Kelleher, Austin Davidson, Madeline Meth, Naomi Iser, Greg Carter, Julianne Cozzetto, Rebecca Williams, and Rachel Smith.
The great law school students who took superb notes at my field visits (with profuse thanks to Caroline Fredrickson and her colleagues at the American Constitution Society): Emily Lekahal, Matthew Roloff, Priscilla Ankrah, Ranit Patel, Anne Easton, Kate Azevedo, Julia Waterhous, Misha Guttenberg, Olevia Boykin, Lindsey Croasdale, Tony Wadas, Sonia Housany, Mark Hartman, and Cybil Rajan.
Special thanks to David Udell and Melissa Ludtke for keeping an eye out for new material, and to Ellika and especially Zoe Edelman, who never failed to ask how the book was coming along.
And most of all, thank you to the people who told me how they had been victimized by high fines and fees and bail they could not afford, the lawyers who helped, and the organizations I describe in the last part of the book.