Misdemeanors: Why One Lawyer Says They're Making America More Unequal [wnycstudios.org]

Alicia Doktor 1/11/194:00 AM

Loitering. Trespassing. Petty theft. Commit one of these low-level crimes, and you might be charged with a misdemeanor. A minor offense.

Alexandra Natapoff, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, says about 13 million misdemeanor cases are filed every year in the United States. That’s compared with just 3 or 4 million felony cases.

“It's an enormous world of low-level offenses, of low-level conduct, and it represents about 80 percent of American criminal dockets. It's pretty much what the American criminal system does most of the time.”

[For more on this story by The Takeaway, go to https://www.wnycstudios.org/st...america-more-unequal]

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