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Do We Treat Poor People Like Criminals?

Tiia Monto/Wikimedia

Peter Edelman has been focused on poverty in America for a very long time. 

He's one of the two Clinton Administration staffers who resigned in protest when the president signed a welfare reform bill in 1996. 

America is hard on poor people, a situation Edelman covers in his book Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America

Examples abound: Ferguson, Missouri, where fines and fees were used to fund city government, is just one.  The author visits with others. 

 

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Geoffrey Riley is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and has hosted the Jefferson Exchange on JPR since 2009. He's been a broadcaster in the Rogue Valley for more than 35 years, working in both television and radio.
April Ehrlich is an editor and reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting. Prior to joining OPB, she was a news host and regional reporter at Jefferson Public Radio.