In Legal Plunder, Joshua Page and Joe Soss propose studying these practices through the concept of predation: unequal relationships in which a dominant group extracts resources from a subordinate group or creates conditions for future extraction. The review says this approach connects criminal justice to public revenue, private profit and changing economic conditions, while also examining race, class and gender.
Society & Economics7 hours ago
A new framework links criminal justice to fines, fees and private profit
Joshua Page and Joe Soss argue that money-making practices across the criminal legal system can be studied as forms of predation.
How predation works
The book presents predation as a way to analyze the criminal legal system as a whole rather than focusing only on individual institutions or practices. It argues that predation can involve fines, administrative fees, asset forfeitures, pay-for-service charges in jails and prisons, and labor requirements under supervision. The book also traces the development of these practices and examines commercial bail through 18 months of participant-observer fieldwork by Page as a bail agent in the pseudonymous town of Rocksville. In that case, bail agents assessed defendants and their loved ones through racialized and gendered ideas about risk, responsibility and reliability.
Why the framework matters
The framework draws attention to the economic functions of criminal justice alongside its familiar roles in punishment and control. It also emphasizes that extraction can occur through conditional inclusion, such as arrangements that bring people or their families into systems that may create future financial obligations, rather than only through exclusion. The review argues that the concept could help researchers examine how penal governance, public revenue and private profit are connected.
Evidence and open questions
This is a scholarly review of a book, not a report of a single experiment or a statistical study. Its evidence includes the book's historical and conceptual analysis and an ethnographic case study based on 18 months of fieldwork in one bail market. The framework remains a category of analysis whose boundaries, explanatory reach and measurement have not been fully established. The review also notes uncertainty about how predation differs from other forms of monetary sanction and calls for comparisons across places and political economies.
// Source
Law & Society Review · 2026 · DOI: 10.1017/lsr.2026.10113
Authors: Angela LaScala‐Gruenewald
Institutions: University of Massachusetts Amherst
