These fines and fees have increased in dollar amount, you have more aggressive policing in poor neighborhoods, and the people that you’re targeting have less ability to pay. And then it spirals into something almost insurmountable in some cases, and dangerously violent in other cases.

Policy analyst Karen Dolan explains how racism and austerity politics have turned the criminal justice system against poor Americans, brutalizing and imprisoning the powerless just to make up budget shortfalls.

Karen authored the report The Poor Get Prison: The Alarming Spread of the Criminalization of Poverty for the Institute for Policy Studies.