>"A new book challenges lawyers to reimagine their role in an unjust system."

These experiences are not flukes, but the intended effects of choices our society has made, argues civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis in his passionate new book, Usual Cruelty. “The decision to make something punishable by human caging authorizes the government to treat people in ways that otherwise would be abhorrent,” he observes.

Meaningful change will not come from “reform” of the mechanisms that allow such treatment, but from their complete transformation.

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