Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
The Bail Trap : A Scandal at the Heart of American Justice - Robin Steinberg

The Bail Trap

A Scandal at the Heart of American Justice

By: Robin Steinberg, Camilo Ramirez

Hardcover | 4 August 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover


RRP $49.99

$48.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $12.19 with

 or 

Available: 4th August 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

From the renowned founder of The Bail Project, an eye-opening book about why we allow money to play any role in the administration of justice

Over 90 percent of people held in jail pretrial because they cannot pay cash bail will plead guilty, whether they committed a crime or not. Cash bail not only creates a two-tier system of justice-one for those with money and one for those without-it also drives racial disparities in the criminal justice system and is responsible for almost all net jail growth in America over the past two decades. There is perhaps no other component of America's justice system that is so broken, yet completely integral to the current operation of our courts, as bail.

With engaging and accessible prose, Robin Steinberg, founder and CEO of The Bail Project, and her colleague Camilo Ramirez tell the shocking true stories of people jailed by poverty while also detailing:

  • the history of bail, from its inception in medieval England, as an incentive for people to return to court, to modern America where it is a "mechanism for detention"
  • the roles lawyers, judges, and legislators have in the legal system and how and why they have become complicit in excessive bail
  • how the current bail system undermines the promise of a fair and just system and the U.S. Constitution
  • effective alternatives to cash bail

For fans of The Race to Incarcerate by Marc Mauer and James Kilgore's Understanding Mass Incarceration, Steinberg, whose previous book was called "powerfully insightful reading" by Kirkus Reviews, and Ramirez provide an unprecedented look at America's cash bail system and inspire us to imagine a better, fairer way forward.

More in Social Discrimination & Inequality

Invisible Women : Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men - Caroline Criado Perez
Women, Race & Class : Penguin Modern Classics - Angela Y. Davis

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
The Trading Game : A Confession - Gary Stevenson

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Technofeudalism : What Killed Capitalism - Yanis Varoufakis

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Crip Stories : An anthology of disabled writers - Beau Windon

RRP $34.99

$29.99

14%
OFF
Pedagogy of the Oppressed : PMC - Paulo Freire

RRP $26.99

$20.75

23%
OFF
Not Quite White in the Head - Melissa Lucashenko

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
Stolen Man on Stolen Land : Being African-American in Australia - Tyree Barnette
The White Possessive : Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty - Aileen Moreton-Robinson
Black Skin, White Masks : Penguin Modern Classics - Frantz Fanon

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF