Poverty for Profit

Anne Kim is a writer, lawyer, and public policy expert with a long career in Washington, DC–based think tanks working in and around Capitol Hill. She is also a contributing editor at Washington Monthly, where she was a senior writer. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Governing, TheAtlantic.com, the Wall Street Journal, Democracy, and numerous other publications. The author of Abandoned: America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection and Poverty for Profit (both from The New Press), she lives in northern Virginia.

Praise for Poverty for Profit:"In exposing the inner workings of these private industries profiting from public money, Kim’s book is an important move toward reform."—Washington Monthly"Poverty for Profit is accessible and informative . . . a terrific addition to any reading list for those interested in social justice and reform."—Shelf Awareness"Kim delves into the behind-the-scenes happenings . . . like bail bondsmen organizing to oppose bail reform and private companies donating to political campaigns to defeat regulations. . . . Readers will be intrigued by this well-researched book."—Booklist (starred review)"A searing, rage-inducing look at how the misery of the poor lines the pockets of the rich."—Kirkus Reviews"An electrifying unmasking of appalling violations of public trust."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Anne Kim’s book is a tour de force, showing in painstaking detail the myriad ways that corporations—many of them ostensibly with a mission to tackle poverty and to manage state and federal antipoverty efforts—exploit America’s poor. Read this book and weep, and then demand action from legislators to end the systemic incentives for legalized highway robbery against individuals and families already living on—or in many cases beyond—the economic margins."—Sasha Abramsky, West Coast correspondent for The Nation and the author of ten books, including The American Way of Poverty"The billions of dollars the government has spent to reduce poverty in our nation is vital, but it could be even more effective if our privatized public sector were not diverting those funds to corporations and the wealthy. Anne Kim’s compelling Poverty for Profit exposes this troubling reality and proposes policy alternatives. A must-read."—Peter Edelman, author of Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America and So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America"From Job Corps franchises and for-profit schools to private prisons, profiteering landlords, and Medicaid mills, Anne Kim explores a corporatized American safety net, where social service contractors reap billions while shortchanging taxpayers—and the vulnerable Americans they are entrusted with training, educating, incarcerating, housing, and healing. Through Anne Kim’s own reporting and decades worth of data, Poverty for Profit powerfully lays out a case for accountability and a renewed embrace of oversight and governance for America’s safety net programs."—Mary Otto, author of Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America