“This book is downright scary — but with its striking research and moving, indelible portraits of life in the ‘digital poorhouse,’ you will emerge smarter and more empowered to demand justice.” ―Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough and This Changes Everything
Today, automated systems control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data analytics, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor.
In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. Deeply researched and passionately written, Automating Inequality could not be more timely.
WINNER: 2019 Lillian Smith Book Award
WINNER: The McGannon Center Book Prize for 2018
SHORTLIST: 2018 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice
“Riveting… . Its argument should be widely circulated, to poor people, social service workers and policymakers, but also throughout the professional classes. Everyone needs to understand that technology is no substitute for justice.” ― The New York Times Book Review
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Virginia Eubanks 