This is on point. I'm Megna Chakrabardi. Daniel Hatcher is a law professor at the University

of Baltimore. He spent his professional career as a legal advocate for America's vulnerable

children and families. He's former senior staff attorney at the Children's Defense Fund,

former assistant director at the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, and former staff attorney

for legal aid in the Baltimore Child Advocacy Unit. So he knows the court system well,

and also knows how often young and old, mostly poor, find themselves caught up in the legal system.

And that experience leads Daniel Hatcher to this conclusion. He says that around the country,

courts and probation agencies, prosecutors, offices, and other agencies have turned the justice

system into factories for raising revenue off of the mostly poor children and adults who come

before them. Here's one example. Hamilton County juvenile court in Ohio, which encompasses

Cincinnati. Hatcher says Hamilton County juvenile court turned through 23,923 new case

filings with 109,000 hearings in just one year, and they only had two judges to turn through all that.

Well, those judges hire attorneys as magistrates to handle the case load. And the court's own

documentation, as shown by Hatcher, says that, quote, the court has allocated three of its

magistrates to preside over child support cases exclusively whereby increasing its entitlement

to federal funds. End quote. And those federal funds claimed by the court totaled more than

$1.8 million back in 2013. Now, again, this is just one example of many in Daniel Hatcher's new

book. It's called Injustice Inc. How America's Justice System commodifies children and the poor.

And he joins us today from Baltimore. Professor Hatcher, welcome to you.

Hello, Mangduck greetings from Baltimore. And thank you so much for having me on the show.

So tell me, since you spent so much time in courts yourself as an advocate,

when was the first time you noticed that there was this sort of pervasive money issue as you

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