Accountability & Reform

The City of Tucson said it has already cleared expunged hundreds of non-violent marijuana possession cases.

"This book takes a harsh, critical look at capital punishment and points out the glaring flaws and misconceptions about its effectiveness. It makes a factual, legal, and moral argument for its abolition while refuting the main arguments in support of the death penalty"--

A law professor examines four Supreme Court cases won by a trailblazing Kentucky-born lawyer dedicated to seeking just treatment for those condemned to death.

"In late 2018, the First Step Act was signed into law by President Donald Trump just hours preceding a government shutdown. It was one of the few major pieces of federal criminal justice reform since the 1970s to move towards reversing the incarceration frenzy that had characterized United States policy. While it did not amount to revolutionary reform, in Reform Nation Colleen P. Eren investigates it as a symbol for the larger movement's trajectory. Its unlikely passage during a period of political polarization was testament to the power of a new constellation of advocates, stakeholders, and strange bedfellow alliances. These intriguing and complex dynamics are indicative of a longer, twenty-year shift in which the movement became nationalized and mainstreamed. Using in-depth interviews with major players in the national movement, formerly incarcerated activists, celebrities, and donors, this is the first book to turn the mirror back on the criminal justice reform movement itself--the frames used, the voices heard, the capital activated among elite participants, and the bitter controversies. This snapshot in time raises much larger questions about how our democratic processes inform criminal justice policy, and where we are going in the decades to come"--

There are many benefits to this innovation.

As seen on CBS This Morning, award-winning attorney Ben Crump exposes a heinous truth in Open Season: Whether with a bullet or a lengthy prison sentence, America is killing black people and justifying it legally. While some deaths make headlines, most are personal tragedies suffered within families and communities. Worse, these killings are done one person at a time, so as not to raise alarm. While it is much more difficult to justify killing many people at once, in dramatic fashion, the result is the same-genocide.--

Chronic failures by the Bureau of Prisons contributed to the deaths of hundreds of federal prison inmates, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General said in a blistering report released Thursday.

"In the American judicial system, even accused murderers, rapists, arsonists, and child abusers have voices and rights; and as the Miranda warning says, if they cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent them. Enter the public defender, who must try to help people who have done reprehensible things-no matter their personal assessment of the client and situation. Former PD Allen Goodman draws upon a deep understanding of that milieu, conveying its complexities and dilemmas, reveling in great moral victories, enduring administrative inanity, and staggering from defeats. It is an intensely idealistic job, but also one that breeds corrosive cynicism. Goodman limns the difficulties of remaining a good human being while defending the worst of them"--

"A ground-breaking, personal exploration of America's obsession with continuing human bondage from the editor of the New York Times-bestselling Barracoon. Freedom and equality are the watchwords of American democracy. But like justice, freedom and equality are meaningless when there is no corresponding practical application of the ideals they represent. Physical, bodily liberty is fundamental to every American's personal sovereignty. And yet, millions of Americans-including author Deborah Plant's brother, whose life sentence at Angola Prison reveals a shocking current parallel to her academic work on the history of slavery in America-are deprived of these basic freedoms every day. In her studies of Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah Plant became fascinated by Hurston's explanation for the atrocities of the international slave trade. In her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston wrote: "But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. . . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory." We look the other way when the basic human rights of marginalized and stigmatized groups are violated and desecrated, not realizing that only the practice of justice everywhere secures justice, for any of us, anywhere. An active vigilance is required of those who would be and remain free; with Of Greed and Glory, Deborah Plant reveals the many ways in which slavery continues in America today and charts our collective course toward personal sovereignty for all." --

Policing data is vital to improving police accountability and transparency. In 2021, Arizona enacted a law requiring law enforcement agencies in the state to co

"Legal decisions continue to mystify: Why was this person convicted and that person acquitted of the same crime? Why did she sue for breach of contract and he did not? Legal rules are supposed to provide answers to these questions, but their answers are radically incomplete. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a theory that explained legal decisions, which predicted how legal cases are likely to be brought and decided? Drawing on Donald Black's theory of the behavior of law, Geometrical Justice: The Death Penalty in America aims to offer some answers, looking specifically at who receives the death penalty in the US. Drawing on large datasets, including the Baldus study which demonstrated racial bias in sentencing decisions, this book considers the ways in which social characteristics such as race, class, moral reputation, organizational status affect legal decision making, and the wide discrepancies in the use of capital punishment. Geometrical Justice will be of interest to those engaged in criminal justice, criminology and socio-legal studies, as well as students taking courses on sentencing, corrections and capital punishment"--

Work on a $10 billion project to funnel renewable energy across western states has come to a halt in southwestern Arizona.

"A demonstration of how wrongful convictions have transformed American criminal justice, and how political ideology divides and shapes the innocence movement's fight for reform"--

When artist Richard Phillips carefully hangs watercolor paintings in his home, he becomes mentally transported into the nature scenes that appear on his canvas.

"Stolen Wealth, Hidden Power contends that the deep economic inequality and racial disparities that Americans take for granted have been quietly held in place by the four-decade campaign of racialized state violence known as mass incarceration. Tasseli McKay presents detailed evidence that the steep direct costs of mass-scale imprisonment are far overshadowed by its hidden costs and harms, many of which have been kept out of sight by women's invisible labor. Finding that the economic value of the damages to Black individuals, families, and communities totals $7.13 trillion--a sum equivalent to 85 percent of the current Black-White household wealth gap--McKay points to the urgency and feasibility of reparation and to the possibilities that lie beyond it"--Provided by publisher.

"The first comprehensive history of probation and parole-and a provocative and compelling argument for abolishing both-from the former Probation Commissioner of New York City"--

Injustice, Inc. : how America's justice system commodifies children and the poor-book

"A groundbreaking look at how America exported mass incarceration around the globe, from a rising young historian"--

"From the struggles of childhood abuse to becoming a female police officer, this book tells the story of a woman's journey through the male dominated world of law enforcement. Through this personal account and unique perspective, a better understanding of policing strengths and weaknesses is gained"--

"From the fearless defense attorney and civil rights lawyer who rose to fame with Netflix's The Staircase comes an essential examination of America's corrupt and abusive criminal justice system"--;In the past thirty years more than 2,800 innocent American prisoners- their combined sentences surpassing 25,000 years- have been exonerated and freed after being condemned for crimes they did not commit. This number represents only a fraction of the actual number of persons wrongfully accused and convicted over the same period. Rudolf draws from his years of experience in the American criminal legal system to shed light on the misconduct that exists at all levels of law enforcement and the tragic consequences that follow in its wake. He revisits unsolved murders to detail how and why the true culprits were never prosecuted; reveals how confirmation bias leads police and prosecutors to employ tactics that make wrongful arrests and prosecutions more likely; and exposes how poverty and racism fundamentally distort the system. - adapted from jacket

"This work focuses on the stories of several individuals who died while in custody to illustrate the long history of policy and practice that at best provides toothless regulation (often unfunded, or without accountable parties), and at worst is officially dismissive of the human lives lost, deliberately making it harder to get to the truth. The authors also tell the stories of activists and journalists, who have often been the ones making the greatest effort to uncover the true scope of deaths in custody"--;"The United States significantly undercounts the number of people who die in law enforcement custody each year. How can we fix this?Deaths resulting from interactions with the US criminal legal system are a public health emergency, but the scope of this issue is intentionally ignored by the very systems that are supposed to be tracking these fatalities. We don't know how many people die in custody each year, whether in an encounter with police on the street, during transport, or while in jails, prisons, or detention centers. In order to make a real difference and address this human rights problem, researchers and policy makers need reliable data. In Death in Custody, Roger A. Mitchell Jr., MD, and Jay D. Aronson, PhD, share the stories of individuals who died in custody and chronicle the efforts of activists and journalists to uncover the true scope of deaths in custody. From Ida B. Wells's enumeration of extrajudicial lynchings more than a century ago to the Washington Post's current effort to count police shootings, the work of journalists and independent groups has always been more reliable than the state's official reports. Through historical analysis, Mitchell and Aronson demonstrate how government at all levels has intentionally avoided reporting death-in-custody data. Mitchell and Aronson outline a practical, achievable system for accurately recording and investigating these deaths. They argue for a straightforward public health solution: adding a simple checkbox to the US Standard Death Certificate that would create an objective way of recording whether a death occurred in custody. They also propose the development of national standards for investigating deaths in custody and the creation of independent regional and federal custodial death review panels. These tangible solutions would allow us to see the full scope of the problem and give us the chance to truly address it"--

"When twenty-six-year-old recent college graduate Aswad Thomas was days away from starting a professional basketball career in 2009, he was shot twice while buying juice at a convenience store. The trauma left him in excruciating pain, with mounting medical debt, and struggling to cope with deep anxiety and fear. That was the same year the national incarceration rate peaked. Yet, despite thousands of new tough-on-crime policies and billions of new dollars pumped into "justice," Aswad never received victim compensation, support, or even basic levels of concern. In the name of victims, justice bureaucracies ballooned while most victims remained on their own. In In Their Names, Lenore Anderson, president of one of the nation's largest reform advocacy organizations, offers a close look at how the political call to help victims in the 1980s morphed into a demand for bigger bureaucracies and more incarceration, and cemented the long-standing chasm that exists between most victims and the justice system. She argues that the powerful myth that mass incarceration benefits victims obscures recognition of what most victims actually need, including addressing their trauma, which is a leading cause of subsequent violent crime. A solutions-oriented, paradigm-shifting book, In Their Names argues persuasively for closing the gap between our public safety systems and crime survivors"--

Incarcerated people have high legal information needs, covering everything from criminal appeals to probate law. I have learned this from working with the Law Library Service to Prisoners (LLSP) pr…

"Fill the void. Lift your voice. Say Her Name. Black women, girls, and femmes as young as seven and as old as ninety-three have been killed by the police, though we rarely hear their names or learn their stories. Breonna Taylor, Alberta Spruill, Rekia Boyd, Shantel Davis, Shelly Frey, Kayla Moore, Kyam Livingston, Miriam Carey, Michelle Cusseaux, and Tanisha Anderson are among the many lives that should have been. #SayHerName provides an analytical framework for understanding Black women's susceptibility to police brutality and state-sanctioned violence, and it explains how--through Black feminist storytelling and ritual--we can effectively mobilize various communities and empower them to advocate for racial justice. Centering Black women's experiences in police violence and gender violence discourses sends the powerful message that, in fact, all Black lives matter and that the police cannot kill without consequence. This is a powerful story of Black feminist practice, community-building, enablement, and Black feminist reckoning."--Amazon.com.

The history of the U.S. criminal justice system is marked by racial inequality and sustained by present day policy. Large racial and ethnic disparities exist across the several stages of criminal legal processing, including in arrests, pre-trial detention, and sentencing and incarceration, among others, with Black, Latino, and Native Americans experiencing worse outcomes. The historical legacy of racial exclusion and structural inequalities form the social context for racial inequalities in crime and criminal justice. Racial inequality can drive disparities in crime, victimization, and system involvement.Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice, and Policy synthesizes the evidence on community-based solutions, noncriminal policy interventions, and criminal justice reforms, charting a path toward the reduction of racial inequalities by minimizing harm in ways that also improve community safety. Reversing the effects of structural racism and severing the close connections between racial inequality, criminal harms such as violence, and criminal justice involvement will involve fostering local innovation and evaluation, and coordinating local initiatives with state and federal leadership.This report also highlights the challenge of creating an accurate, national picture of racial inequality in crime and justice: there is a lack of consistent, reliable data, as well as data transparency and accountability. While the available data points toward trends that Black, Latino, and Native American individuals are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and given more severe punishments compared to White individuals, opportunities for improving research should be explored to better inform decision-making.

"An original argument that the answer to mass incarceration lies not with experts and pundits, but with ordinary people taking extraordinary actions together-written by a leading authority on bail reform and social movements"--

America is in the midst of a police officer shortage. Agencies of all sizes are struggling to fill open positions.

The city of White Plains, New York, has settled a lawsuit by the family of a man who was shot in his home by police after accidentally pressing his medical alert badge in 2011. Kenneth Chamberlain repeatedly told police he was fine and asked them to leave, but they refused, called him racial slurs and broke into his home before killing him. After a decade of legal action, the family agreed to a $5 million settlement with the city, but the local police association blasted the agreement and said it was not an admission of misconduct. “It doesn’t equate to accountability,” says Kenneth Chamberlain Jr., who now works to challenge police brutality and continues to ask for unsealed records related to his father’s death. “We need actual structural change,” says Mayo Bartlett, a human rights lawyer representing the Chamberlain family, who argues police misconduct must be addressed through legislation. “It has to be something that’s codified in law.”

Introduction: The death penalty, also known as capital punishment, is the practice of executing individuals who have been convicted of certain serious — August 22, 2023

"From the co-creators and co-hosts of the Peabody- and Pulitzer-nominated podcast comes this illuminating view of prison life, as told by presently and formerly incarcerated people. The United States locks up more people per capita than any other nation in the world--600,000 each year and 2.3 million in total. The acclaimed podcast Ear Hustle, named after the prison term for eavesdropping, gives voice to that ever-growing prison population. Co-created for the Radiotopia podcast network from PRX by visual artist Nigel Poor and inmate Earlonne Woods, who was serving thirty-one years to life before his sentence was commuted in 2018, Ear Hustle was launched in the basement media lab of California's San Quentin State Prison. As the first podcast created and produced entirely within prison, it has since been globally lauded for the rare access and perspective it contributes to the conversation about incarceration. Now, in their first book, Poor and Woods present unheard stories that delve deeper into the experiences of incarceration and share their personal paths to San Quentin as well as how they came to be co-creators. This unprecedented narrative, enhanced by forty original black-and-white illustrations, reveals the spectrum of humanity of those in prison and navigating post-incarceration. Bringing to the page the same insight, balance, and charismatic rapport that has distinguished their podcast, Poor and Woods illuminate the full--and often surprising--realities of prison life. With characteristic candor and humor, their portrayals include unexpected moments of self-discovery, unlikely alliances, and many ingenious work-arounds. One personal narrative at a time, framed by Poor's and Wood's distinct perspectives, This Is Ear Hustle tells the real lived experience of the criminal justice system"--