"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"--

"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.--

"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." --

"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"--

This riveting blend of on-the-ground reporting and sweeping social and architectural history discusses the decision to close Rikers Island and what it will really mean for reformists, justice architects, abolitionists, city government officials, prison guards and the incarcerated themselves.

"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"--

"#MeToo. Black Lives Matter. Decriminalize Drugs. No More Stolen Sisters. Stop Stranger Attacks. Do we need more cops or to defund police? Harm reduction or treatment? Tougher sentences or prison abolition? The debate about Canada's criminal justice system has rarely been so polarized. This book brings the stories of survivors and offenders alike to the forefront to help us understand why the criminal justice system is facing such an existential crisis. Benjamin Perrin draws on his expertise as a lawyer, former top criminal justice advisor to the prime minister, and law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada to investigate the criminal justice system itself. He critiques the system from a trauma-informed perspective, examining its treatment of victims of crime, Indigenous people and Black Canadians, people with substance use and mental health disorders, and people experiencing homelessness, poverty, and unemployment. Perrin also shares insights from others on the frontlines, including prosecutors and defence lawyers, police chiefs, Indigenous leaders, victim support workers, corrections officers, public health experts, gang outreach workers, prisoner and victims' rights advocates, criminologists, psychologists, and leading trauma experts. Bringing forward the voices of marginalized people, along with their stories of survival and resilience, Indictment shows that a better way is possible."--

"Through an examination of the historical development and contemporary outcomes of the "aggravated felony" category of deportable crimes, From Criminalization to Deportation provides new understanding of the ways that criminal justice system inequities are reproduced through processes of immigration enforcement and deportation. The severe, expansive, and racially disparate outcomes of the aggravated felony are met with innovative legal responses, bolstered by networks of community-based resistance-with key implications for those concerned with creating equal systems of justice and protecting the rights of immigrants nationwide"--

"From the critically acclaimed author of High-risers comes a groundbreaking and honest investigation into the crisis of the American criminal justice system-through the lens of parole. Perfect for fans of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy The United States, alone, locks up a quarter of the world's incarcerated people. And yet apart from cliches-paying a debt to society; you do the crime, you do the time-there is little sense collectively in America what constitutes retribution or atonement. We don't actually know why we punish. Ben Austen's powerful exploration offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of parole. Told through the portraits of two men imprisoned for murder, and the parole board that holds their freedom in the balance, Austen's unflinching storytelling forces us to reckon with some of the most profound questions underlying the country's values around crime and punishment. What must someone who commits a terrible act do to get a second chance? What does incarceration seek to accomplish? An illuminating work of narrative nonfiction, Correction challenges us to consider for ourselves why and who we punish-and how we might find a way out of an era of mass imprisonment"--

"Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls. Burton goes beyond the state records that other histories have relied on for the story of Attica and expands that archive, drawing on oral history and applying Black radical theory in ways that center the intellectual and political goals of the incarcerated people who led the struggle. Packed with little-known insights from the prison movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army, Tip of the Spear promises to transform our understanding of prisons-not only as sites of race war and class war, of counterinsurgency and genocide, but also as sources of defiant Black life, revolutionary consciousness, and abolitionist possibility"--

"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.

Since the early 1960s, incarcerated Muslims have used legal action to establish their rights to religious freedom behind bars and improve the conditions of their incarceration. Inspired by Islamic principles of justice and equality, these efforts have played a critical role in safeguarding the civil rights not only of imprisoned Muslims but of all those confined to carceral settings. In this sweeping book����-the first to examine this history in depth-SpearIt writes a missing chapter in the history of Islam in America while illuminating new perspectives on the role of religious expression and experience in the courtroom.

"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 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"--

"What's not to like about the Victims' Rights Movement? What about the fact that it has led to excessive punishment and to increased racial disparity in sentencing? What about its false promises to crime victims that they will experience "closure" by participating in the criminal justice process?"--

"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.

"From "one of the most interesting sociologists of his generation" and a former cop, the story of three departments and their struggle to change aggressive police culture and achieve what Americans want: fair, humane, and effective policing"--;Currently, only 14-percent of Americans believe that "policing works pretty well as it is." Gross takes readers inside three police departments whose chiefs signed on to replace aggressive culture with models focused on equity before the law, social responsibility, racial reconciliation, and the preservation of life. In doing so, he opens a window onto what the police could be if we took seriously the change of creating a more just America. -- adapted from jacket

"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"--

The ABA Journal is read by half of the nation's 1 million lawyers every month. It covers the trends, people and finances of the legal profession from Wall Street to Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue.

"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"--

"A former prosecutor turned law professor explains the rise of Mass Incarceration and the path to reform. The book offers an in-the-trenches perspective that solves the riddle of how thousands of local police, prosecutors, and judges, acting independently, produced the world's highest incarceration rates, while solving a shockingly low percentage of even serious crimes"--;The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other nation. Mass Incarceration Nation offers a novel, in-the-trenches perspective to explain the factors--historical, political, and institutional--that led to the current system of mass imprisonment. The book examines the causes and impacts of mass incarceration on both the political and criminal justice systems. With accessible language and straightforward statistical analysis, former prosecutor turned law professor Jeffrey Bellin provides a formula for reform to return to the low incarceration rates that characterized the United States prior to the 1970s.