"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"--

"#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."--

Surviving the Future is a collection of the most current ideas in radical queer movement work and revolutionary queer theory. Beset by a new pandemic, fanning the flames of global uprising, these queers cast off progressive narratives of liberal hope while building mutual networks of rebellion and care. These essays propose a militant strategy of queer survival in an ever precarious future. Starting from a position of abolition—of prisons, police, the State, identity, and racist cisheteronormative society—this collection refuses the bribes of inclusion in a system built on our expendability. Though the mainstream media saturates us with the boring norms of queer representation (with a recent focus on trans visibility), the writers in this book ditch false hope to imagine collective visions of liberation that tell different stories, build alternate worlds, and refuse the legacies of racial capitalism, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialism. The work curated in this book spans Black queer life in the time of COVID-19 and uprising, assimilation and pinkwashing settler colonial projects, subversive and deviant forms of representation, building anarchist trans/queer infrastructures, and more. Contributors include Che Gossett, Yasmin Nair, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Adrian Shanker, Kitty Stryker, Toshio Meronek, and more.