Social Movements & the Law

"In March of 2011, Howard University sponsored an Alternative Spring Break trip to Chicago where law students worked with me to create several lessons in constitutional law for middle schoolers. The lesson on policing teaches civilians the constitutional limits on police power. Sometimes referred to as "Street Law," I call the training Know Your Rights. It was a huge hit with middle school students and teachers, and became the genesis for Know Your Rights trainings in other venues. I will never forget Raven and Stanley, the two Howard students volunteering in Chicago who wrote the first drafts of skits we performed, and found ways to connect with the middle school students we taught. When another teacher brought her class to hear the two firebrands, doubling Raven and Stanley's class size, Raven even stood on a chair to be heard"--

Provides a critical understanding and evaluation of police tactics and the use of force Police violence has historically played an important role in shaping public attitudes toward the government. Community trust and confidence in policing have been undermined by the perception that officers are using force unnecessarily, too frequently, or in problematic ways. The use of force, or harm suffered by a community as a result of such force, can also serve as a flashpoint, a spark that ignites long-simmering community hostility. In Evaluating Police Uses of Force, legal scholar Seth W. Stoughton, former deputy chief of police Jeffrey J. Noble, and distinguished criminologist Geoffrey P. Alpert explore a critical but largely overlooked facet of the difficult and controversial issues of police violence and accountability: how does society evaluate use-of-force incidents? By leading readers through answers to this question from four different perspectives--constitutional law, state law, administrative regulation, and community expectations--and by providing critical information about police tactics and force options that are implicated within those frameworks, Evaluating Police Uses of Force helps situate readers within broader conversations about governmental accountability, the role that police play in modern society, and how officers should go about fulfilling their duties.

An unusually intimate, year-long journey across the stubbornly violent landscape of our cities through the eyes of those fighting to sow peace and security.

"The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself"--Cover.;"Recent years have seen an explosion of protest and concern about police brutality and repression--especially after long-held grievances in Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in months of violent protest following the police killing of Brown. Much of the conversation has focused on calls for enhancing police accountability, increasing police diversity, improving police training, and emphasizing community policing. Unfortunately, none of these is likely to produce results, because they fail to get at the core of the problem. The problem is policing itself--the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. This book attempts to jog public discussion of policing by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control and demonstrating how the expanded role of the police is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice--even public safety. Drawing on first-hand research from across the globe, Alex Vitale shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing, like drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs, has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice"--Provided by publisher.

"In 2002, the Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, opening the door to the Court's application of the Eighth Amendment on an almost annual basis - Roper v. Simmons (2005), Kennedy v. Louisiana (2007), Baze v. Rees (2008), Graham v. Florida (2010), Brown v. Plata (2011), Miller v. Alabama (2012), Hall v. Florida (2014), Glossip v. Gross (2015), Moore v. Texas (2017), Bucklew v. Precythe (2019), Timbs v. Indiana (2019), Kahler v. Kansas (2019-20 term), and Mathena v. Malvo (2019-20 term). These decisions generated a number of interesting conversations and papers by many of the contributors to this book. Some particularly memorable conversations included a SEALS panel in the summer of 2011 in Hilton Head, South Carolina, with John Stinneford and Corinna Lain; a Law & Society panel in Boston, Massachusetts in 2013 with Rick Bierschbach and Beth Colgan; a Law & Society panel in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2014 with Richard Frase; an AALS panel in 2016 in New York City with Corinna Lain, Debby Denno, and Eric Berger; and a Law & Society panel in Washington, DC in 2019 with Corinna Lain and John Bessler. And of course, we should mention the SEALS panel we had in August 2018 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with many of the contributors in preparation for this volume: Rick Bierschbach, Mike Mannheimer, Debby Denno, John Bessler, Corinna Lain, John Stinneford, and Cara Drinan"--

"Driving While Brown is a saga and a warning. Two investigative journalists spent several years chronicling the human consequences of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's relentless immigration enforcement in Maricopa County, Arizona. They tell the tale of two dueling movements--Arizona's restrictionist cause embraced by Joe Arpaio and the Latino resistance that rose up against him. This inside story of the wrenching battles that embittered and divided Arizonans offers a fresh perspective on the roots of the Trump administration's national crusade against immigrants. The narrative follows activist Lydia Guzman, who paid a steep personal price for gathering evidence in a landmark racial-profiling lawsuit that took surprising twists and stunned the nation. The daughter of a Mexican immigrant, Guzman was one voice in the Latino-led resistance--a coalition of men and women of different generations united in their unfaltering resolve to stop Arpaio, reform unconstitutional law enforcement, and fight for their civil rights. Driving While Brown documents Arpaio's transformation from 'America's Toughest Sheriff,' who forced jail inmates to wear pink underwear, into the nation's most notorious immigration enforcer. A polarizing figure in recent American history, the sheriff was celebrated by a national fan base even as he became a symbol of white supremacy to his foes. After being found guilty of a crime tied to disobeying a federal judge, Arpaio was pardoned by his friend, Donald Trump. In Driving While Brown, Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block immerse readers in the lives of people on both sides of this tense narrative. The result of tireless investigative reporting, their book provides critical insights into effective resistance to entrenched, institutionalized racism in law enforcement"--

'Doing Justice, Preventing Crime' lays normative and empirical foundations for building new, more just, and more effective systems of sentencing and punishment in the 21st century. The overriding goals are to prevent crime while treating people convicted of crimes justly, fairly, and even-handedly; to take sympathetic account of the circumstances of peoples' lives; and to punish no one more severely than he or she deserves. Michael Tonry discusses philosophy and punishment theory, surveys what is known about the deterrent, incapacitative, and rehabilitative effects of punishment, and explains what needs to be done to move from an ignoble present to a better future.

On April 27, the Brookings Policy 2020 initiative and the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary policy hosted an online discussion with William “Sandy” Darity and Kirsten Mullen on their new book, "From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century" (University of North Carolina Press). https://www.brookings.edu/events/webinar-reparations-for-black-americans-whether-why-and-how/ (transcript available) Subscribe! http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=BrookingsInstitution Follow Brookings on social media! Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/Brookings Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/BrookingsInst Instagram: http://www.Instagram.com/brookingsinst LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/com/company/the-brookings-institution

"Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice, from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists"--

Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined by more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes - mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented in this book through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.

This vital addition to carceral, prison, and disability studies draws important new links between deinstitutionalization and decarceration Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral facilities in the twentieth century: the closure of disability institutions and psychiatric hospitals. Decarcerating Disability provides a much-needed corrective, combining a genealogy of deinstitutionalization with critiques of the current prison system. Liat Ben-Moshe provides groundbreaking case studies that show how abolition is not an unattainable goal but rather a reality, and how it plays out in different arenas of incarceration-antipsychiatry, the field of intellectual disabilities, and the fight against the prison-industrial complex. Ben-Moshe discusses a range of topics, including why deinstitutionalization is often wrongly blamed for the rise in incarceration; who resists decarceration and deinstitutionalization, and the coalitions opposing such resistance; and how understanding deinstitutionalization as a form of residential integration makes visible intersections with racial desegregation. By connecting deinstitutionalization with prison abolition, Decarcerating Disability also illuminates some of the limitations of disability rights and inclusion discourses, as well as tactics such as litigation, in securing freedom. Decarcerating Disability's rich analysis of lived experience, history, and culture helps to chart a way out of a failing system of incarceration.

The Black Lives Matter group has been fighting to be heard since 2013 - and the phrase itself is now being seen on streets and screens all around the world after the killing of George Floyd. But how did the movement get here? And how did it begin? (Subscribe: https://bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe) ------- Watch more of our explainer series here - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXjqQf1xYLQ6bu-iixvoFTVsiXQVlVniX Get more news at our site - https://www.channel4.com/news/ Follow us: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/Channel4News

From the author of the national bestseller Dead Man Walking comes a brave and fiercely argued new book that tests the moral edge of the debate on capital punishment: What if we’re executing innocent men? Two cases in point are Dobie Gillis Williams, an indigent black man with an IQ of 65, and Joseph Roger O’Dell. Both were convicted of murder on flimsy evidence (O’Dell’s principal accuser was a jailhouse informant who later recanted his testimony). Both were executed in spite of numerous appeals. Sister Helen Prejean watched both of them die.As she recounts these men’s cases and takes us through their terrible last moments, Prejean brilliantly dismantles the legal and religious arguments that have been used to justify the death penalty. Riveting, moving, and ultimately damning, The Death of Innocents is a book we dare not ignore.

Selected letters from Incarcerated Persons requesting books from Books to Prisoners, a Prison Book Program

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing. Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story—which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album—is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.

"The job of the exert witness is to offer opinions about a case based on a subjective understanding and analysis of the evidence. It is the nature of litigation that the opposing side will always dispute those opinions and offer their own counter-opinions. The opinions offered in this book about the cases discussed have all previously been disclosed in publicly available expert witness reports and court documents. They are just that, opinions. Only a Judge or Jury can rule on the ultimate issue of guilt or innocence"--

Dead Certainty is about the challenge of judging matters of public concern without a common sense of the good or other shared criteria that validate final decisions. Examining both the philosophical and the practical aspects of this challenge, this book focuses on United States Supreme Court opinions that authorize and regulate the practice of sentencing people to death. Unlike other books that discuss capital punishment, it does not argue for or against the death penalty. Instead, Dead Certainty contributes to a larger project in contemporary political and legal philosophy: re-imagining how people in today's world give coherence and meaning to their shared experience. Culbert's work will be of interest to scholars of political theory, jurisprudence, law and society, rhetoric, continental philosophy, and ethics.

Regarder cette vidéo en français ici: https://youtu.be/10IfuOWhhpk Mira este video en español aquí: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W258VJEtNk Watch a conversation with human rights defenders working on police violence and/or systemic racism! Along with discussing the specific country-contexts including how patterns of systemic racism affect women and LGBTI+ persons, they discuss the implementation of the Human Rights Council resolution 43/1 that mandated the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with preparing a report on systemic racism and police violence against Africans and people of African descent. Panellists: - Salimah Hankins, U.S. Human Rights Network - Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, Fondation Frantz Fanon - Douglas Belchior, Uneafro Brasil and Coalizão Negra por Direitos - Rodje Malcom, Jamaicans for Justice - Esther Mamadou, Implementation Team for the International Decade for People of African Descent Spain - Deji Adeyanju, Concerned Nigerians + Videos by Dayana Blanco Acendra,Founder and Director General of Ilex Acción Jurídica (Colombia), and Mothers against Police Brtuality (USA) More information: https://www.ishr.ch/anti-black-racism-police-brutality-human-rights-defenders-expectations-un-human-rights-council

Criminal (In)Justice: A Critical Introductiontakes an unflinching look at the American criminal justice system and the social forces that affect the implementation of justice. Author Aaron Fichtelberg uses a unique, critical perspective to introduce readers to criminal justice and encourages them to look closer at the intersection of race, class, gender, and inequality in the criminal justice system. Covering each of the foundational areas of the criminal justice system--policing, courts, and corrections--this book takes an in-depth look at the influence of inequality, making it ideal for those who want to critically assess and understand the American criminal justice system.

In a video produced by Offensive Tackle Alex Leatherwood, well-known players on the University of Alabama's football team and Coach Nick Saban speak out against racial injustice and inequalities. Subscribe to WVTM on YouTube now for more: https://bit.ly/2jvAaUD Get more Birmingham news: http://www.wvtm13.com Like us: https://www.facebook.com/WVTM13/ Follow us: https://twitter.com/WVTM13 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvtm13/

Provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of efforts in the state and the federal systems to make sentencing fairer, reduce overuse of imprisonment, and help offenders live law-abiding lives. It addresses a variety of topics and themes related to sentencing and reform, including racial disparities, violence prediction, plea negotiation, case processing, federal and state guidelines, California's historic "realignment," and more. This volume covers what students, scholars, practitioners, and policy makers need to know about how sentencing really works, what a half century's "reforms" have and have not accomplished, how sentencing processes can be made fairer, and how sentencing outcomes can be made more just. Its writers are among America's leading scholarly specialists--often the leading specialist--in their fields.

The first expert and comprehensive analysis of the surprising impact of body-worn cameras Following the tragic deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and others at the hands of police, interest in body-worn cameras for local, state, and federal law enforcement has skyrocketed. In Cops, Cameras, and Crisis, Michael D. White and Aili Malm provide an up-to-date analysis of this promising technology, evaluating whether it can address today's crisis in police legitimacy. Drawing on the latest research and insights from experts with field experience with police-worn body cameras, White and Malm show the benefits and drawbacks of this technology for police departments, police officers, and members of the public. Ultimately, they identify--and assess--each claim, weighing in on whether the specter of being "caught on tape" is capable of changing a criminal justice system desperately in need of reform. Cops, Cameras, and Crisis is a must-read for policymakers, police leaders, and activists interested in twenty-first-century policing.

Trevor shares his thoughts on the killing of George Floyd, the protests in Minneapolis, the dominos of racial injustice and police brutality, and how the contract between society and black Americans has been broken time and time again. #DailyShow #TrevorNoah #GeorgeFloyd Subscribe to The Daily Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA/?sub_confirmation=1 Follow The Daily Show: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailyshow Watch full episodes of The Daily Show for free: http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah/full-episodes Follow Comedy Central: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ComedyCentral Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentral Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comedycentral About The Daily Show: Trevor Noah and The Daily Show correspondents tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

When Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos left the classroom to become a cop in Baltimore's Eastern District, he was thrust deep into police culture and the ways of the street--the nerve-rattling patrols, the thriving drug corners, and a world of poverty and violence that outsiders never see. In Cop in the Hood, Moskos reveals the truths he learned on the midnight shift. Through Moskos's eyes, we see police academy graduates unprepared for the realities of the street, success measured by number of arrests, and the ultimate failure of the war on drugs. In addition to telling an explosive insider's story of what it is really like to be a police officer, he makes a passionate argument for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence--and let cops once again protect and serve. In a new afterword, Moskos describes the many benefits of foot patrol--or, as he calls it, "policing green."

Activist and author Kimberly Jones unpacks her emotional viral video on the state of race in America, the injustices Black people face beyond the headlines, and her novel “I’m Not Dying with You Tonight.” #DailyShow #TrevorNoah #KimberlyJones Donate to support the Equal Justice Initiative: https://dailyshow.com/EqualJusticeInitiative Subscribe to The Daily Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA/?sub_confirmation=1 Follow The Daily Show: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailyshow Watch full episodes of The Daily Show for free: http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah/full-episodes Follow Comedy Central: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ComedyCentral Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentral Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comedycentral About The Daily Show: Trevor Noah and The Daily Show correspondents tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

"Every day, innocent men across America are thrown into prison, betrayed by a faulty justice system, and robbed of their lives--either by decades-long sentences or the death penalty itself. Injustice tarnishes our legal process from start to finish. From the racial discrimination and violence used by backwards law enforcement officers, to a prison culture that breeds inmate conflict, there is opportunity for error at every turn. Award-winning journalist Stanley Cohen chronicles more than one hundred of these cases from the 1973 case of one of the first death row exonerees, David Keaton, to multiple cases as of 2015 that resulted from the corrupt practices of NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella (with nearly seventy Brooklyn cases under review for wrongful conviction)."--Jacket

"Plea negotiation is rife with due process concerns, including a heightened risk of coerced pleas, ignoring mens rea, serious questions about assistance of counsel, limited discovery and little litigation of the evidence, the conviction of innocent defendants and significant questions about fairness and equity. Plea negotiation is also the fast track to criminal conviction, tough punishment, and mass incarceration. From the perspective of public policy, plea negotiation perpetuates a harm based, retribution focused system of crime and punishment. Because of the failures of public health, the justice system has become a dumping ground for hundreds of thousands of mentally ill, substance addicted and abusing, and neurocognitively impaired offenders. And because of a tough on crime mentality and lack of information and options, the justice system routinely prosecutes and punishes these offenders. The evidence is quite clear that punishment does nothing to improve these circumstances and often exacerbates them. The result, as one would predict, is extraordinarily high rates of reoffending, propelling the revolving door of the justice system. [This book] takes a close look at plea negotiation, criminal prosecution, public defense, and pretrial justice systems and identifies a wide variety of problems and concerns with each. [The authors] provide key decision makers with the tools to make better, more informed decisions regarding pre-trial detention, prosecution and plea deals, criminal defense, and diversion to treatment. Critical to this effort is redefining roles, responsibilities and the culture of criminal justice by prosecutors, judges and defense counsel accepting responsibility for reducing recidivism and embracing problem solving as a primary decision making strategy" --Back cover.

Politicians, citizens, and police agencies have long embraced community policing, hoping to reduce crime and disorder by strengthening the ties between urban residents and the officers entrusted with their protection.  That strategy seems to make sense, but in Citizens, Cops, and Power, Steve Herbert reveals the reasons why it rarely, if ever, works. Drawing on data he collected in diverse Seattle neighborhoods from interviews with residents, observation of police officers, and attendance at community-police meetings, Herbert identifies the many obstacles that make effective collaboration between city dwellers and the police so unlikely to succeed. At the same time, he shows that residents' pragmatic ideas about the role of community differ dramatically from those held by social theorists. Surprising and provocative, Citizens, Cops, and Power provides a critical perspective not only on the future of community policing, but on the nature of state-society relations as well.

"Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread--all with the support of judges and politicians. In his no-holds-barred style, Butler, whose scholarship has been featured on 60 Minutes, uses new data to demonstrate that white men commit the majority of violent crime in the United States. For example, a white woman is ten times more likely to be raped by a white male acquaintance than be the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a black man. Butler also frankly discusses the problem of black on black violence and how to keep communities safer--without relying as much on police. Chokehold powerfully demonstrates why current efforts to reform law enforcement will not create lasting change. Butler's controversial recommendations about how to crash the system, and when it's better for a black man to plead guilty--even if he's innocent--are sure to be game-changers in the national debate about policing, criminal justice, and race relations"--