Download or read book Smart on Crime written by Kamala D. Harris and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vice president and former San Francisco district attorney presents her vision for smart criminal justice and public safety. Before she became the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris was committed to fighting crime as a prosecutor in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. Originally published in 2009, Smart on Crime shares her insight and offers a new approach designed to end the cycle of repeat offenders. Harris shatters the old distinctions rooted in false choices and myths. She presents practical solutions for making the criminal justice system truly—not just rhetorically—tough. Smart on Crime spells out the policy shifts required to increase public safety, reduce costs, and strengthen our communities.

Download or read book Smart on Crime written by Garrick L. Percival and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most punitive era in American history reached its apex in the 1990s, but the trend has reversed in recent years. Smart on Crime: The Struggle to Build a Better American Penal System examines the factors causing this dramatic turnaround. It relates and echoes the increasing need and desire on the part of actors in the American government system to construct a penal system that is more rational and humane. Author Garrick L. Percival points out that the prison boom did not naturally emerge as a governmental response to increasing crime rates. Instead, political forces actively built and shaped the growth of a more aggressive and populated penal system. He is optimistic that the shifting political forces surrounding crime and punishment can now reform the system, explaining how current political actors can craft more constructive and just policies and programs. The book shows how rationality and humanitarianism lead to a penal system that imprisons fewer people, does less harm to the lives of individual offenders and those close to them, and is less expensive to maintain. The book presents empirical data to concretely demonstrate what is working and what is not in today’s penal system. It closely examines policies and practices in Texas, Ohio, and California as comparative illustrations on what progress has been made or needs to be made in penal systems across the United States. The book includes a comprehensive discussion of highlighted issues, and relates more than two dozen interviews with pivotal political actors who clarify why there is a major shift underway in the American penal system. Their insights reveal paths that can be taken to improve the current penal system.

Download or read book The Future of Crime and Punishment written by William R. Kelly and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, we know that crime is often not just a matter of making bad decisions. Rather, there are a variety of factors that are implicated in much criminal offending, some fairly obvious like poverty, mental illness, and drug abuse and others less so, such as neurocognitive problems. Today, we have the tools for effective criminal behavioral change, but this cannot be an excuse for criminal offending. In The Future of Crime and Punishment, William R. Kelly identifies the need to educate the public on how these tools can be used to most effectively and cost efficiently reduce crime, recidivism, victimization and cost. The justice system of the future needs to be much more collaborative, utilizing the expertise of a variety of disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, addiction, and neuroscience. Judges and prosecutors are lawyers, not clinicians, and as we transition the justice system to a focus on behavioral change, the decision making will need to reflect the input of clinical experts. The path forward is one characterized largely by change from traditional criminal prosecution and punishment to venues that balance accountability, compliance, and risk management with behavioral change interventions that address the primary underlying causes for recidivism. There are many moving parts to this effort and it is a complex proposition. It requires substantial changes to law, procedure, decision making, roles and responsibilities, expertise, and funding. Moreover, it requires a radical shift in how we think about crime and punishment. Our thinking needs to reflect a perspective that crime is harmful, but that much criminal behavior is changeable.

Download or read book Kamala s Way written by Dan Morain and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory biography of the first Black woman to be elected Vice President of the United States. In Kamala’s Way, longtime Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Morain charts how the daughter of two immigrants born in segregated California became one of this country’s most effective power players. He takes readers through Harris’s years in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, explores her audacious embrace of the little-known Barack Obama, and shows the sharp elbows she deployed to make it to the US Senate. He analyses her failure as a presidential candidate and the behind-the-scenes campaign she waged to land the Vice President spot. And along the way, Morain paints a vivid picture of her family, values and priorities, as well as the missteps, risks and bold moves she’s made on her way to the top. Kamala’s Way is a comprehensive account of the Vice President-Elect and her history-making career.

Download or read book Criminal Justice at the Crossroads written by William R. Kelly and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past forty years, the criminal justice system in the United States has engaged in a very expensive policy failure, attempting to punish its way to public safety, with dismal results. So-called "tough on crime" policies have not only failed to effectively reduce crime, recidivism, and victimization but also created an incredibly inefficient system that routinely fails the public, taxpayers, crime victims, criminal offenders, their families, and their communities. Strategies that focus on behavior change are much more productive and cost effective for reducing crime than punishment, and in this book, William R. Kelly discusses the policy, process, and funding innovations and priorities that the United States needs to effectively reduce crime, recidivism, victimization, and cost. He recommends proactive, evidence-based interventions to address criminogenic behavior; collaborative decision making from a variety of professions and disciplines; and a focus on innovative alternatives to incarceration, such as problem-solving courts and probation. Students, professionals, and policy makers alike will find in this comprehensive text a bracing discussion of how our criminal justice system became broken and the best strategies by which to fix it.

Download or read book Charged written by Emily Bazelon and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned journalist and legal commentator exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis—and charts a way out. “An important, thoughtful, and thorough examination of criminal justice in America that speaks directly to how we reduce mass incarceration.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy “This harrowing, often enraging book is a hopeful one, as well, profiling innovative new approaches and the frontline advocates who champion them.”—Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The New York Public Library • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. That image of the law does not match the reality in the courtroom, however. Much of the time, it is prosecutors more than judges who control the outcome of a case, from choosing the charge to setting bail to determining the plea bargain. They often decide who goes free and who goes to prison, even who lives and who dies. In Charged, Emily Bazelon reveals how this kind of unchecked power is the underreported cause of enormous injustice—and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle. Charged follows the story of two young people caught up in the criminal justice system: Kevin, a twenty-year-old in Brooklyn who picked up his friend’s gun as the cops burst in and was charged with a serious violent felony, and Noura, a teenage girl in Memphis indicted for the murder of her mother. Bazelon tracks both cases—from arrest and charging to trial and sentencing—and, with her trademark blend of deeply reported narrative, legal analysis, and investigative journalism, illustrates just how criminal prosecutions can go wrong and, more important, why they don’t have to. Bazelon also details the second chances they prosecutors can extend, if they choose, to Kevin and Noura and so many others. She follows a wave of reform-minded D.A.s who have been elected in some of our biggest cities, as well as in rural areas in every region of the country, put in office to do nothing less than reinvent how their job is done. If they succeed, they can point the country toward a different and profoundly better future.

Download or read book The Feminist War on Crime written by Aya Gruber and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many feminists grapple with the problem of hyper-incarceration in the United States, and yet commentators on gender crime continue to assert that criminal law is not tough enough. This punitive impulse, prominent legal scholar Aya Gruber argues, is dangerous and counterproductive. In their quest to secure women’s protection from domestic violence and rape, American feminists have become soldiers in the war on crime by emphasizing white female victimhood, expanding the power of police and prosecutors, touting the problem-solving power of incarceration, and diverting resources toward law enforcement and away from marginalized communities. Deploying vivid cases and unflinching analysis, The Feminist War on Crime documents the failure of the state to combat sexual and domestic violence through law and punishment. Zero-tolerance anti-violence law and policy tend to make women less safe and more fragile. Mandatory arrests, no-drop prosecutions, forced separation, and incarceration embroil poor women of color in a criminal justice system that is historically hostile to them. This carceral approach exacerbates social inequalities by diverting more power and resources toward a fundamentally flawed criminal justice system, further harming victims, perpetrators, and communities alike. In order to reverse this troubling course, Gruber contends that we must abandon the conventional feminist wisdom, fight violence against women without reinforcing the American prison state, and use criminalization as a technique of last—not first—resort.

Download or read book Smart Decarceration written by Matthew Epperson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smart Decarceration is a forward-thinking, practical volume that provides concrete strategies for an era of decarceration. This timely work consists of chapters written from multiple perspectives and disciplines including scholars, practitioners, and persons with incarceration histories. The text grapples with tough questions and builds a foundation for the decarceration field.

Download or read book The Truths We Hold written by Kamala Harris and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times bestseller From Vice President Kamala Harris, one of America's most inspiring political leaders, comes a book about the core truths that unite us and how best to act upon them. "A life story that genuinely entrances." —Los Angeles Times “An engaging read that provides insights into the influences of [Harris’s] life...Revealing and even endearing.” —San Francisco Chronicle The daughter of immigrants and civil rights activists, Vice President Kamala Harris was raised in an Oakland, California, community that cared deeply about social justice. As she rose to prominence as one of the political leaders of our time, her experiences would become her guiding light as she grappled with an array of complex issues and learned to bring a voice to the voiceless. In The Truths We Hold, she reckons with the big challenges we face together. Drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values as we confront the great work of our day.

Download or read book From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime written by Elizabeth Hinton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-02 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A Wall Street Journal Favorite Book of the Year A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Publishers Weekly Favorite Book of the Year In the United States today, one in every thirty-one adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the “land of the free” become the home of the world’s largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America’s prison problem originated with the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society at the height of the civil rights era. “An extraordinary and important new book.” —Jill Lepore, New Yorker “Hinton’s book is more than an argument; it is a revelation...There are moments that will make your skin crawl...This is history, but the implications for today are striking. Readers will learn how the militarization of the police that we’ve witnessed in Ferguson and elsewhere had roots in the 1960s.” —Imani Perry, New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Prisoners of Politics written by Rachel Elise Barkow and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A CounterPunch Best Book of the Year A Lone Star Policy Institute Recommended Book “If you care, as I do, about disrupting the perverse politics of criminal justice, there is no better place to start than Prisoners of Politics.” —James Forman, Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The social consequences of this fact—recycling people who commit crimes through an overwhelmed system and creating a growing class of permanently criminalized citizens—are devastating. A leading criminal justice reformer who has successfully rewritten sentencing guidelines, Rachel Barkow argues that we would be safer, and have fewer people in prison, if we relied more on expertise and evidence and worried less about being “tough on crime.” A groundbreaking work that is transforming our national conversation on crime and punishment, Prisoners of Politics shows how problematic it is to base criminal justice policy on the whims of the electorate and argues for an overdue shift that could upend our prison problem and make America a more equitable society. “A critically important exploration of the political dynamics that have made us one of the most punitive societies in human history. A must-read by one of our most thoughtful scholars of crime and punishment.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy “Barkow’s analysis suggests that it is not enough to slash police budgets if we want to ensure lasting reform. We also need to find ways to insulate the process from political winds.” —David Cole, New York Review of Books “A cogent and provocative argument about how to achieve true institutional reform and fix our broken system.” —Emily Bazelon, author of Charged

Download or read book Smart written by Kim Slater and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the Federation of Children's Book Groups Prize and longlisted for the 2015 Carnegie Medal, Kim Slater's outstanding debut, Smart, is moving and compelling novel with a loveable character at its heart. 'I found Jean's friend dead in the river. His name was Colin Kirk. He was a homeless man, but he still wanted to live.' There's been a murder, but the police don't care. It was only a homeless old man after all. Kieran cares. He's made a promise, and when you say something out loud, that means you're going to do it, for real. He's going to find out what really happened. To Colin. And to his grandma, who just stopped coming round one day. It's a good job Kieran's a master of observation, and knows all the detective tricks of the trade. But being a detective is difficult when you're Kieran Woods. When you're amazing at drawing but terrible at fitting in. And when there are dangerous secrets everywhere, not just outside, but under your own roof.

Download or read book Doing Justice written by Preet Bharara and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *A New York Times Bestseller* An important overview of the way our justice system works, and why the rule of law is essential to our survival as a society—from the one-time federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, and host of the Doing Justice podcast. Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, he argues, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws both in our justice system and in human nature. Bharara uses the many illustrative anecdotes and case histories from his storied, formidable career—the successes as well as the failures—to shed light on the realities of the legal system and the consequences of taking action. Inspiring and inspiringly written, Doing Justice gives us hope that rational and objective fact-based thinking, combined with compassion, can help us achieve truth and justice in our daily lives. Sometimes poignant and sometimes controversial, Bharara's expose is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system as well as in our society.

Download or read book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice written by William J. Stuntz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rule of law has vanished in America’s criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide whom to punish; most accused never face a jury; policing is inconsistent; plea bargaining is rampant; and draconian sentencing fills prisons with mostly minority defendants. A leading criminal law scholar looks to history for the roots of these problems—and solutions.

Download or read book Superheroes Are Everywhere written by Kamala Harris and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Vice President Kamala Harris comes a picture book with an empowering message: Superheroes are all around us--and if we try, we can all be heroes too. A #1 New York Times bestseller! Before Kamala Harris was elected to the vice presidency and named the Democratic presidential nominee, she was a little girl who loved superheroes. And when she looked around, she was amazed to find them everywhere! In her family, among her friends, even down the street--there were superheroes wherever she looked. And those superheroes showed her that all you need to do to be a superhero is to be the best that you can be. In this empowering and joyful picture book that speaks directly to kids, Kamala Harris takes readers through her life and shows them that the power to make the world a better place is inside all of us. And with fun and engaging art by Mechal Renee Roe, as well as a guide to being a superhero at the end, this book is sure to have kids taking up the superhero mantle (cape and mask optional). Praise for Superheroes Are Everywhere: "This [book] offers a solid message: a superhero could be anyone, including you." --Booklist

Download or read book Chokehold written by Paul Butler and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency’s Media for a Just Society Awards Nominated for the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction) A 2017 Washington Post Notable Book A Kirkus Best Book of 2017 “Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men.” —The Washington Post “The most readable and provocative account of the consequences of the war on drugs since Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow . . . .” —The New York Times Book Review “Powerful . . . deeply informed from a legal standpoint and yet in some ways still highly personal” —The Times Literary Supplement (London) With the eloquence of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the persuasive research of Michelle Alexander, a former federal prosecutor explains how the system really works, and how to disrupt it 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.

Download or read book Let s Get Free written by Paul Butler and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radical ideas for changing the justice system, rooted in the real-life experiences of those in overpoliced communities, from the acclaimed former federal prosecutor and author of Chokehold Paul Butler was an ambitious federal prosecutor, a Harvard Law grad who gave up his corporate law salary to fight the good fight—until one day he was arrested on the street and charged with a crime he didn't commit. In a book Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree calls “a must-read,” Butler looks at places where ordinary citizens meet the justice system—as jurors, witnesses, and in encounters with the police—and explores what “doing the right thing” means in a corrupt system. No matter how powerless those caught up in the web of the law may feel, there is a chance to regain agency, argues Butler. Through groundbreaking and sometimes controversial methods—jury nullification (voting “not guilty” in drug cases as a form of protest), just saying “no” when the police request your permission to search, and refusing to work inside the system as a snitch or a prosecutor—ordinary people can tip the system towards actual justice. Let’s Get Free is an evocative, compelling look at the steps we can collectively take to reform our broken system.