Download or read book Punishment and Inclusion written by Andrew Dilts and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the start of the twenty-first century, 1 percent of the U.S. population is behind bars. An additional 3 percent is on parole or probation. In all but two states, incarcerated felons cannot vote, and in three states felon disenfranchisement is for life. More than 5 million adult Americans cannot vote because of a felony-class criminal conviction, meaning that more than 2 percent of otherwise eligible voters are stripped of their political rights. Nationally, fully a third of the disenfranchised are African American, effectively disenfranchising 8 percent of all African Americans in the United States. In Alabama, Kentucky, and Florida, one in every five adult African Americans cannot vote. Punishment and Inclusion gives a theoretical and historical account of this pernicious practice of felon disenfranchisement, drawing widely on early modern political philosophy, continental and postcolonial political thought, critical race theory, feminist philosophy, disability theory, critical legal studies, and archival research into state constitutional conventions. It demonstrates that the history of felon disenfranchisement, rooted in postslavery restrictions on suffrage and the contemporaneous emergence of the modern “American” penal system, reveals the deep connections between two political institutions often thought to be separate, showing the work of membership done by the criminal punishment system and the work of punishment done by the electoral franchise. Felon disenfranchisement is a symptom of the tension that persists in democratic politics between membership and punishment. This book shows how this tension is managed via the persistence of white supremacy in contemporary regimes of punishment and governance.
Download or read book Punishment and Inclusion written by Andrew Dilts and published by . This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives a theoretical and historical account of felon disenfranchisement, showing deep connections between punishment and citizenship practices in the United States. These connections are deployed quietly and yet perniciously as part of a political system of white supremacy, shaping contemporary regimes of punishment and governance.
Download or read book Punishment and Inequality in America written by Bruce Western and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than seven-fold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought. Punishment and Inequality in America dispels many of the myths about the relationships among crime, imprisonment, and inequality. While many people support the increase in incarceration because of recent reductions in crime, Western shows that the decrease in crime rates in the 1990s was mostly fueled by growth in city police forces and the pacification of the drug trade. Getting "tough on crime" with longer sentences only explains about 10 percent of the fall in crime, but has come at a significant cost. Punishment and Inequality in America reveals a strong relationship between incarceration and severely dampened economic prospects for former inmates. Western finds that because of their involvement in the penal system, young black men hardly benefited from the economic boom of the 1990s. Those who spent time in prison had much lower wages and employment rates than did similar men without criminal records. The losses from mass incarceration spread to the social sphere as well, leaving one out of ten young black children with a father behind bars by the end of the 1990s, thereby helping perpetuate the damaging cycle of broken families, poverty, and crime. The recent explosion of imprisonment is exacting heavy costs on American society and exacerbating inequality. Whereas college or the military were once the formative institutions in young men's lives, prison has increasingly usurped that role in many communities. Punishment and Inequality in America profiles how the growth in incarceration came about and the toll it is taking on the social and economic fabric of many American communities.
Download or read book Halfway Home written by Reuben Jonathan Miller and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "persuasive and essential" (Matthew Desmond) work that will forever change how we look at life after prison in America through Miller's "stunning, and deeply painful reckoning with our nation's carceral system" (Heather Ann Thompson). Each year, more than half a million Americans are released from prison and join a population of twenty million people who live with a felony record. Reuben Miller, a chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago and now a sociologist studying mass incarceration, spent years alongside prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends, and their families to understand the lifelong burden that even a single arrest can entail. What his work revealed is a simple, if overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that one can serve their debt and return to life as a full-fledge member of society is one of America's most nefarious myths. Recently released individuals are faced with jobs that are off-limits, apartments that cannot be occupied and votes that cannot be cast. As The Color of Law exposed about our understanding of housing segregation, Halfway Home shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate. Parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they've paid their debt to society. Informed by Miller's experience as the son and brother of incarcerated men, captures the stories of the men, women, and communities fighting against a system that is designed for them to fail. It is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that reveals how laws, rules, and regulations extract a tangible cost not only from those working to rebuild their lives, but also our democracy. As Miller searchingly explores, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens. PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist Winner of the 2022 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences 2022 PROSE Awards Finalist 2022 PROSE Awards Category Winner for Cultural Anthropology and Sociology An NPR Selected 2021 Books We Love As heard on NPR’s Fresh Air
Download or read book Troublemakers written by Carla Shalaby and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical educator's paradigm-shifting inquiry into the accepted, normal demands of school, as illuminated by moving portraits of four young "problem children" In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers," challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small. Through delicately crafted portraits of these memorable children—Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcus—Troublemakers allows us to see school through the eyes of those who know firsthand what it means to be labeled a problem. From Zora's proud individuality to Marcus's open willfulness, from Sean's struggle with authority to Lucas's tenacious imagination, comes profound insight—for educators and parents alike—into how schools engender, exclude, and then try to erase trouble, right along with the young people accused of making it. And although the harsh disciplining of adolescent behavior has been called out as part of a school-to-prison pipeline, the children we meet in these pages demonstrate how a child's path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age. Shalaby's empathetic, discerning, and elegant prose gives us a deeply textured look at what noncompliance signals about the environments we require students to adapt to in our schools. Both urgent and timely, this paradigm-shifting book challenges our typical expectations for young children and with principled affection reveals how these demands—despite good intentions—work to undermine the pursuit of a free and just society.
Download or read book Punishment and Citizenship written by Milena Tripkovic and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criminal disenfranchisement-the practice of restricting electoral rights following criminal conviction-is the only surviving electoral restriction of adult, mentally competent citizens in contemporary democracies. Despite the strong devotion to the principle of universal suffrage, criminal offenders are still routinely deprived of active and passive franchise, while the justifications for such limitations remain elusive and incoherent. In Punishment and Citizenship, Milena Tripkovic develops an empirical and normative account of criminal disenfranchisement. Starting from historical precedents of such restrictions and examining the current policies of a number of European countries, Tripkovic argues that while criminal disenfranchisement is considered a form of punishment, it should instead be viewed as a citizenship sanction imposed when a citizen fails to perform their role as a member of a political community. In order to determine the justifications of disenfranchisement, Tripkovic explores various citizenship ideals and examines whether criminal offenders comply with the expectations that are posed before them. After developing a theoretical framework of citizenship duties, Tripkovic concludes that very few criminal offenders fail to satisfy fundamental citizenship conditions and exhaustive voting restrictions cannot ultimately be justified. A comprehensive assessment of criminal disenfranchisement, Punishment and Citizenship offers concrete policy suggestions to determine the limited circumstances under which electoral rights could justifiably be withheld from criminal offenders.
Download or read book A Pound of Flesh written by Alexes Harris and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2016-06-08 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over seven million Americans are either incarcerated, on probation, or on parole, with their criminal records often following them for life and affecting access to higher education, jobs, and housing. Court-ordered monetary sanctions that compel criminal defendants to pay fines, fees, surcharges, and restitution further inhibit their ability to reenter society. In A Pound of Flesh, sociologist Alexes Harris analyzes the rise of monetary sanctions in the criminal justice system and shows how they permanently penalize and marginalize the poor. She exposes the damaging effects of a little-understood component of criminal sentencing and shows how it further perpetuates racial and economic inequality. Harris draws from extensive sentencing data, legal documents, observations of court hearings, and interviews with defendants, judges, prosecutors, and other court officials. She documents how low-income defendants are affected by monetary sanctions, which include fees for public defenders and a variety of processing charges. Until these debts are paid in full, individuals remain under judicial supervision, subject to court summons, warrants, and jail stays. As a result of interest and surcharges that accumulate on unpaid financial penalties, these monetary sanctions often become insurmountable legal debts which many offenders carry for the remainder of their lives. Harris finds that such fiscal sentences, which are imposed disproportionately on low-income minorities, help create a permanent economic underclass and deepen social stratification. A Pound of Flesh delves into the court practices of five counties in Washington State to illustrate the ways in which subjective sentencing shapes the practice of monetary sanctions. Judges and court clerks hold a considerable degree of discretion in the sentencing and monitoring of monetary sanctions and rely on individual values—such as personal responsibility, meritocracy, and paternalism—to determine how much and when offenders should pay. Harris shows that monetary sanctions are imposed at different rates across jurisdictions, with little or no state government oversight. Local officials’ reliance on their own values and beliefs can also push offenders further into debt—for example, when judges charge defendants who lack the means to pay their fines with contempt of court and penalize them with additional fines or jail time. A Pound of Flesh provides a timely examination of how monetary sanctions permanently bind poor offenders to the judicial system. Harris concludes that in letting monetary sanctions go unchecked, we have created a two-tiered legal system that imposes additional burdens on already-marginalized groups.
Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society written by Jonathan Simon and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The project of interpreting contemporary forms of punishment means exploring the social, political, economic, and historical conditions in the society in which those forms arise. The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society draws together this disparate and expansive field of punishment and society into one compelling new volume. Headed by two of the leading scholars in the field, Jonathan Simon and Richard Sparks have crafted a comprehensive and definitive resource that illuminates some of the key themes in this complex area - from historical and prospective issues to penal trends and related contributions through theory, literature and philosophy. Incorporating a stellar and international line-up of contributors the book addresses issues such as: capital punishment, the civilising process, gender, diversity, inequality, power, human rights and neoliberalism. This engaging, vibrantly written collection will be captivating reading for academics and researchers in criminology, penology, criminal justice, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy and politics.
Download or read book Executing Freedom written by Daniel LaChance and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1990s, as public trust in big government was near an all-time low, 80% of Americans told Gallup that they supported the death penalty. Why did people who didn’t trust government to regulate the economy or provide daily services nonetheless believe that it should have the power to put its citizens to death? That question is at the heart of Executing Freedom, a powerful, wide-ranging examination of the place of the death penalty in American culture and how it has changed over the years. Drawing on an array of sources, including congressional hearings and campaign speeches, true crime classics like In Cold Blood, and films like Dead Man Walking, Daniel LaChance shows how attitudes toward the death penalty have reflected broader shifts in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state. Emerging from the height of 1970s disillusion, the simplicity and moral power of the death penalty became a potent symbol for many Americans of what government could do—and LaChance argues, fascinatingly, that it’s the very failure of capital punishment to live up to that mythology that could prove its eventual undoing in the United States.
Download or read book The Behavioral Code written by Benjamin van Rooij and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2022 PROSE Award finalist in Legal Studies and Criminology A 2022 American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award Finalist A Behavioral Scientist’s Notable Book of 2021 Freakonomics for the law—how applying behavioral science to the law can fundamentally change and explain misbehavior Why do most Americans wear seatbelts but continue to speed even though speeding fines are higher? Why could park rangers reduce theft by removing “no stealing” signs? Why was a man who stole 3 golf clubs sentenced to 25 years in prison? Some laws radically change behavior whereas others are consistently ignored and routinely broken. And yet we keep relying on harsh punishment against crime despite its continued failure. Professors Benjamin van Rooij and Adam Fine draw on decades of research to uncover the behavioral code: the root causes and hidden forces that drive human behavior and our responses to society’s laws. In doing so, they present the first accessible analysis of behavioral jurisprudence, which will fundamentally alter how we understand the connection between law and human behavior. The Behavioral Code offers a necessary and different approach to battling crime and injustice that is based in understanding the science of human misconduct—rather than relying on our instinctual drive to punish as a way to shape behavior. The book reveals the behavioral code’s hidden role through illustrative examples like: • The illusion of the US’s beloved tax refund • German walls that “pee back” at public urinators • The $1,000 monthly “good behavior” reward that reduced gun violence • Uber’s backdoor “Greyball” app that helped the company evade Seattle’s taxi regulators • A $2.3 billion legal settlement against Pfizer that revealed how whistleblower protections fail to reduce corporate malfeasance • A toxic organizational culture playing a core role in Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal • How Peter Thiel helped Hulk Hogan sue Gawker into oblivion Revelatory and counterintuitive, The Behavioral Code catalyzes the conversation about how the law can effectively improve human conduct and respond to some of our most pressing issues today, from police misconduct to corporate malfeasance.
Download or read book The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America written by Wilbur R. Miller and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2012-07-20 with total page 2657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several encyclopedias overview the contemporary system of criminal justice in America, but full understanding of current social problems and contemporary strategies to deal with them can come only with clear appreciation of the historical underpinnings of those problems. Thus, this five-volume work surveys the history and philosophy of crime, punishment, and criminal justice institutions in America from colonial times to the present. It covers the whole of the criminal justice system, from crimes, law enforcement and policing, to courts, corrections and human services. Among other things, this encyclopedia: explicates philosophical foundations underpinning our system of justice; charts changing patterns in criminal activity and subsequent effects on legal responses; identifies major periods in the development of our system of criminal justice; and explores in the first four volumes - supplemented by a fifth volume containing annotated primary documents - evolving debates and conflicts on how best to address issues of crime and punishment. Its signed entries in the first four volumes--supplemented by a fifth volume containing annotated primary documents--provide the historical context for students to better understand contemporary criminological debates and the contemporary shape of the U.S. system of law and justice.
Download or read book An Eye for an Eye written by Mitchel P. Roth and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From “an eye for an eye” to debates over capital punishment, humanity has a long and controversial relationship with doling out justice for criminal acts. Today, crime and punishment remain significant parts of our culture, but societies vary greatly on what is considered criminal and how it should be punished. In this global survey of crime and punishment throughout history, Mitchel P. Roth examines how and why we penalize certain activities, and he scrutinizes the effectiveness of such efforts in both punishing wrongdoers and bringing a sense of justice to victims. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, folklore, and literature, Roth chronicles the global history of crime and punishment—from early civilizations to the outlawing of sex crimes and serial homicide to the development of organized crime and the threat today of global piracy. He explores the birth of the penitentiary and the practice of incarceration as well as the modern philosophy of rehabilitation, arguing that these are perhaps the most important advances in the effort to safeguard citizens from harm. Looking closely at the retributions societies have condoned, Roth also look at execution and its many forms, showing how stoning, hemlock, the firing squad, and lethal injection are considered either barbaric or justified across different cultures. Ultimately, he illustrates that despite advances in every level of human experience, there is remarkable continuity in what is considered a crime and the sanctions administered. Perfect for students, academics, and general readers alike, this interdisciplinary book provides a fascinating look at criminality and its consequences.
Download or read book Harsh Justice written by James Q. Whitman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criminal punishment in America is harsh and degrading--more so than anywhere else in the liberal west. Executions and long prison terms are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent to prison, and when they are, they serve far shorter terms than their American counterparts. Why is America so comparatively harsh? In this novel work of comparative legal history, James Whitman argues that the answer lies in America's triumphant embrace of a non-hierarchical social system and distrust of state power which have contributed to a law of punishment that is more willing to degrade offenders.
Download or read book Rethinking Punishment in the Era of Mass Incarceration written by Chris W. Surprenant and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important problems faced by the United States is addressing its broken criminal justice system. This collection of essays offers a thorough examination of incarceration as a form of punishment. In addition to focusing on the philosophical aspects related to punishment, the volume’s diverse group of contributors provides additional background in criminology, economics, law, and sociology to help contextualize the philosophical issues. The first group of essays addresses whether or not our current institutions connected with punishment and incarceration are justified in a liberal society. The next set of chapters explores the negative effects of incarceration as a form of punishment, including its impact on children and families. The volume then describes how we arrived at our current situation in the United States, focusing on questions related to how we view prisons and prisoners, policing for profit, and the motivations of prosecutors in trying to secure convictions. Finally, Rethinking Punishment in the Era of Mass Incarceration examines specific policy alternatives that might offer solutions to our current approach to punishment and incarceration.
Download or read book The Political Economy of Punishment Today written by Dario Melossi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-03 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last fifteen years, the analytical field of punishment and society has witnessed an increase of research developing the connection between economic processes and the evolution of penality from different standpoints, focusing particularly on the increase of rates of incarceration in relation to the transformations of neoliberal capitalism. Bringing together leading researchers from diverse geographical contexts, this book reframes the theoretical field of the political economy of punishment, analysing penality within the current economic situation and connecting contemporary penal changes with political and cultural processes. It challenges the traditional and common sense understanding of imprisonment as 'exclusion' and posits a more promising concept of imprisonment as a 'differential' or 'subordinate' form of 'inclusion'. This groundbreaking book will be a key text for scholars who are working in the field of punishment and society as well as reaching a broader audience within law, sociology, economics, criminology and criminal justice studies.
Download or read book Offending Women written by Lynne Allison Haney and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lynne Haney is already an important voice in the sociology of welfare but this book marks her debut as a major figure in the sociology of punishment and the study of governmentality. Offending Women is a fascinating work that combines rich ethnographic detail with a structural account of the changing contours of contemporary governance. Its original contributions to prison ethnography, women's studies, and the sociology of the penal-welfare state will make it a reference point in each of these disciplines."--David Garland, author of The Culture of Control "Offending Women is an exemplary piece of work. Haney's writing is engaging, crisp, and smart. She brilliantly assesses the various intentions of the state and incarcerated women and clarifies how these intentions are based on orientations toward punishment and 'healing' that demand fundamental rethinking."--Rickie Solinger, author of Pregnancy and Power and co-editor of Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States "Lynne Haney brings together her stupendous skills as an ethnographer and her theoretical insights into how states work to explain how the treatment of imprisoned women has changed over the past decade. An altogether brilliant book."--Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin
Download or read book Discipline Over Punishment written by Trevor W. Gardner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discipline Over Punishment is an exploration of the transformative potential of restorative discipline practices in schools, ranging from the micro-level of one-on-one interactions with students to the macro-level of re-routing the school-to-prison pipeline and improving life outcomes for young people. Gardner, who continues to teach high school in Oakland, CA, has spent nearly 20 years innovating, struggling, and succeeding to implement various restorative justice practices in classrooms and schools around the Bay Area. Using classrooms and schools where he has taught and students, families and educators with whom he has worked, Gardner examines how restorative justice, as a set of beliefs and practices can be a force for justice and equity in our classrooms, schools, and beyond.
