American Exceptionalism In Crime And Punishment

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American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment

Author : Kevin R. Reitz
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190203544
Total Pages : 585 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment by : Kevin R. Reitz

Download or read book American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment written by Kevin R. Reitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- American exceptionalism : perspectives -- American exceptionalism in crime, punishment, and disadvantage : race, federalization, and politicization in the perspective of local autonomy / Nicola Lacey and David Soskice -- The concept of American exceptionalism and the case of capital punishment / David Garland -- Penal optimism : understanding American mass imprisonment from a Canadian perspective / Cheryl Marie Webster and Anthony N. Doob -- The complications of penal federalism : American exceptionalism or fifty different countries? / Franklin E. Zimring -- American exceptionalism in crime -- American exceptionalism in comparative perspective : explaining trends and variation in the use of incarceration / Tapio Lappi-Seppälä -- How exceptional is the history of violence and criminal justice in the United States? : variation across time and space as the keys to understanding homicide and punitiveness / Randolph Roth -- Making the state pay : violence and the politicization of crime in comparative perspective / Lisa L. Miller -- Comparing serious violent crime in the United States and England and Wales : why it matters, and how it can be done / Zelia Gallo, Nicola Lacey, and David Soskice -- American exceptionalism in community supervision : a comparative analysis of probation in the United States, Scotland, and Sweden / Edward E. Rhine and Faye S. Taxman -- American exceptionalism in parole release and supervision : a European perspective / Dirk van Zyl Smit and Alessandro Corda -- Collateral sanctions and American exceptionalism : a comparative perspective / Nora V. Demleitner -- Index

Unusually Cruel

Author : Marc Morjé Howard
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190659343
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Unusually Cruel by : Marc Morjé Howard

Download or read book Unusually Cruel written by Marc Morjé Howard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States incarcerates far more people than any other country in the world, at rates 7-10 times higher than other liberal democracies. Indeed, while the US holds only about 5 percent of the world's population, it contains nearly 25 percent of its prisoners. At every stage of thecriminal justice process - including plea bargaining, sentencing, prison conditions, rehabilitation, parole, and societal reentry - the US has harsher and more punitive practices than other comparable countries. Media headlines allude to the "radically humane" prisons of Europe, sometimes presentingthem as too soft on crime. But when lower rates of incarceration and better prison conditions often correlate with lower costs, increased public safety, and more successful rehabilitation, why do prisons in the US remain so punitive?In Unusually Cruel, Marc Morje Howard argues that the United States' prison system is exceptional - in a truly shameful way. Although other scholars have focused on the internal dynamics that have produced this massive carceral system, Howard provides the first sustained comparative analysis thatshows just how far the US prison system lies outside of the norm of established democracies. The book compares the US to other advanced industrialized democracies, with particular focus on the three comparative cases of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.Although Unusually Cruel paints a grim picture of the American system, it also provides a hopeful message. Howard identifies practical and proven solutions from other countries that are less punitive and more productive, as well as models that could help the US get out of its criminal justicequagmire.

Exceptional America

Author : Mugambi Jouet
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520966465
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Exceptional America by : Mugambi Jouet

Download or read book Exceptional America written by Mugambi Jouet and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Donald Trump follow Barack Obama into the White House? Why is America so polarized? And how does American exceptionalism explain these social changes? In this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war. Raised in Paris by a French mother and Kenyan father, Jouet then lived in the Bible Belt, Manhattan, and beyond. Drawing inspiration from Alexis de Tocqueville, he wields his multicultural sensibility to parse how the intense polarization of U.S. conservatives and liberals has become a key dimension of American exceptionalism—an idea widely misunderstood as American superiority. While exceptionalism once was a source of strength, it may now spell decline, as unique features of U.S. history, politics, law, culture, religion, and race relations foster grave conflicts. They also shed light on the intriguing ideological evolution of American conservatism, which long predated Trumpism. Anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, a visceral suspicion of government, and Christian fundamentalism are far more common in America than the rest of the Western world—Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Exceptional America dissects the American soul, in all of its peculiar, clashing, and striking manifestations.

Crime and Punishment in America

Author : Elliott Currie
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1250024218
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Crime and Punishment in America by : Elliott Currie

Download or read book Crime and Punishment in America written by Elliott Currie and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that a policy of mass incarceration is ineffective and that prison expenditures could have greater impact on criminal violence if spent on prevention and rehabilitation programs.

Unusually Cruel

Author : Marc Morjé Howard
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190659351
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Unusually Cruel by : Marc Morjé Howard

Download or read book Unusually Cruel written by Marc Morjé Howard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States incarcerates far more people than any other country in the world, at rates nearly ten times higher than other liberal democracies. Indeed, while the U.S. is home to 5 percent of the world's population, it contains nearly 25 percent of its prisoners. But the extent of American cruelty goes beyond simply locking people up. At every stage of the criminal justice process - plea bargaining, sentencing, prison conditions, rehabilitation, parole, and societal reentry - the U.S. is harsher and more punitive than other comparable countries. In Unusually Cruel, Marc Morjé Howard argues that the American criminal justice and prison systems are exceptional - in a truly shameful way. Although other scholars have focused on the internal dynamics that have produced this massive carceral system, Howard provides the first sustained comparative analysis that shows just how far the U.S. lies outside the norm of established democracies. And, by highlighting how other countries successfully apply less punitive and more productive policies, he provides plausible solutions to addressing America's criminal justice quagmire.

The Dual Penal State

Author : Markus D. Dubber
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191061786
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Dual Penal State by : Markus D. Dubber

Download or read book The Dual Penal State written by Markus D. Dubber and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Dual Penal State, Markus Dubber addresses the rampant use of penal power in Western liberal democracies. The interference with the autonomy of the very persons upon whose autonomy the legitimacy of state power is supposed to rest is systemically normalized, rather than continuously scrutinized. The fundamental challenge of the penal paradox-the prima facie illegitimacy of modern punishment-remains unaddressed and unresolved. Focusing on the United States and Germany, and drawing on his influential account of the patriarchal origins of police power, Dubber exposes the persistence of a two-sided criminal justice regime: the dual penal state. The dual penal state combines principled punishment of equals under the rule of law, on one side, with punitive discipline of others under the rule of police, on the other. Slavery has long played a central role in drawing the line between the two sides of the dual penal state. In Europe, the slave appears in the classic and still foundational accounts of liberal punishment (from Beccaria to Kant) as the paradigmatic other beyond the protection of law, not a legal subject but a mere object of the master's or the state's discretionary discipline. In America, the patriarchal power to police portrays the continuum from the antebellum slaveholder's whipping of his slaves in private and the racial terror perpetrated by slave patrols in public, to the apartheid regime of Jim Crow and the treatment of prisoners as "slaves of the state," and eventually to the late 20th century's systemic racial violence of the “war on crime" and the widespread killing of Black suspects by an increasingly militarized and armed police force that triggered the global Black Lives Matter movement.

Peculiar Institution

Author : David Garland
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674058488
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Peculiar Institution by : David Garland

Download or read book Peculiar Institution written by David Garland and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. death penalty is a peculiar institution, and a uniquely American one. Despite its comprehensive abolition elsewhere in the Western world, capital punishment continues in dozens of American states– a fact that is frequently discussed but rarely understood. The same puzzlement surrounds the peculiar form that American capital punishment now takes, with its uneven application, its seemingly endless delays, and the uncertainty of its ever being carried out in individual cases, none of which seem conducive to effective crime control or criminal justice. In a brilliantly provocative study, David Garland explains this tenacity and shows how death penalty practice has come to bear the distinctive hallmarks of America’s political institutions and cultural conflicts. America’s radical federalism and local democracy, as well as its legacy of violence and racism, account for our divergence from the rest of the West. Whereas the elites of other nations were able to impose nationwide abolition from above despite public objections, American elites are unable– and unwilling– to end a punishment that has the support of local majorities and a storied place in popular culture. In the course of hundreds of decisions, federal courts sought to rationalize and civilize an institution that too often resembled a lynching, producing layers of legal process but also delays and reversals. Yet the Supreme Court insists that the issue is to be decided by local political actors and public opinion. So the death penalty continues to respond to popular will, enhancing the power of criminal justice professionals, providing drama for the media, and bringing pleasure to a public audience who consumes its chilling tales. Garland brings a new clarity to our understanding of this peculiar institution– and a new challenge to supporters and opponents alike.

American Exceptionalism and Human Rights

Author : Michael Ignatieff
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400826888
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis American Exceptionalism and Human Rights by : Michael Ignatieff

Download or read book American Exceptionalism and Human Rights written by Michael Ignatieff and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, the most controversial question in world politics fast became whether the United States stands within the order of international law or outside it. Does America still play by the rules it helped create? American Exceptionalism and Human Rights addresses this question as it applies to U.S. behavior in relation to international human rights. With essays by eleven leading experts in such fields as international relations and international law, it seeks to show and explain how America's approach to human rights differs from that of most other Western nations. In his introduction, Michael Ignatieff identifies three main types of exceptionalism: exemptionalism (supporting treaties as long as Americans are exempt from them); double standards (criticizing "others for not heeding the findings of international human rights bodies, but ignoring what these bodies say of the United States); and legal isolationism (the tendency of American judges to ignore other jurisdictions). The contributors use Ignatieff's essay as a jumping-off point to discuss specific types of exceptionalism--America's approach to capital punishment and to free speech, for example--or to explore the social, cultural, and institutional roots of exceptionalism. These essays--most of which appear in print here for the first time, and all of which have been revised or updated since being presented in a year-long lecture series on American exceptionalism at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government--are by Stanley Hoffmann, Paul Kahn, Harold Koh, Frank Michelman, Andrew Moravcsik, John Ruggie, Frederick Schauer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Carol Steiker, and Cass Sunstein.

Contrasts in Punishment

Author : John Pratt
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136217002
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (362 download)

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Book Synopsis Contrasts in Punishment by : John Pratt

Download or read book Contrasts in Punishment written by John Pratt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some modern societies punish their offenders differently to others? Why are some more punitive and others more tolerant in their approach to offending and how can these differences be explained? Based on extensive historical analysis and fieldwork in the penal systems of England, Australia and New Zealand on the one hand and Finland, Norway and Sweden on the other, this book seeks to answer these questions. The book argues that the penal differences that currently exist between these two clusters of societies emanate from their early nineteenth-century social arrangements, when the Anglophone societies were dominated by exclusionary value systems that contrasted with the more inclusionary values of the Nordic countries. The development of their penal programmes over this two hundred year period, including the much earlier demise of the death penalty in the Nordic countries and significant differences between the respective prison rates and prison conditions of the two clusters, reflects the continuing influence of these values. Indeed, in the early 21st century these differences have become even more pronounced. John Pratt and Anna Eriksson offer a unique contribution to this topic of growing importance: comparative research in the history and sociology of punishment. This book will be of interest to those studying criminology, sociology, punishment, prison and penal policy, as well as professionals working in prisons or in the area of penal policy across the six societies that feature in the book.

The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment

Author : Franklin E. Zimring
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190292377
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment by : Franklin E. Zimring

Download or read book The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment written by Franklin E. Zimring and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does the United States continue to employ the death penalty when fifty other developed democracies have abolished it? Why does capital punishment become more problematic each year? How can the death penalty conflict be resolved? In The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, Frank Zimring reveals that the seemingly insoluble turmoil surrounding the death penalty reflects a deep and long-standing division in American values, a division that he predicts will soon bring about the end of capital punishment in our country. On the one hand, execution would seem to violate our nation's highest legal principles of fairness and due process. It sets us increasingly apart from our allies and indeed is regarded by European nations as a barbaric and particularly egregious form of American exceptionalism. On the other hand, the death penalty represents a deeply held American belief in violent social justice that sees the hangman as an agent of local control and safeguard of community values. Zimring uncovers the most troubling symptom of this attraction to vigilante justice in the lynch mob. He shows that the great majority of executions in recent decades have occurred in precisely those Southern states where lynchings were most common a hundred years ago. It is this legacy, Zimring suggests, that constitutes both the distinctive appeal of the death penalty in the United States and one of the most compelling reasons for abolishing it. Impeccably researched and engagingly written, Contradictions in American Capital Punishment casts a clear new light on America's long and troubled embrace of the death penalty.

Penal Exceptionalism?

Author : Thomas Ugelvik
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136698884
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (366 download)

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Book Synopsis Penal Exceptionalism? by : Thomas Ugelvik

Download or read book Penal Exceptionalism? written by Thomas Ugelvik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-07-29 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the growing field of comparative criminal justice, the Nordic countries are regularly used as exceptions to the global move towards growing rates of imprisonment and tougher, less welfare-oriented crime-control policies. Why are the Nordic penal institutions viewed as so ‘different’ from a non-Nordic vantage point? Are Nordic prisons and penal policies in fact positive exceptions to the general rule? If they are, what exactly are the exceptional qualities, and why are the Nordic societies lucky enough to have them? Are there important overlooked examples of Nordic ‘bad practice’ in the penal area? Could there be a specifically Nordic way of doing prison research, contributing to the gap between internal and external perspectives? In considering – among others – the above questions, this book explores and discusses the Nordic jurisdictions as contexts for the specific penal policies and practices that may or may not be described as exceptional. Written by leading prison scholars from the Nordic countries as well as selected researchers from the English-speaking world ‘looking in’, this book will be particularly useful for students of criminology and practitioners across the Nordic countries, but also of relevance in a wider geographical context.

Crime and Punishment in America

Author : David B. Wolcott
Publisher : Infobase Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1438126891
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Crime and Punishment in America by : David B. Wolcott

Download or read book Crime and Punishment in America written by David B. Wolcott and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first incident of petty theft to modern media piracy, crime and punishment have been a part of every society. However, the structure and values of a particular society shape both the incidences of crime and the punishment of criminals. When the United States became an independent nation, politicians and civilians began the process of deciding which systems of punishment were appropriate for dealing with crimea process that continues to this day. Crime and Punishment in America examines the development of crime and punishment in the United Statesfrom the criminal justice practices of American Indians and the influence of colonists to the mistreatment of slaves, as well as such current criminal issues as the response to international terrorism.

The Punisher's Brain

Author : Morris B. Hoffman
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107038065
Total Pages : 373 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis The Punisher's Brain by : Morris B. Hoffman

Download or read book The Punisher's Brain written by Morris B. Hoffman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-14 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Evolution built us to punish cheaters. Without that punishment instinct, we would never have been able to live in small groups, and would never have realized all the significant benefits that small-group living conferred, including mutual defense, cooperative hunting, property, divisions of labor and economies of scale. In fact, to a large extent our notions of right and wrong, of empathy and compassion, of fairness and justice, all come from the tensions of group living, and thus indirectly owe their very existence to punishment. It may sound strange that one key to civilization is our willingness to punish each other, but every parent knows it's true. Every parent also feels the irresistible pull not to punish too much, and in fact maybe not to punishat all - to forgive - and this, too, is a remnant of evolution. Our punishment instinct is not so much a sword ready to fall as it is a finely tuned balance, sometimes susceptible to the gentlest of breezes"--

Presumed Criminal

Author : Carl Suddler
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479850284
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis Presumed Criminal by : Carl Suddler

Download or read book Presumed Criminal written by Carl Suddler and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A startling examination of the deliberate criminalization of black youths from the 1930s to today A stark disparity exists between black and white youth experiences in the justice system today. Black youths are perceived to be older and less innocent than their white peers. When it comes to incarceration, race trumps class, and even as black youths articulate their own experiences with carceral authorities, many Americans remain surprised by the inequalities they continue to endure. In this revealing book, Carl Suddler brings to light a much longer history of the policies and strategies that tethered the lives of black youths to the justice system indefinitely. The criminalization of black youth is inseparable from its racialized origins. In the mid-twentieth century, the United States justice system began to focus on punishment, rather than rehabilitation. By the time the federal government began to address the issue of juvenile delinquency, the juvenile justice system shifted its priorities from saving delinquent youth to purely controlling crime, and black teens bore the brunt of the transition. In New York City, increased state surveillance of predominantly black communities compounded arrest rates during the post–World War II period, providing justification for tough-on-crime policies. Questionable police practices, like stop-and-frisk, combined with media sensationalism, cemented the belief that black youth were the primary cause for concern. Even before the War on Crime, the stakes were clear: race would continue to be the crucial determinant in American notions of crime and delinquency, and black youths condemned with a stigma of criminality would continue to confront the overwhelming power of the state.

America's Death Penalty

Author : David Garland
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780814732809
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (328 download)

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Book Synopsis America's Death Penalty by : David Garland

Download or read book America's Death Penalty written by David Garland and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past three decades, the United States has embraced the death penalty with tenacious enthusiasm. While most of those countries whose legal systems and cultures are normally compared to the United States have abolished capital punishment, the United States continues to employ this ultimate tool of punishment. The death penalty has achieved an unparalleled prominence in our public life and left an indelible imprint on our politics and culture. It has also provoked intense scholarly debate, much of it devoted to explaining the roots of American exceptionalism. America’s Death Penalty takes a different approach to the issue by examining the historical and theoretical assumptions that have underpinned the discussion of capital punishment in the United States today. At various times the death penalty has been portrayed as an anachronism, an inheritance, or an innovation, with little reflection on the consequences that flow from the choice of words. This volume represents an effort to restore the sense of capital punishment as a question caught up in history. Edited by leading scholars of crime and justice, these original essays pursue different strategies for unsettling the usual terms of the debate. In particular, the authors use comparative and historical investigations of both Europe and America in order to cast fresh light on familiar questions about the meaning of capital punishment. This volume is essential reading for understanding the death penalty in America. Contributors: David Garland, Douglas Hay, Randall McGowen, Michael Meranze, Rebecca McLennan, and Jonathan Simon.

Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South

Author : Amy Louise Wood
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780252084195
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South by : Amy Louise Wood

Download or read book Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South written by Amy Louise Wood and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In recent years, there has been renewed attention to problems pervading the criminal justice system in the United States. The prison population has grown exponentially since 1970 due to the war on drugs, minimum sentencing laws, and other crime control measures instituted in the 1980s and 1990s. The U.S. now incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world, over 2 million in 2016. African Americans constitute nearly half of those prisoners. This volume contributes to current debates on the criminal justice system by filling a crucial gap in scholarship with ten original essays by both established and up-and-coming historians on the topics of crime and state punishment in the Jim Crow era. In particular, these essays address the relationship between the modern state, crime control, and white supremacy. Essays in the collection show that the development of the modern penal system was part and parcel of Jim Crow, and so are the racial injustices endemic to it. The essays that Wood and Ring have curated enrich our understanding of how the penal system impacted the New South; demonstrate the centrality of the carceral regime in producing racial, gender, and legal categories in the New South; provide insightful analysis of intellectual work around the U.S. prison regime; use the penal system to make a case for Southern exceptionalism; and extend conversations about the penal system's restriction of African American political and civil rights. As a whole, the volume provides a nuanced portrait of the dynamic between state power and white supremacy in the South beyond a story of top-down social control"--

America's Jails

Author : Derek Jeffreys
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479838624
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis America's Jails by : Derek Jeffreys

Download or read book America's Jails written by Derek Jeffreys and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the contemporary crisis in U.S. jails with recommendations for improving and protecting the dignity of inmates Twelve million Americans go through the U.S. jail system on an annual basis. Jails, which differ significantly from prisons, are designed to house inmates for short amounts of time, and are often occupied by large populations of legally innocent people waiting for a trial. Jails often have deplorable sanitary conditions, and there are countless records of inmates being brutalized by staff and other inmates while in custody. Local municipalities use jails to institutionalize those whom they perceive to be a threat, so hundreds of thousands of inmates suffer from mental illness. People abandoned by families or lacking health insurance, or those who cannot afford bail, often cycle in and out of jails. In America’s Jails, Derek Jeffreys draws on sociology, philosophy, history, and his personal experience volunteering in jails and prisons to provide an understanding of the jail experience from the inmates’ perspective, focusing on the stigma that surrounds incarceration. Using his research at Cook County Jail, the nation’s largest single-site jail, Jeffreys attests that jail inmates possess an inherent dignity that should govern how we treat them. Ultimately, fundamental changes in the U.S. jail system are necessary and America’s Jails provides specific policy recommendations for changing its poor conditions. Highlighting the experiences of inmates themselves, America’s Jails aims to shift public perception and understanding of jail inmates to center their inherent dignity and help eliminate the stigma attached to their incarceration.