Criminal Justice

When news breaks that a convicted murderer, released from prison, has killed again, or that an innocent person has escaped the death chamber in light of new DNA evidence, arguments about capital punishment inevitably heat up. Few controversies continue to stir as much emotion as this one, and public confusion is often the result. This volume brings together seven experts--judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and philosophers--to debate the death penalty in a spirit of open inquiry and civil discussion. Here, as the contributors present their reasons for or against capital punishment, the multiple facets of the issue are revealed in clear and thought-provoking detail. Is the death penalty a viable deterrent to future crimes? Does the imposition of lesser penalties, such as life imprisonment, truly serve justice in cases of the worst offences? Does the legal system discriminate against poor or minority defendants? Is the possibility of executing innocent persons sufficient grounds for abolition? In confronting such questions and making their arguments, the contributors marshal an impressive array of evidence, both statistical and from their own experiences working on death penalty cases. The book also includes the text of Governor George Ryan's March 2002 speech in which he explained why he had commuted the sentences of all prisoners on Illinois's death row. By representing the viewpoints of experts who face the vexing questions about capital punishment on a daily basis, Debating the Death Penalty makes a vital contribution to a more nuanced understanding of the moral and legal problems underlying this controversy.

In capital trials archival research documents race-of-victim discrimination while the experimental research supports a race-of-offender effect. Using interviews with jurors, Edelman sought to reconcile this conflict and explain how and when race effects are likely to occur. White jurors were more likely to discount mitigating evidence when the victim was white. White jurors empathized more with a white than black victim. Victim race also had an indirect effect on the evaluation of the defendant. Killers of whites were evaluated less positively than killers of blacks. These two effects suggest that white jurors were less likely to hold a life sentence position when a black defendant was convicted for murdering a white victim.

Pettus traces felony disenfranchisement from Athenian democracy to the present. She analyzes the contradiction between present state disenfranchisement practices and voting rights jurisprudence and concludes that American citizens lack equal voting rights: the right to vote for national representatives is trumped by state laws that define felonies and the criteria for disenfranchisement. The majority of the disenfranchised today are African-American, and most felony convictions are drug-related. Nonetheless, drug use and trafficking are equally distributed across demographic groups. The current variation in state laws disenfranchising felons, the lack of standard definitions of felonies, and the racial disparities within the criminal justice system reproduce many of the inequalities of the colonial America, despite the development of federal citizenship and voting rights law since the end of the Civil War.

America keeps expanding its prisons - despite the lack of any credible evidence to show that this punitive view of justice provides safer communities and reduces crime. But how is this justice system serving us?

This remarkably original and vital work argues that the problems are rooted in a disjunction between prevailing values and the prevailing doctrinal regime in constitutional law. Dripps asserts that the Fourteenth Amendment's more general standards of due process and equal protection encompass the values that ought to govern the criminal process.Why does the American criminal justice system punish too many innocent people, failing to punish so many guilty parties and imposing a disproportionate burden on blacks? This remarkably original and vital work argues that the problems are rooted in a disjunction between prevailing values and the prevailing doctrinal regime in constitutional law. Dripps asserts that the Fourteenth Amendment's more general standards of due process and equal protection encompass the values that ought to govern the criminal process.Criminal procedure ought to be about protecting the innocent, punishing the guilty, and doing equal justice. Modern legal doctrine, however, hinders these pursuits by concentrating on the specific procedural safeguards contained in the Bill of Rights. Dripps argues that a renewed focus on the Fourteenth Amendment would be more consistent than current law with both our values and with the legitimate sources of Constitutional law, and will promote the instrumental values the criminal process ought to serve. Legal and constitutional scholars will find his account of our criminal system's disarray compelling, and his argument as to how it may be reconstructed important and provoking.

Explores the experiences of women imprisoned for killing their male abusers and their treatment by the criminal justice system.

In The Costs of Crime and Justice, Mark Cohen presents a comprehensive view of the financial setbacks of criminal behaviour. Victims of crime might incur medical costs, lost wages and property damage; while for some crimes pain, suffering and reduced quality of life suffered by victims far exceeds any physical damage. The government also incurs costs as the provider of mental health services, police, courts and prisons.Cohen argues that understanding the costs of crime can lead to important insights and policy conclusions - both in terms of criminal justice policy but also in terms of other social ills that compete with crime for government funding. This book systematically discusses the numerous methodological approaches and tallies up what is known about the costs of crimeA must-read for anyone involved in public policy, The Costs of Crime and Justice consolidates the diverse research in this area but also makes one of the most valuable contributions to date to the study of the economics of criminal behavior.

Current research on media and the law has generally been atheoretical and contradictory. This volume explains why pretrial publicity is unlikely to affect the outcome of most jury trials, despite many experimental studies claiming to show the influence of publicity. It reviews existing literature on the topic and includes results from the authors'own research in an effort to answer four questions: •Does pretrial publicity bias the outcome of trials? •If it has an effect, under what conditions does this effect emerge? •What remedies should courts apply in situations where pretrial publicity may have an effect? •How does pretrial publicity relate to broader questions of justice? Reporting research based on actual trial outcomes rather than on artificial laboratory studies, Free Press vs. Fair Trials examines publicity in the context of the whole judicial system and media system. After a thorough review of research into pretrial publicity, the authors argue that the criminal justice system's remedies are likely to be effective in most cases and that there are much larger obstacles confronting defendants than publicity. This book presents the first extensive study of the influence of pretrial publicity on actual criminal trials, with results that challenge years of experimental research and call for more sophisticated study of the intersection of media and criminal justice. It is required reading for scholars in media law, media effects, legal communication, criminal justice, and related areas.

The use of police informants in the criminal justice system presents a range of potential pitfalls. Bloom illuminates the pernicious legal ramifications that can result from the justice system's relationship to and use of informers providing insights into law enforcement techniques as well as the Court's response to them. Law professors, criminologists, and law enforcement scholars will find Bloom's account of this much used and abused but under-reported aspect of America's law enforcement efforts both edifying and sobering.

The problem remains: students in schools across the United States are not only bullying each other but are killing each other. This book provides a foundation for the study of school violence, beginning with an analysis of the shootings at Columbine and going on to discuss all forms of aggression in schools. The authors provide a history of school violence in America, theories to explain bullying, and teachers' perceptions of this violence – and suggest ways that teachers and other school personnel can predict, control, and prevent outbursts of violence. Also included are discussions on the effects of the media on school violence, as well as the criminal justice system’s responses.
This book is an excellent resource for courses in criminal justice, teacher education, and all youth workers and counselors in schools and the community.

Winner of a 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (Honorable MentionAmericans fear crime, are rattled by race and avoid honest discussions of both. Anxiety, denial, miscommunication, and ignorance abound. Imaginary connections between minorities and crime become real, self-fulfilling prophecies and authentic links to race, class, gender and crime go unexplored. Katheryn Russell-Brown, author of the highly acclaimed The Color of Crime, makes her way through this intellectual minefield, determined to shed light on the most persistent and perplexing domestic policy issues. The author tackles a range of race and crime issues. From outdated research methods that perpetuate stereotypes about African Americans, women, and crime to the over hyped discourse about gangsta rap and law breaking, Russell-Brown challenges the conventional wisdom of criminology. Underground Codes delves into understudied topics such as victimization rates for Native Americans—among the highest of any racial group—and how racial profiling affects the day-to-day lives of people of color. Innovative, well-researched and meticulously documented, Underground Codes makes a case for greater public involvement in the debate over law enforcement—and our own language—that must be heard if we are to begin to have a productive national conversation about crime and race.

From an award-winning New York times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy--which left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man ... It was one of the FBI's biggest secrets: a senior executive with America's most politically powerful corporation, Archer Daniels Midland, had become a confidential government witness, secretly recording a vast criminal conspiracy spanning five continents. Mark Whitacre, the promising golden boy of ADM, had put his career and family at risk to wear a wire and deceive his friends and colleagues. Using Whitacre and a small team of agents to tap into the secrets at ADM, the FBI discovered the company's scheme to steal millions of dollars from its own customers. But as the FBI and federal prosecutors closed in on ADM, using stakeouts, wiretaps, and secret recordings of illegal meetings around the world, they suddenly found that everything was not all that it appeared. At the same time Whitacre was cooperating with the Feds while playing the role of loyal company man, he had his own agenda he kept hidden from everyone around him--his wife, his lawyer, even the FBI agents who had come to trust him with the case they had put their careers on the line for.