Progressive Justice in an Age of Repression


Book Description

Progressive Justice in an Age of Repression provides a much-needed engagement with questions of justice and reform within the current phase of global capitalism, one that is marked not only by significant social inequality, but also political bifurcation. It offers guidance on progressive strategies for resistance. It also extends criminological analysis by situating these contemporary challenges as globalized and inextricably linked to questions of political economy, law, and society. Bringing together an international selection of scholars, this book draws on a range of issues, such as immigration, street crime and the renewed push for "law and order," violence against women, environmental injustice, assaults on health care and social services, and the unleashing of private corporate exploitation of natural resources. It is a clarion for strategic thinking, a call for action fuelled by informed analysis, and a reimagining of the progressive society that is under attack by Trumpism, populism, and a rising right. This is an important read for those who teach and study criminology, deviance and social control, social problems, legal studies, political science, and policy studies. It is also a useful resource for practitioners, community-based activists, and policy makers seeking new ways of thinking critically about crime, law, and social control.




Sensing Injustice


Book Description

The remarkable life of a lawyer at the forefront of civil and human rights since the 1960s By the time he was 26, Michael Tigar was a legend in legal circles well before he would take on some of the highest-profile cases of his generation. In his first US Supreme Court case—at the age of 28—Tigar won a unanimous victory that freed thousands of Vietnam War resisters from prison. Tigar also led the legal team that secured a judgment against the Pinochet regime for the 1976 murders of Pinochet opponent Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronni Moffitt in a Washington, DC car bombing. He then worked with the lawyers who prosecuted Pinochet for torture and genocide. A relentless fighter of injustice—not only as a human rights lawyer, but also as a teacher, scholar, journalist, playwright, and comrade—Tigar has been counsel to Angela Davis, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), the Chicago Eight, and leaders of the Black Panther Party, to name only a few. It is past time that Michael Tigar wrote his memoir. Sensing Injustice: A Lawyer's Life in the Battle for Change is a vibrant literary and legal feat. In it, Tigar weaves powerful legal analysis and wry observation through the story of his remarkable life. The result is a compelling narrative that blends law, history, and progressive politics. This is essential reading for lawyers, for law students, for anyone who aspires to bend the law toward change.




Woman Abuse in Rural Places


Book Description

This book chronicles key contemporary developments in the social scientific study of various types of male-to-female abuse in rural places and suggests new directions in research, theory, and policy. The main objective of this book is not to simply provide a dry recitation of the extant literature on the abuse of rural women in private places. To be sure, this material is covered, but rural women’s experiences of crimes of the powerful like genocidal rape and corporate violence against female employees are also examined. Written by a celebrated expert on the subject, this book considers woman abuse in a broad context, covering forms of violence such as physical and sexual assault, coercive control genocidal rape, abortion bans, forced pregnancy, and corporate forms of violence. It offers a broad research agenda, that examines the multidimensional nature of violence against rural women. Drawing on decades of work in the shelter movement, with activist organizations, and doing government research, DeKeseredy punctuates the book with stories and voices of perpetrators and survivors of abuse. Additionally, what makes this book unique is that it focuses on the plight of rural women around the world and it introduces a modified version of Liz Kelly’s original continuum of sexual violence. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, women’s studies, cultural studies, policing, geography and all those interested in learning about the abuse women face in rural areas. Walter S. DeKeseredy is Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University. He has published 26 books, over 100 refereed journal articles, and 90 scholarly book chapters on issues such as woman abuse, rural criminology, and criminological theory.




The Routledge International Handbook of Violence Studies


Book Description

Violence is a serious public health problem. The number of violent deaths tells only part of the story, and many more survive violence and are left with permanent physical and emotional scars. Violence also erodes communities by reducing productivity, decreasing property values, and disrupting social services. In recent years, scholars have broadened their definitions of violence beyond the realm of interpersonal harms such as murder, armed robbery, and male-to-female physical and sexual assaults in intimate relationships, to include behaviors often ignored by the criminal justice system, such as human rights violations, racism, psychological abuse, state terrorism, environmental violations, and war. Guided by this broader definition of violence, this handbook offers state of the art research in the field and brings together international experts to discuss empirical, theoretical, and policy issues.




Populism, Democracy and Community Development


Book Description

Using international perspectives and case studies, this book discusses the relationships between community development and populism in the context of today’s widespread crisis of democracy. It investigates the development, meanings and manifestations of contemporary forms of populism and explores the synergies and contradictions between the values and practices of populism and community development. Contributors examine the ways that the ascendancy of right-wing populist politics is influencing the landscapes within which community development is located and they offer new insights on how the field can understand and respond to the challenges of populism.




A Peculiar Indifference


Book Description

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR From Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliott Currie comes a devastating exploration of the extreme levels of violence afflicting Black communities, and a blueprint for addressing the crisis About 170,000 Black Americans have died in homicides just since the year 2000. Violence takes more years of life from Black men than cancer, stroke, and diabetes combined; a young Black man in the United States has a fifteen times greater chance of dying from violence than his white counterpart. Even Black women suffer violent death at a higher rate than white men, despite homicide’s usual gender patterns. Yet while the country has been rightly outraged by the recent spate of police killings of Black Americans, the shocking amount of “everyday” violence that plagues African American communities receives far less attention, and has nearly disappeared as a target of public policy. As acclaimed criminologist Elliott Currie makes clear, this pervasive violence is a direct result of the continuing social and economic marginalization of many Black communities in America. Those conditions help perpetuate a level of preventable trauma and needless suffering that has no counterpart anywhere in the developed world. Compelling and accessible, drawing on a rich array of both classic and contemporary research, A Peculiar Indifference describes the dimensions and consequences of this enduring emergency, explains its causes, and offers an urgent plea for long-overdue social action to end it.




Assaulted Personhood


Book Description

In 21st century America, personhood is under daily assault, sometimes with dire consequences. Scientist, ethicist, and ordained minister Craig C. Malbon encourages the reader to consider such assaults on personhood endured by victims of abortion, ageism, Alzheimer’s disease, drug addiction, mental and physical disabilities, gender, gender orientation, racism, sexual preference, identity politics, and our will-to-power over the “other.” In exploring personhood status, Malbon poses difficult questions for us. Is personhood assigned as all-or-nothing, or is it a sliding scale based upon criteria arbitrarily aimed at our vulnerabilities? Does the voiceless embryo and fetus have advocates who can speak to the moral question of abortion? Is the personhood of an economically insecure pregnant woman degraded to the point where lack of access to early termination of pregnancy results in “coercive childbearing?” Does being a member of the LGBTQI+ community target one for assaults on personhood, to the extreme of being killed? In delving into the biology and psychology of assaults of “self” upon the “other,” Malbon sees powerful linkages of everyday assaults on personhood to darker, profound “original sins” that are foundational to the rise of the American empire, i.e., assaults on the indigenous Native Americans and assaults derivative to the institution of slavery upon Africans, African Americans, and their descendants.




Social Democratic Criminology


Book Description

This book argues that ‘social democratic criminology’ is an important critical perspective which is essential for the analysis of crime and criminal justice and crucial for humane and effective policy. The end of World War II resulted in 30 years of strategies to create a more peaceful international order. In domestic policy, all Western countries followed agendas informed by a social democratic sensibility. Social Democratic Criminology argues that the social democratic consensus has been pulled apart since the late 1960s, by the hegemony of neoliberalism: a resuscitation of nineteenth-century free market economics. There is now a gathering storm of apocalyptic dangers from climate change, pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and other existential threats. This book shows that the neoliberal revolution of the rich pushed aside social democratic values and policies regarding crime and security and replaced them with tougher ‘law and order’ approaches. The initial consequence was a tsunami of crime in all senses. Smarter security techniques did succeed in abating this for a while, but the decade of austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis has seen growing violent and serious crime. Social Democratic Criminology charts the history of social democracy, discusses the variety of conflicting ways in which it has been interpreted, and identifies its core uniting concepts and influence on criminology in the twentieth century. It analyses the decline of social democratic criminology and the sustained intellectual and political attacks it has endured. The concluding chapter looks at the prospects for reviving social democratic criminology, itself dependent on the prospects for a rebirth of the broader social democratic movement. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, cultural studies, politics, history, social policy, and all those interested in social democracy and its importance for society.




Crowd-Sourced Syllabus


Book Description

Curating the contributions of Twitter users via hashtags, crowd-sourced syllabi respond to evolving crises and critical questions in real time, resulting in living materials for educators and students. This book showcases how these syllabi are filling a gap in educational efficacy by providing access to forgotten, hidden and unpopular resources.




Routledge Handbook of Public Criminologies


Book Description

Featuring contributions from scholars from across the globe, Routledge Handbook of Public Criminologies is a comprehensive resource that addresses the challenges related to public conversations around crime and policy. In an era of fake news, misguided rhetoric about immigrants and refugees, and efforts to toughen criminal laws, criminologists seeking to engage publicly around crime and policy arguably face an uphill battle. This handbook outlines the foundations of and developments in public criminology, underscoring the need to not only understand earlier ideas and debates, but also how scholars pursue public-facing work through various approaches. The first of its kind, this collection captures diverse and critical perspectives on the practices and challenges of actually doing public criminology. The book presents real-world examples that help readers better understand the nature of public criminological work, as well as the structural and institutional barriers and enablers of engaging wider audiences. Contributors address policies around crime and crime control, media landscapes, and changing political dynamics. In examining attempts to bridge the gaps between scholarship, activism, and outreach, the essays featured here capture important tensions related to inequality and social difference, including the ways in which criminology can be complicit in perpetuating inequitable practices and structures, and how public criminology aims—but sometimes fails—to address them. The depth and breadth of material in the book will appeal to a wide range of academics, students, and practitioners. It is an important resource for early career researchers, more established scholars, and professionals, with accessible content that can also be used in upper-level undergraduate classes. Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.