Prosecuting Political Violence


Book Description

This volume unpacks the multidimensional realities of political violence, and how these crimes are dealt with throughout the US judicial system, using a mixed methods approach. The work seeks to challenge the often-noted problems with mainstream terrorism research, namely an overreliance on secondary sources, a scarcity of data-driven analyses, and a tendency for authors not to work collaboratively. This volume inverts these challenges, situating itself within primary-source materials, empirically studied through collaborative, inter-generational (statistical) analysis. Through a focused exploration of how these crimes are influenced by gender, ethnicity, ideology, tactical choice, geography, and citizenship, the chapters offered here represent scholarship from a pool of more than sixty authors. Utilizing a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods, including regression and other forms of statistical analysis, Grounded Theory, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, and Discourse Analysis, the researchers in this book explore not only the subject of political violence and the law but also the craft of research. In bringing together these emerging voices, this volume seeks to challenge expertism, while privileging the empirical. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, criminology, and US politics.




Prosecuting Domestic Violence


Book Description

This text provides a philosophical investigation of the criminal prosecution of domestic violence. It features a theoretical framework for understanding ongoing debates regarding the criminal justice system's response to domestic violence.




Prosecuting Conflict-related Sexual Violence at the ICTY


Book Description

Although sexual violence directed at both females and males is a reality in many on-going conflicts throughout the world today, accountability for the perpetrators of such violence remains the exception rather than the rule. While awareness of the problem is growing, more effective approaches are urgently needed for the investigation and prosecution of conflict-related sexual violence crimes. Upon its establishment in 1993, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) began the challenging task of prosecuting the perpetrators of conflict-related sexual violence crimes, alongside the many other atrocities committed during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. This book documents the experiences, achievements, challenges, and fundamental insights of the OTP in prosecuting conflict-related sexual violence crimes at the ICTY over the past two decades. It draws on an extensive dossier of OTP documentation, court filings, trial exhibits, testimony, ICTY judgements, and other materials, as well as interviews with current and former OTP staff members. The authors provide a unique analytical perspective on the obstacles faced in prioritizing, investigating, and prosecuting conflict-related sexual violence crimes. While ICTY has made great strides in developing international criminal law in this area, this volume exposes the pressing need for determined and increasingly sophisticated strategies in order to overcome the ongoing obstacles in prosecuting conflict-related sexual violence crimes. The book presents concrete recommendations to inform future work being done at the national and international levels, including that of the International Criminal Court, international investigation commissions, and countries developing transitional justice processes. It provides an essential resource for investigators and criminal lawyers, human rights fact-finders, policy makers, rule of law experts, and academics.




United States Attorneys' Manual


Book Description




Prosecuting Political Violence


Book Description

This volume unpacks the multidimensional realities of political violence, and how these crimes are dealt with throughout the US judicial system, using a mixed methods approach. The work seeks to challenge the often-noted problems with mainstream terrorism research, namely an overreliance on secondary sources, a scarcity of data-driven analyses, and a tendency for authors not to work collaboratively. This volume inverts these challenges, situating itself within primary-source materials, empirically studied through collaborative, inter-generational (statistical) analysis. Through a focused exploration of how these crimes are influenced by gender, ethnicity, ideology, tactical choice, geography, and citizenship, the chapters offered here represent scholarship from a pool of more than sixty authors. Utilizing a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods, including regression and other forms of statistical analysis, Grounded Theory, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, and Discourse Analysis, the researchers in this book explore not only the subject of political violence and the law but also the craft of research. In bringing together these emerging voices, this volume seeks to challenge expertism, while privileging the empirical. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, criminology, and US politics.




The First Global Prosecutor


Book Description

The establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) gave rise to the first permanent Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), with independent powers of investigation and prosecution. Elected in 2003 for a nine-year term as the ICC’s first Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo established policies and practices for when and how to investigate, when to pursue prosecution, and how to obtain the cooperation of sovereign nations. He laid a foundation for the OTP’s involvement with the United Nations Security Council, state parties, nongovernmental organizations, victims, the accused, witnesses, and the media. This volume of essays presents the first sustained examination of this unique office and offers a rare look into international justice. The contributors, ranging from legal scholars to practitioners of international law, explore the spectrum of options available to the OTP, the particular choices Moreno Ocampo made, and issues ripe for consideration as his successor, Fatou B. Bensouda, assumes her duties. The beginning of Bensouda’s term thus offers the perfect opportunity to examine the first Prosecutor’s singular efforts to strengthen international justice, in all its facets.




Chokehold


Book Description

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.




Charged


Book Description

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.




The Prosecutor


Book Description

The outsider who transformed our justice system Nazir Afzal knows a thing or two about justice. As a Chief Prosecutor, it was his job to make sure the most complex, violent and harrowing crimes made it to court, and that their perpetrators were convicted. From the Rochdale sex ring to the earliest prosecutions for honour killing and modern slavery, Nazir was at the forefront of the British legal system for decades. But his story begins in Birmingham, in the sixties, as a young boy facing racist violence and the tragic death of a young family member - and it's this that sets him on the path to his groundbreaking career, and which enables him to help communities that the conventional justice system ignores, giving a voice to the voiceless. A memoir of struggle and survival as well as crime and punishment, The Prosecutor is both a searing insight into the justice system and a powerful story of one man's pursuit of the truth.




Human Rights in War


Book Description

This volume is the most comprehensive and up-to-date compilation of in-depth analyses on human rights violations committed in war. It offers myriad perspectives on the content and application of legal protections offered to civilians, including women, children and the elderly, and to others who are ‘no longer active in the fight.’ A series of carefully researched case studies illustrates the extent to which human rights violations occur in recent and current armed conflict, and signals the ways in which these violations are dealt with. Each of the contributing authors has been selected on the basis of their international academic reputation and/or professional standing within the human rights field. Given the alarming numbers of people harmed in recent and current armed conflict, this book will be of great interest to researchers, policymakers and opinion-shapers alike.