The American Response to Crime
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 6 pages
File Size : 34,6 MB
Release : 1983
Category : Criminal courts
ISBN :
The Challenge of Crime
Author : Henry Ruth
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 38,13 MB
Release : 2006-03-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0674266943
Book Description
The development of crime policy in the United States for many generations has been hampered by a drastic shortage of knowledge and data, an excess of partisanship and instinctual responses, and a one-way tendency to expand the criminal justice system. Even if a three-decade pattern of prison growth came to a full stop in the early 2000s, the current decade will be by far the most punitive in U.S. history, hitting some minority communities particularly hard. The book examines the history, scope, and effects of the revolution in America's response to crime since 1970. Henry Ruth and Kevin Reitz offer a comprehensive, long-term, pragmatic approach to increase public understanding of and find improvements in the nation's response to crime. Concentrating on meaningful areas for change in policing, sentencing, guns, drugs, and juvenile crime, they discuss such topics as new priorities for the use of incarceration; aggressive policing; the war on drugs; the need to switch the gun control debate to a focus on crime gun regulation; a new focus on offenders' transition from confinement to freedom; and the role of private enterprise. A book that rejects traditional liberal and conservative outlooks, The Challenge of Crime takes a major step in offering new approaches for the nation's responses to crime.
Solutions
Author : Joe Biden
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 10,20 MB
Release : 2015-04-27
Category :
ISBN : 9780692459218
Book Description
Mass incarceration. In recent years it's become clear that the size of America's prison population is unsustainable -- and isn't needed to protect public safety. In this remarkable bipartisan collaboration, the country's most prominent public figures and experts join together to propose ideas for change. In these original essays, many authors speak out for the first time on the issue. The vast majority agree that reducing our incarcerated population is a priority. Marking a clear political shift on crime and punishment in America, these sentiments are a far cry from politicians racing to be the most punitive in the 1980s and 1990s. Mass incarceration threatens American democracy. Hiding in plain sight, it drives economic inequality, racial injustice, and poverty. How do we achieve change? From using federal funding to bolster police best practices to allowing for the release of low-level offenders while they wait for trial, from eliminating prison for low-level drug crimes to increasing drug and mental health treatment, the ideas in this book pave a way forward. Solutions promises to further the intellectual and political momentum to reform our justice system.
The New Jim Crow
Author : Michelle Alexander
Publisher : The New Press
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 27,49 MB
Release : 2020-01-07
Category : Law
ISBN : 1620971941
Book Description
One of the New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education—with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." —Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice
Author : William J. Stuntz
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 31,63 MB
Release : 2011-09-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0674051750
Book Description
Rule of law has vanished in America’s criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide whom to punish; most accused never face a jury; policing is inconsistent; plea bargaining is rampant; and draconian sentencing fills prisons with mostly minority defendants. A leading criminal law scholar looks to history for the roots of these problems—and solutions.
Smart on Crime
Author : Garrick L. Percival
Publisher : CRC Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 17,2 MB
Release : 2015-07-28
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1498703143
Book Description
The most punitive era in American history reached its apex in the 1990s, but the trend has reversed in recent years. Smart on Crime: The Struggle to Build a Better American Penal System examines the factors causing this dramatic turnaround. It relates and echoes the increasing need and desire on the part of actors in the American government system to construct a penal system that is more rational and humane. Author Garrick L. Percival points out that the prison boom did not naturally emerge as a governmental response to increasing crime rates. Instead, political forces actively built and shaped the growth of a more aggressive and populated penal system. He is optimistic that the shifting political forces surrounding crime and punishment can now reform the system, explaining how current political actors can craft more constructive and just policies and programs. The book shows how rationality and humanitarianism lead to a penal system that imprisons fewer people, does less harm to the lives of individual offenders and those close to them, and is less expensive to maintain. The book presents empirical data to concretely demonstrate what is working and what is not in today’s penal system. It closely examines policies and practices in Texas, Ohio, and California as comparative illustrations on what progress has been made or needs to be made in penal systems across the United States. The book includes a comprehensive discussion of highlighted issues, and relates more than two dozen interviews with pivotal political actors who clarify why there is a major shift underway in the American penal system. Their insights reveal paths that can be taken to improve the current penal system.
Crime Victims with Developmental Disabilities
Author : National Research Council
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 22,86 MB
Release : 2001-02-06
Category : Law
ISBN : 030917127X
Book Description
Although violent crime in the United States has declined over the past five years, certain groups appear to remain at disproportionately high risk for violent victimization. In the United States, people with developmental disabilities-such as mental retardation, autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and severe learning disabilities may be included in this group. While the scientific evidence is scanty, a handful of studies from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain consistently find high rates of violence and abuse affecting people with these kinds of disabilities. A number of social and demographic trends are converging that may worsen the situation considerably over the next several years. The prevalence of developmental disabilities has increased in low-income populations, due to a number of factors, such as poor prenatal nutrition, lack of access to health care or better perinatal care for some fragile babies, and increases in child abuse and substance abuse during pregnancy. For example, a recent report of the California State Council on Developmental Disabilities found that during the past decade, while the state population increased by 20 percent, the number of persons with developmental disabilities in California increased by 52 percent and the population segment with mild mental retardation doubled. Because of a growing concern among parents and advocates regarding possible high rates of crime victimization among persons with developmental disabilities, Congress, through the Crime Victims with Disabilities Awareness Act of 1998, requested that the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences conduct a study to increase knowledge and information about crimes against individuals with developmental disabilities that will be useful in developing new strategies to reduce the incidence of crimes against those individuals. Crime Victims with Developmental Disabilities summarizes the workshop and addresses the following issues: (1) the nature and extent of crimes against individuals with developmental disabilities; (2) the risk factors associated with victimization of individuals with developmental disabilities; (3) the manner in which the justice system responds to crimes against individuals with disabilities; and (4) the means by which states may establish and maintain a centralized computer database on the incidence of crimes against individuals with disabilities within a state.
Crime and Punishment in American History
Author : Lawrence Friedman
Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
Page : 566 pages
File Size : 25,86 MB
Release : 2010-11-05
Category : Law
ISBN : 1459608135
Book Description
In a panoramic history of our criminal justice system from Colonial times to today, one of our foremost legal thinkers shows how America fashioned a system of crime and punishment in its own image.
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
Author : United States
Publisher :
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 22,39 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Criminal justice, Administration of
ISBN :
Book Description
The Growth of Incarceration in the United States
Author : Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 800 pages
File Size : 30,51 MB
Release : 2014-12-31
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780309298018
Book Description
After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States has increased fivefold during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation's population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States examines policy changes that created an increasingly punitive political climate and offers specific policy advice in sentencing policy, prison policy, and social policy. The report also identifies important research questions that must be answered to provide a firmer basis for policy. This report is a call for change in the way society views criminals, punishment, and prison. This landmark study assesses the evidence and its implications for public policy to inform an extensive and thoughtful public debate about and reconsideration of policies.
