Racial Issues in Criminal Justice

Racial Issues in Criminal Justice PDF Author: Marvin D. Free
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313057109
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Almost a third of all African American men in their twenties in the United States are in jail or prison, or on probation or parole. African Americans, who comprise approximately 13% of the general population, make up about half of the prison population. Between 1980 and 2000, 38 states added more African American men to their prison systems than were added to their respective systems of higher education. However, these statistics fail to tell the entire story. To understand how the dynamics of disproportionate minority confinement came to exist, one must examine the historical and cultural antecedents that affected (and continue to affect) this group. Examining proposed solutions and providing alternative perspectives, this volume addresses the overrepresentation of African Americans in the criminal justice system by critically examining the significance of race in American society and criminal justice responses to crime and African Americans. Offering a critical examination of the issues, this collection begins with a discussion of the marginalization of African Americans in the academic discipline of criminal justice and in the larger society, an assessment of the impact of the legacy of slavery on private prisons and mass imprisonment, and an empirical examination of the depiction of African Americans in prime-time television crime programs. Part II looks at racial profiling, the underrepresentation of African Americans in hate crime victimization research, the impact of race on presentencing, the trend toward trying juveniles in adult court, and the discriminatory treatment of African Americans in capital-eligible cases. Finally, Part III discusses the impact of African American police officers on the profession, analyzes black juror nullification, proposes an increase in the presence of African American jurors, and assesses the potential ameliorative impact of restorative justice on the current racial imbalance in the criminal justice system.

African Americans and the Criminal Justice System

African Americans and the Criminal Justice System PDF Author: Marvin D. Free
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780815319825
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
Twenty-nine collected essays represent a critical history of Shakespeare's play as text and as theater, beginning with Samuel Johnson in 1765, and ending with a review of the Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1991. The criticism centers on three aspects of the play: the love/friendship debate.

The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow PDF Author: Michelle Alexander
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620971941
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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.

Locking Up Our Own

Locking Up Our Own PDF Author: James Forman, Jr.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374712905
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTON ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWS' 10 BEST BOOKS LONG-LISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST, CURRENT INTEREST CATEGORY, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZES "Locking Up Our Own is an engaging, insightful, and provocative reexamination of over-incarceration in the black community. James Forman Jr. carefully exposes the complexities of crime, criminal justice, and race. What he illuminates should not be ignored." —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative "A beautiful book, written so well, that gives us the origins and consequences of where we are . . . I can see why [the Pulitzer prize] was awarded." —Trevor Noah, The Daily Show Former public defender James Forman, Jr. is a leading critic of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on people of color. In Locking Up Our Own, he seeks to understand the war on crime that began in the 1970s and why it was supported by many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers. Forman shows us that the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office amid a surge in crime and drug addiction. Many prominent black officials, including Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry and federal prosecutor Eric Holder, feared that the gains of the civil rights movement were being undermined by lawlessness—and thus embraced tough-on-crime measures, including longer sentences and aggressive police tactics. In the face of skyrocketing murder rates and the proliferation of open-air drug markets, they believed they had no choice. But the policies they adopted would have devastating consequences for residents of poor black neighborhoods. A former D.C. public defender, Forman tells riveting stories of politicians, community activists, police officers, defendants, and crime victims. He writes with compassion about individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas—from the men and women he represented in court to officials struggling to respond to a public safety emergency. Locking Up Our Own enriches our understanding of why our society became so punitive and offers important lessons to anyone concerned about the future of race and the criminal justice system in this country.

Uncontrollable Blackness

Uncontrollable Blackness PDF Author: Douglas J. Flowe
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469655748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Book Description
Early twentieth-century African American men in northern urban centers like New York faced economic isolation, segregation, a biased criminal justice system, and overt racial attacks by police and citizens. In this book, Douglas J. Flowe interrogates the meaning of crime and violence in the lives of these men, whose lawful conduct itself was often surveilled and criminalized, by focusing on what their actions and behaviors represented to them. He narrates the stories of men who sought profits in underground markets, protected themselves when law enforcement failed to do so, and exerted control over public, commercial, and domestic spaces through force in a city that denied their claims to citizenship and manhood. Flowe furthermore traces how the features of urban Jim Crow and the efforts of civic and progressive leaders to restrict their autonomy ultimately produced the circumstances under which illegality became a form of resistance. Drawing from voluminous prison and arrest records, trial transcripts, personal letters and documents, and investigative reports, Flowe opens up new ways of understanding the black struggle for freedom in the twentieth century. By uncovering the relationship between the fight for civil rights, black constructions of masculinity, and lawlessness, he offers a stirring account of how working-class black men employed extralegal methods to address racial injustice.

African American Classics in Criminology and Criminal Justice

African American Classics in Criminology and Criminal Justice PDF Author: Shaun L Gabbidon
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761924333
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
"This collection of writings is crucially important, in part, because it reminds us the theoretical paradigms of these and other African American scholars are excluded when crime, its causes, and its control are discussed by criminologists, criminal justice practitioners, and policy makers. To understand crime fully, the perspectives advanced by these scholars must become an integral part of discussions about who is a criminal and which public policies will best control crime." --From the forward by Anne Thomas Sulton, Ph.D, J.D. From W.E.B. Dubois through Lee Brown, this anthology provides a collection of the key articles in criminology and criminal justice written by black scholars. Available in a single volume for the first time, the articles collected in this book reflect the voices of African-American scholars and display the diversity of perspectives sought after in today's academic community. Crime in the African-American community is examined from social, economic and political perspectives, and the historical context of each article is provided by the editors. Spanning the 20th century, these works present a historical chronology of African-American views on crime and its control with theoretical perspectives that have often been tangential to mainstream scholarship. For your courses in: Criminological Theory Race and Crime Crime and Social Policy Minorities and Criminal Justice

The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice

The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice PDF Author: Nina M. Moore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107022975
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Book Description
This book examines the role of the public and policy makers in enabling the race problem in the American criminal justice system.

Black Men, Invisibility and Crime

Black Men, Invisibility and Crime PDF Author: Martin Glynn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134709331
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
Past studies have suggested that offenders desist from crime due to a range of factors, such as familial pressures, faith based interventions or financial incentives. To date, little has been written about the relationship between desistance and racialisation. This book seeks to bring much needed attention to this under-researched area of criminological inquiry. Martin Glynn builds on recent empirical research in the UK and the USA and uses Critical Race Theory as a framework for developing a fresh perspective about black men’s desistance. This book posits that the voices and collective narrative of black men offers a unique opportunity to refine current understandings of desistance. It also demonstrates how new insights can be gained by studying the ways in which elements of the desistance trajectory are racialised. This book will be of interest both to criminologists and sociologists engaged with race, racialisation, ethnicity, and criminal justice.

A Theory of African American Offending

A Theory of African American Offending PDF Author: James D. Unnever
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 113680921X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
This book argues that a theory of crime specific to the African American experience is justified by qualitative and quantitative data, not just because of the disproportionately higher percentage of African Americans (in the U.S. population) who are offenders, but also because of the vastly higher percentage of Black Americans who are non-offenders.

Criminal Injustice

Criminal Injustice PDF Author: Robynne Neugebauer
Publisher: Canadian Scholars’ Press
ISBN: 1551301644
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Book Description
This volume examines racism within the process of criminal justice. In every society criminal justice plays a key role establishing social control and maintaining the hegemony of the dominant economic classes. The contributors to this anthology argue that the differential treatment of people of colour and First Nations peoples is due to systemic racism within all levels of the criminal justice system, which serves these dominant classes. Ideological and cultural changes are preconditions for the success of anti-racist policies and practices within the criminal justice system and within other state institutions. Recommendations for transformations in justice policy and practice are provided.