Critical Issues in Crime and Society - Böcker

The American criminal justice system contains numerous safeguards to prevent the conviction of innocent persons. The Bill of Rights provides nineteen separate rights for the alleged criminal offender, including the right to effective legal representation and the right to be judged without regard to race or creed. Despite these safeguards, wrongful convictions persist, and the issue has reverberated in the national debate over capital punishment.The essays in this volume are written from a cross-disciplinary perspective by some of the most eminent lawyers, criminologists, and social scientists in the field today. The articles are divided into four sections: the causes of wrongful convictions, the social characteristics of the wrongly convicted, case studies and personal histories, and suggestions for changes in the criminal justice system to prevent wrongful convictions. Contributors examine a broad range of issues, including the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, particularly in cross-racial identifications; the disadvantages faced by racial and ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system; and the impact of new technologies, especially DNA evidence, in freeing the innocent and bringing the guilty to justice. The book also asks such questions as: What legal characteristics do wrongful convictions share? What are the mechanisms that defendants and their attorneys use to overturn wrongful convictions? The book also provides case studies that offer specific examples of what can and does go wrong in the criminal justice system.

"Sharp’s book reemphasizes the tremendous costs of maintaining the death penalty-costs to real people and real families that ripple throughout generations to come."-Saundra D. Westervelt, author of Shifting the Blame: How Victimization Became a Criminal Defense"Everyone concerned with the effects of capital punishment must have this book."-Margaret Vandiver, professor, department of criminology and criminal justice, University of MemphisMurderers, particularly those sentenced to death, are considered by most to be unusually heinous, often sub-human, and entirely different from the rest of us. In Hidden Victims, sociologist Susan F. Sharp challenges this culturally ingrained perspective by reminding us that those individuals facing a death sentence, in addition to being murderers, are brothers or sisters, mothers or fathers, daughters or sons, relatives or friends. Through a series of vivid and in-depth interviews with families of the accused, she demonstrates how the exceptionally severe way in which we view those on death row trickles down to those with whom they are closely connected. Sharp shows how family members and friends-in effect, the indirect victims of the initial crime-experience a profoundly complicated and socially isolating grief process.Departing from a humanist perspective from which most accounts of victims are told, Sharp makes her case from a sociological standpoint that draws out the parallel experiences and coping mechanisms of these individuals. Chapters focus on responses to sentencing, the particular structure of grieving faced by this population, execution, aftermath, wrongful conviction, family formation after conviction, and the complex situation of individuals related to both the killer and the victim.Powerful, poignant, and intelligently written, Hidden Victims challenges all of us-regardless of which side of the death penalty you are on-to understand the economic, social, and psychological repercussions that shape the lives of the often forgotten families of death row inmates.

Arrests of women for assault increased more than 40 percent over the past decade, while male arrests for this offense have fallen by about one percent. Some studies report that for the first time ever the rate of reported intimate partner abuse among men and women is nearly equal. Susan L. Miller’s timely book explores the important questions raised by these startling statistics.Are women finally closing the gender gap on violence? Or does this phenomenon reflect a backlash shaped by men who batter? How do abusive men use the criminal justice system to increase control over their wives? Do police, courts, and treatment providers support aggressive arrest policies for women?  Are these women “victims” or “offenders”?  In answering these questions, Miller draws on extensive data from a study of police behavior in the field, interviews with criminal justice professionals and social service providers, and participant observation of female offender programs. She offers a critical analysis of the theoretical assumptions framing the study of violence and provides insight into the often contradictory implications of the mandatory and pro-arrest policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s. Miller argues that these enforcement strategies, designed to protect women, have often victimized women in different ways. Without sensationalizing, Miller unveils a reality that looks very different from what current statistics on domestic violence imply.

Enron, Haliburton, ExxonValdez, "shock and awe"-their mere mention brings forth images of scandal, collusion, fraud, and human and environmental destruction. While great power and great crimes have always been linked, media exposure in recent decades has brought increased attention to the devious exploits of economic and political elites.Despite growing attention to crimes by those in positions of trust, however, violations in business and similar wrongdoing in government are still often treated as fundamentally separate problems. In State-Corporate Crime, Raymond J. Michalowski and Ronald C. Kramer bring together fifteen essays to show that those in positions of political and economic power frequently operate in collaboration, and are often all too willing to sacrifice the well-being of the many for the private profit and political advantage of the few.Drawing on case studies including the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, Ford Explorer rollovers, the crash of Valujet flight 592, nuclear weapons production, and war profiteering, the essays bear frank witness to those who have suffered, those who have died, and those who have contributed to the greatest human and environmental devastations of our time. This book is a much needed reminder that the most serious threats to public health, security, and safety are not those petty crimes that appear nightly on local news broadcasts, but rather are those that result from corruption among the wealthiest and most powerful members of society.

From its largest cities to deep within its heartland, from its heavily trafficked airways to its meandering country byways, America has become a nation racked by anxiety about terrorism and national security. In response to the fears prompted by the tragedy of September 11th, the country has changed in countless ways. Airline security has tightened, mail service is closely examined, and restrictions on civil liberties are more readily imposed by the government and accepted by a wary public. The altered American landscape, however, includes more than security measures and ID cards. The country's desperate quest for security is visible in many less obvious, yet more insidious ways. In Scapegoats of September 11th, criminologist Michael Welch argues that the "war on terror" is a political charade that delivers illusory comfort, stokes fear, and produces scapegoats used as emotional relief. Regrettably, much of the outrage that resulted from 9/11 has been targeted at those not involved in the attacks on the Pentagon or the Twin Towers. As this book explains, those people have become the scapegoats of September 11th. Welch takes on the uneasy task of sorting out the various manifestations of displaced aggression, most notably the hate crimes and state crimes that have become embarrassing hallmarks both at home and abroad. Drawing on topics such as ethnic profiling, the Abu Ghraib scandal, Guantanamo Bay, and the controversial Patriot Act, Welch looks at the significance of knowledge, language, and emotion in a post-9/11 world. In the face of popular and political cheerleading in the war on terror, this book presents a careful and sober assessment, reminding us that sound counterterrorism policies must rise above, rather than participate in, the propagation of bigotry and victimization.

The American prison system has grown tenfold since the 1970s, but crime rates in the United States have not decreased. This doesn't surprise Michael J. Lynch, a critical criminologist, who argues that our oversized prison system is a product of our consumer culture, the public's inaccurate beliefs about controlling crime, and the government's criminalizing of the poor. While deterrence and incapacitation theories suggest that imprisoning more criminals and punishing them leads to a reduction in crime, case studies, such as one focusing on the New York City jail system between 1993 and 2003, show that a reduction in crime is unrelated to the size of jail populations. Although we are locking away more people, Lynch explains that we are not targeting the worst offenders. Prison populations are comprised of the poor, and many are incarcerated for relatively minor robberies and violence. America's prison expansion focused on this group to the exclusion of corporate and white collar offenders who create hazardous workplace and environmental conditions that lead to deaths and injuries, and enormous economic crimes. If America truly wants to reduce crime, Lynch urges readers to rethink cultural values that equate bigger with better.

Female drug addicts are often stereotyped either as promiscuous, lazy, and selfish, or as weak, scared, and trapped into addiction. These depictions typify the "pathology and powerlessness" narrative that has historically characterized popular and academic conversations about female substance abusers. Neither Villain Nor Victim attempts to correct these polarizing perspectives by presenting a critical feminist analysis of the drug world. By shifting the discussion to one centered on women's agency and empowerment, this book reveals the complex experiences and social relationships of women addicts.Essays explore a range of topics, including the many ways that women negotiate the illicit drug world, how former drug addicts manage the more intimate aspects of their lives as they try to achieve abstinence, how women tend to use intervention resources more positively than their male counterparts, and how society can improve its response to female substance abusers by moving away from social controls (such as the criminalization of prostitution) and rehabilitative programs that have been shown to fail women in the long term.Advancing important new perspectives about the position of women in the drug world, this book is essential reading in courses on women and crime, feminist theory, and criminal justice.

In November 1999, fifty-thousand anti-globalization activists converged on Seattle to shut down the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Meeting. Using innovative and network-based strategies, the protesters left police flummoxed, desperately searching for ways to control the emerging anti-corporate globalization movement.  Faced with these network-based tactics, law enforcement agencies transformed their policing and social control mechanisms to manage this new threat.Policing Dissent provides a firsthand account of the changing nature of control efforts employed by law enforcement agencies when confronted with mass activism. The book also offers readers the richness of experiential detail and engaging stories often lacking in studies of police practices and social movements. This book does not merely seek to explain the causal relationship between repression and mobilization. Rather, it shows how social control strategies act on the mind and body of protesters.

Hundreds of thousands of the inmates who populate the nation's jails and prison systems today are identified as mentally ill. Many experts point to the deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals in the 1960s, which led to more patients living on their own, as the reason for this high rate of incarceration. But this explanation does not justify why our society has chosen to treat these people with punitive measures.In Crime, Punishment, and Mental Illness, Patricia E. Erickson and Steven K. Erickson explore how societal beliefs about free will and moral responsibility have shaped current policies and they identify the differences among the goals, ethos, and actions of the legal and health care systems. Drawing on high-profile cases, the authors provide a critical analysis of topics, including legal standards for competency, insanity versus mental illness, sex offenders, psychologically disturbed juveniles, the injury and death rates of mentally ill prisoners due to the inappropriate use of force, the high level of suicide, and the release of mentally ill individuals from jails and prisons who have received little or no treatment.

In Pump and Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy,Robert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard argue that these scandals are symptoms of a corporate governance problem that began in the 1990s as New Economy pundits claimed that advances in technology and forms of business organization were changing the rules. A decade later, it looked more like a case of no rules. Endless revelations of fraud in the wake of corporate bankruptcies left ordinary investors bewildered and employees out of work with little or nothing.Tillman and Indergaard observe that victims were taken in by organized behavior that calls to mind “pump and dump” schemes where shadowy swindlers push penny stocks. Yet, in the 1990s it was high-profile firms and high-status accomplices (financial analysts, bankers, and accountants) who used powerful institutional levers to pump the value of stock-duping investors while insiders sold their holdings for fantastic profits before the crash.The authors explain how it was that so much of corporate America came to resemble a two-bit securities scam by focusing on the rules that mattered in three critical industries-energy trading, telecommunications, and dot-coms. Free-market hype and policies at the national level set the tone. While Wall Street wrapped itself in star-spangled packaging and celebrated its purported “democratization,” in the real halls of democracy congressional allies of business gutted protections for ordinary investors. In the regulatory vacuum that resulted, business professionals who were supposed to watch corporations instead promoted New Economy doctrines and worked with executives to tout their firms as New Economy contenders. Ringleaders in the inner circles that committed fraud made their own rules, which they enforced through a mix of bribery and bullying.  At a time when there is growing debate about proposals to privatize programs like Social Security and to promote an “ownership society,” Pump and Dump offers a path-breaking analysis of America’s most urgent economic problem: a system that relies on self-regulation and the rancid politics that continue to support the short-term interests of financial elites over the long-term interests of most Americans.

Since 9/11, a new configuration of power situated at the core of the executive branch of the U.S. government has taken hold. In Crimes of Power & States of Impunity, Michael Welch takes a close look at the key historical, political, and economic forces shaping the country's response to terror. Welch continues the work he began in Scapegoats of September 11th and argues that current U.S. policies, many enacted after the attacks, undermine basic human rights and violate domestic and international law. He recounts these offenses and analyzes the system that sanctions them, offering fresh insight into the complex relationship between power and state crime. Welch critically examines the unlawful enemy combatant designation, Guantanamo Bay, recent torture cases, and collateral damage relating to the war in Iraq. This book transcends important legal arguments as Welch strives for a broader sociological interpretation of what transpired early this century, analyzing the abuses of power that jeopardize our safety and security.

Since 9/11, a new configuration of power situated at the core of the executive branch of the U.S. government has taken hold. In Crimes of Power & States of Impunity, Michael Welch takes a close look at the key historical, political, and economic forces shaping the country's response to terror. Welch continues the work he began in Scapegoats of September 11th and argues that current U.S. policies, many enacted after the attacks, undermine basic human rights and violate domestic and international law. He recounts these offenses and analyzes the system that sanctions them, offering fresh insight into the complex relationship between power and state crime. Welch critically examines the unlawful enemy combatant designation, Guantanamo Bay, recent torture cases, and collateral damage relating to the war in Iraq. This book transcends important legal arguments as Welch strives for a broader sociological interpretation of what transpired early this century, analyzing the abuses of power that jeopardize our safety and security.

Decade after decade, violence against women has gained more attention from scholars, policy makers, and the general public. Social scientists in particular have contributed significant empirical and theoretical understandings to this issue. Strikingly, scant attention has focused on the victimization of women who want to leave their hostile partners. This groundbreaking work challenges the perception that rural communities are safe havens from the brutality of urban living. Identifying hidden crimes of economic blackmail and psychological mistreatment, and the complex relationship between patriarchy and abuse, Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz propose concrete and effective solutions, giving voice to women who have often suffered in silence.

Decade after decade, violence against women has gained more attention from scholars, policy makers, and the general public. Social scientists in particular have contributed significant empirical and theoretical understandings to this issue. Strikingly, scant attention has focused on the victimization of women who want to leave their hostile partners. This groundbreaking work challenges the perception that rural communities are safe havens from the brutality of urban living. Identifying hidden crimes of economic blackmail and psychological mistreatment, and the complex relationship between patriarchy and abuse, Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz propose concrete and effective solutions, giving voice to women who have often suffered in silence.

Hailed as a definitive analytical and historical study of the juvenile justice system, this 40th anniversary edition of The Child Savers features a new essay by Anthony M. Platt that highlights recent directions in the field, as well as a critique of his original text. Focusing on social reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Platt's principal argument is that the "child savers" movement was not an effort to liberate and dignify youth but, instead, a punitive and intrusive attempt to control the lives of working-class urban adolescents. This expanded edition provides a renewed and distinguished contribution by placing it in historical context through insightful commentaries from cross-disciplinary academics, along with an essay by Miroslava ChÁvez-GarcÍa examining how Platt's influential study has impacted many of the central arguments social scientists and historians face today.

Schools under Surveillance gathers together some of the very best researchers studying surveillance and discipline in contemporary public schools. Surveillance is not simply about monitoring or tracking individuals and their dataùit is about the structuring of power relations through human, technical, or hybrid control mechanisms. Essays cover a broad range of topics including police and military recruiters on campus, testing and accountability regimes such as No Child Left Behind, and efforts by students and teachers to circumvent the most egregious forms of surveillance in public education. Each contributor is committed to the continued critique of the disparity and inequality in the use of surveillance to target and sort students along lines of race, class, and gender.

Schools under Surveillance gathers together some of the very best researchers studying surveillance and discipline in contemporary public schools. Surveillance is not simply about monitoring or tracking individuals and their dataùit is about the structuring of power relations through human, technical, or hybrid control mechanisms. Essays cover a broad range of topics including police and military recruiters on campus, testing and accountability regimes such as No Child Left Behind, and efforts by students and teachers to circumvent the most egregious forms of surveillance in public education. Each contributor is committed to the continued critique of the disparity and inequality in the use of surveillance to target and sort students along lines of race, class, and gender.

Threats of terrorism, natural disaster, identity theft, job loss, illegal immigration, and even biblical apocalypse-all are perils that trigger alarm in people today. Although there may be a factual basis for many of these fears, they do not simply represent objective conditions. Feelings of insecurity are instilled by politicians and the media, and sustained by urban fortification, technological surveillance, and economic vulnerability.Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity fuses advanced theoretical accounts of state power and neoliberalism with original research from the social settings in which insecurity dynamics play out in the new century. Torin Monahan explores the counterterrorism-themed show 24, Rapture fiction, traffic control centers, security conferences, public housing, and gated communities, and examines how each manifests complex relationships of inequality, insecurity, and surveillance. Alleviating insecurity requires that we confront its mythic dimensions, the politics inherent in new configurations of security provision, and the structural obstacles to achieving equality in societies.

Threats of terrorism, natural disaster, identity theft, job loss, illegal immigration, and even biblical apocalypse-all are perils that trigger alarm in people today. Although there may be a factual basis for many of these fears, they do not simply represent objective conditions. Feelings of insecurity are instilled by politicians and the media, and sustained by urban fortification, technological surveillance, and economic vulnerability.Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity fuses advanced theoretical accounts of state power and neoliberalism with original research from the social settings in which insecurity dynamics play out in the new century. Torin Monahan explores the counterterrorism-themed show 24, Rapture fiction, traffic control centers, security conferences, public housing, and gated communities, and examines how each manifests complex relationships of inequality, insecurity, and surveillance. Alleviating insecurity requires that we confront its mythic dimensions, the politics inherent in new configurations of security provision, and the structural obstacles to achieving equality in societies.

The attacks of 9/11 led to a war on Iraq, although there was neither tangible evidence that the nation's leader, Saddam Hussein, was linked to Osama bin Laden nor proof of weapons of mass destruction. Why, then, did the Iraq war garner so much acceptance in the United States during its primary stages? Mass Deception argues that the George W. Bush administration manufactured public support for the war on Iraq. Scott A. Bonn introduces a unique, integrated, and interdisciplinary theory called "critical communication" to explain how and why political elites and the news media periodically create public panics that benefit both parties. Using quantitative analysis of public opinion polls and presidential rhetoric pre- and post-9/11 in the news media, Bonn applies the moral panic concept to the Iraq war. He critiques the war and occupation of Iraq as violations of domestic and international law. Finally, Mass Deception connects propaganda and distortion efforts by the Bush administration to more general theories of elite deviance and state crime.

Current media and political discourse on crime has long ignored crimes committed by States themselves, despite their greater financial and human toll. For the past two decades, scholars have examined how and why States violate their own laws and international law and explored what can be done to reduce or prevent these injustices. Through a collection of essays by leading scholars in the field, State Crime offers a set of cases exemplifying state criminality along with various methods for controlling governmental transgressions. With topics ranging from crimes of aggression to nuclear weapons to the construction and implementation of social controls, this volume is an indispensable resource for those who examine the behavior of States and those who study crime in its varied forms.

Current media and political discourse on crime has long ignored crimes committed by States themselves, despite their greater financial and human toll. For the past two decades, scholars have examined how and why States violate their own laws and international law and explored what can be done to reduce or prevent these injustices. Through a collection of essays by leading scholars in the field, State Crime offers a set of cases exemplifying state criminality along with various methods for controlling governmental transgressions. With topics ranging from crimes of aggression to nuclear weapons to the construction and implementation of social controls, this volume is an indispensable resource for those who examine the behavior of States and those who study crime in its varied forms.

In recent years, community policing has transformed American law enforcement by promising to build trust between citizens and officers. Today, three-quarters of American police departments claim to embrace the strategy. But decades before the phrase was coined, the New York City Housing Authority Police Department (HAPD) had pioneered community-based crime-fighting strategies.The Last Neighborhood Cops reveals the forgotten history of the residents and cops who forged community policing in the public housing complexes of New York City during the second half of the twentieth century. Through a combination of poignant storytelling and historical analysis, Fritz Umbach draws on buried and confidential police records and voices of retired officers and older residents to help explore the rise and fall of the HAPD's community-based strategy, while questioning its tactical effectiveness. The result is a unique perspective on contemporary debates of community policing and historical developments chronicling the influence of poor and working-class populations on public policy making.

Juvenile drug courts are on the rise in the United States, as a result of a favorable political climate and justice officials' endorsement of the therapeutic jurisprudence movement--the concept of combining therapeutic care with correctional discipline. The goal is to divert nonviolent youth drug offenders into addiction treatment instead of long-term incarceration. Discretionary Justice overviews the system, taking readers behind the scenes of the juvenile drug court. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews at a California court, Leslie Paik explores the staff's decision-making practices in assessing the youths' cases, concentrating on the way accountability and noncompliance are assessed. Using the concept of "workability," Paik demonstrates how compliance, and what is seen by staff as "noncompliance," are the constructed results of staff decisions, fluctuating budgets, and sometimes questionable drug test results.While these courts largely focus on holding youths responsible for their actions, this book underscores the social factors that shape how staff members view progress in the court. Paik also emphasizes the perspectives of children and parents. Given the growing emphasis on individual responsibility in other settings, such as schools and public welfare agencies, Paik's findings are relevant outside the juvenile justice system.

Juvenile drug courts are on the rise in the United States, as a result of a favorable political climate and justice officials' endorsement of the therapeutic jurisprudence movement--the concept of combining therapeutic care with correctional discipline. The goal is to divert nonviolent youth drug offenders into addiction treatment instead of long-term incarceration. Discretionary Justice overviews the system, taking readers behind the scenes of the juvenile drug court. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews at a California court, Leslie Paik explores the staff's decision-making practices in assessing the youths' cases, concentrating on the way accountability and noncompliance are assessed. Using the concept of "workability," Paik demonstrates how compliance, and what is seen by staff as "noncompliance," are the constructed results of staff decisions, fluctuating budgets, and sometimes questionable drug test results.While these courts largely focus on holding youths responsible for their actions, this book underscores the social factors that shape how staff members view progress in the court. Paik also emphasizes the perspectives of children and parents. Given the growing emphasis on individual responsibility in other settings, such as schools and public welfare agencies, Paik's findings are relevant outside the juvenile justice system.

Life after Death Row examines the post-incarceration struggles of individuals who have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes, sentenced to death, and subsequently exonerated.Saundra D. Westervelt and Kimberly J. Cook present eighteen exonerees’ stories, focusing on three central areas: the invisibility of the innocent after release, the complicity of the justice system in that invisibility, and personal trauma management. Contrary to popular belief, exonerees are not automatically compensated by the state or provided adequate assistance in the transition to post-prison life. With no time and little support, many struggle to find homes, financial security, and community. They have limited or obsolete employment skills and difficulty managing such daily tasks as grocery shopping or banking. They struggle to regain independence, self-sufficiency, and identity.Drawing upon research on trauma, recovery, coping, and stigma, the authors weave a nuanced fabric of grief, loss, resilience, hope, and meaning to provide the richest account to date of the struggles faced by people striving to reclaim their lives after years of wrongful incarceration.

Received an Honorable Mention for the 2015 Society for Social Work and Research Outstanding Social Work Book Award To date, knowledge of the everyday world of the juvenile correction institution has been extremely sparse. Compassionate Confinement brings to light the challenges and complexities inherent in the U.S. system of juvenile corrections. Building on over a year of field work at a boys’ residential facility, Laura S. Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe provide a context for contemporary institutions and highlight some of the system’s most troubling tensions.This ethnographic text utilizes narratives, observations, and case examples to illustrate the strain between treatment and correctional paradigms and the mixed messages regarding gender identity and masculinity that the youths are expected to navigate. Within this context, the authors use the boys’ stories to show various and unexpected pathways toward behavior change. While some residents clearly seized opportunities for self-transformation, others manipulated their way toward release, and faced substantial challenges when they returned home.Compassionate Confinement concludes with recommendations for rehabilitating this notoriously troubled system in light of the experiences of its most vulnerable stakeholders.

Received an Honorable Mention for the 2015 Society for Social Work and Research Outstanding Social Work Book Award To date, knowledge of the everyday world of the juvenile correction institution has been extremely sparse. Compassionate Confinement brings to light the challenges and complexities inherent in the U.S. system of juvenile corrections. Building on over a year of field work at a boys’ residential facility, Laura S. Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe provide a context for contemporary institutions and highlight some of the system’s most troubling tensions.This ethnographic text utilizes narratives, observations, and case examples to illustrate the strain between treatment and correctional paradigms and the mixed messages regarding gender identity and masculinity that the youths are expected to navigate. Within this context, the authors use the boys’ stories to show various and unexpected pathways toward behavior change. While some residents clearly seized opportunities for self-transformation, others manipulated their way toward release, and faced substantial challenges when they returned home.Compassionate Confinement concludes with recommendations for rehabilitating this notoriously troubled system in light of the experiences of its most vulnerable stakeholders.