Author: Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 9780309298018 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 800
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.
Author: William J. Stuntz Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674051750 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 425
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.
Author: G. Edward White Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199766002 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 168
Book Description
A concise examination of the central role of legal decisions in shaping key social issues explores topics ranging from Native American affairs and slavery to business and home life as well as how criminal and civil offenses have been addressed in positive and negative ways. Original.
Author: Bradley Chapin Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 0820336912 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
This study analyzes the development of criminal law during the first several generations of American life. Its comparison of the substantive and procedural law among the colonies reveals the similarities and differences between the New England and the Chesapeake colonies. Bradley Chapin addresses the often-debated question of the “reception” of English law and makes estimates of the relative weight of the sources and methods of early American law. A main theme of his book is that colonial legislators and judges achieved a significant reform of the English criminal law at a time when a parallel movement in England failed. The analysis is made specific and concrete by statistics that show patterns of prosecutions and crime rates. In addition to the exciting and convincing theme of a “lost period” of great creativity in American criminal law, Chapin gives a wealth of detail on statutory and common-law rulings, noteworthy criminal cases, and judicial views of how the law was to be administered. He provides social and economic explanations of shifts and peculiarities in the law, using carefully arranged evidence from the records. His treatment of the Quaker cases in Massachusetts and the witchcraft prosecutions in New England throws new light on those frequently misunderstood episodes. Chapin's book will be of interest not only to scholars working in the field but also to anyone curious about early American legal history.
Author: Barry Latzer Publisher: Encounter Books ISBN: 1594039305 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
A compelling case can be made that violent crime, especially after the 1960s, was one of the most significant domestic issues in the United States. Indeed, few issues had as profound an effect on American life in the last third of the twentieth century. After 1965, crime rose to such levels that it frightened virtually all Americans and prompted significant alterations in everyday behaviors and even lifestyles. The risk of being mugged was a concern when Americans chose places to live and schools for their children, selected commuter routes to work, and planned their leisure activities. In some locales, people were afraid to leave their dwellings at any time, day or night, even to go to the market. In the worst of the post-1960s crime wave, Americans spent part of each day literally looking back over their shoulders. The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America is the first book to comprehensively examine this important phenomenon over the entire postwar era. It combines a social history of the United States with the insights of criminology and examines the relationship between rising and falling crime and such historical developments as the postwar economic boom, suburbanization and the rise of the middle class, baby booms and busts, war and antiwar protest, the urbanization of minorities, and more.
Author: Roscoe Pound Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351288822 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
Roscoe Pound believed that unless the criminal justice system maintains stability while adapting to change, it will either fossilize or be subject to the whims of public opinion. In Criminal Justice in America, Pound recognizes the dangers law faces when it does not keep pace with societal change. When the home, neighborhood, and religion are no longer capable of social control, increased conflicts arise, laws proliferate, and new menaces wrought by technology, drugs, and juvenile delinquency flourish. Where Pound saw the influence of the motion pictures as part of the "multiplication of the agencies of menace," today we might cite television and the Internet. His point still holds true: The "old machinery" cannot meet the evolving needs of society. In Criminal Justice in America,Pound points out that one aspect of the criminal justice problem is a rigid mechanical approach that resists change. The other dimension of the problem is that change, when it comes, will result from the pressure of public opinion. Justice suffers when the public is moved by the oldest of public feelings, vengeance. This can result in citizens taking the law into their own hands--from tax evasion to mob lynchings--as well as in altering the judicial system--from sensationalizing trials to producing wrongful convictions. Ron Christenson, in his new introduction, discusses the evolution of Roscoe Pound's career and thought. Pound's theories on jurisprudence were remarkably prescient. They continue to gain resonance as crimes become more and more sensationalized by the media.Criminal Justice in America is a fascinating study that should be read by legal scholars and professionals, sociologists, political theorists, and philosophers.
Author: Lawrence Friedman Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com ISBN: 1459608135 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 566
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.
Author: Shima Baradaran Baughman Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107131367 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 331
Book Description
Examines the causes for mass incarceration of Americans and calls for the reform of the bail system. Traces the history of bail, how it has come to be an oppressive tool of the courts, and makes recommendations for reforming the bail system and alleviating the mass incarceration problem.
Author: Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration
Author: David K.. Watson
Author: William J. Stuntz
Author: G. Edward White
Author: Bradley Chapin
Author: Barry Latzer
Author: United States
Author: Roscoe Pound
Author: Lawrence Friedman
Author: Shima Baradaran Baughman