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This book evaluates the impact of tough sentencing reforms on the courts, prisons, and crime. It also unpacks the resulting policy implications.
An excellent introduction to judicial politics as a method of analysis, the eighth edition of Judicial Process and Judicial Policymaking focuses on policy in the judicial process. Rather than limiting the text to coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court, G. Alan Tarr examines the judiciary as the third branch of government, and weaves four major premises throughout the text: (1) Courts in the United States have always played an important role in governing and their role has increased in recent decades; (2) Judicial policymaking is a distinctive activity; (3) Courts make policy in a variety of ways; and (4) Courts may be the objects of public policy, as well as creators. New to the Eighth Edition D...
This riveting and enlightening narrative unfolds on the night of August 16, 1996, with the brutal and senseless murder of Eric Nesbitt, a young man stationed at Langley Air Force Base, at the hands of 18-year-old Daryl Atkins. Over the course of more than a decade, Atkins’s case has bounced between the lowest and the highest levels of the judicial system. Found guilty and then sentenced to death in 1998 for Nesbitt’s murder, the Atkins case was then taken up in 2002 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The issue before the justices: given Daryl Atkins’s mental retardation, would his execution constitute cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment? A 6–3 vote said yes. Da...
Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than seven-fold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought. Punishment and Inequality in Amer...
Deterrence is at the heart of the preventive aspiration of criminal justice. Deterrence, whether through preventive patrol by police officers or stiff prison sentences for violent offenders, is the principal mechanism through which the central feature of criminal justice, the exercise of state authority, works – it is hoped -- to diminish offending and enhance public safety. And however well we think deterrence works, it clearly often does not work nearly as well as we would like – and often at very great cost. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly literatures and real-world experience, Kennedy argues that we should reframe the ways in which we think about and produce deterrence. He argue...
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Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction 6e continues to offer a trusted, authoritative and impeccably researched introduction to the criminal justice system in America. This book’s freedom vs. safety theme, its unmatched timeliness, and its coverage of the newest criminal justice trends and technology helps readers think critically about the criminal justice system in a time when the issue of freedom vs. safety has never been more critical. The book’s primary theme discusses the balance of freedom and safety between our society and the criminal justice system. Terrorism and security issues include up-to-date coverage of police terrorism response, including the most recent information on counter terrorism initiatives by America's police. Other hot topics include all the latest crime statistics, court cases, trends in the system and criminal justice news. Extensive coverage of technology and crime includes the latest law enforcement technology used to combat crime and technology used by criminals to commit crimes. Also includes extensive discussion of the juvenile justice system. For anyone with current or future criminal justice careers or those in law enforcement positions.
From the 1970s to the new millennium, the prison population in the United States has quadrupled while an unprecedented amount of sentencing reform has taken place, largely intended to protect the public from dangerous criminals. This book details the California experience, including the history and politics of criminal sentencing policy reform, as well as the consequences of this activity to the criminal justice system. Using cutting-edge computer simulation modeling, Kathleen Auerhahn explores the impact that sentencing reforms dating back to the 1970s have had on the composition and structure of the criminal justice system, with specific focus on prison populations. She illustrates how dynamic systems simulation modeling is used to both examine "possible futures" under a variety of sentencing structures and sentencing policy alternatives, including narrowing "strike zones" and the early release of elderly offenders, in order to more effectively target the dangerous criminals these policies promise to remove from society via incarceration.
In Criminal Sentencing in Bangladesh, Muhammad Mahbubur Rahman critically examines the sentencing policies of Bangladesh and demonstrates that the country’s sentencing policies are not only yet to be developed in a coherent manner and shaped with an appropriate and contextual balance, but also remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The author forcefully argues that the conception of ‘sentencing policies’ cannot and should not always be confined exclusively to institutional understandings. The typical realities of post-colonial societies call for rethinking the traditional judiciary-centred understanding of what is meant by criminal sentences. This book thus raises the question for theoretical sentencing scholarship whether the prevailing judiciary-centred understanding of sentencing should be rethought.