After forty years of increasing prison construction and incarceration rates, winds of change are blowing through the American correctional system. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the unsustainability of the incarceration project, thereby empowering policy makers to reform punishment through fiscal prudence and austerity. In Cheap on Crime, Hadar Aviram draws on years of archival and journalistic research and builds on social history and economics literature to show the powerful impact of recession-era discourse on the death penalty, the war on drugs, incarceration practices, prison health care, and other aspects of the American correctional landscape.
After forty years of increasing prison construction and incarceration rates, winds of change are blowing through the American correctional system. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the unsustainability of the incarceration project, thereby empowering policy makers to reform punishment through fiscal prudence and austerity. In Cheap on Crime, Hadar Aviram draws on years of archival and journalistic research and builds on social history and economics literature to show the powerful impact of recession-era discourse on the death penalty, the war on drugs, incarceration practices, prison health care, and other aspects of the American correctional landscape.
Literature on “late mass incarceration” observed a contraction of the carceral state, with varying opinions as to its causes and various degrees of optimism about its potential. But even optimistic commentators were taken aback by the Trump-Sessions Administration's criminal justice rhetoric. This paper maps out the extent to which federal, state and local actions in the age of Trump have reversed the promising trends to shrink the criminal justice apparatus, focusing on federal legislation, continued state and local reform, and the role of criminal justice in 2020 presidential campaigns. The paper concludes that the overall salutary trends from 2008 onward have slowed down in some respects, but continued on in others, and that advocacy concerns should focus on particular areas of the criminal justice apparatus.
In Studying Criminology, the author explores the interplay between philosophical and criminological theories to provide a stimulating and insightful overview of the subject. It offers students a fresh way of thinking about crime, giving them an opportunity to develop their understanding and to hone their critical skills. Conceived by Chris Grey as an antidote to conventional textbooks, each book in the ‘Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap’ series takes a core area of the curriculum and turns it on its head by providing a critical and sophisticated overview of the key issues and debates in an informal, conversational and often humorous way. Suitable for Undergraduate and Postgraduate students of Criminology and anybody interested in the field of Criminological studies.
“Challenging and daring. Marshall Frank gives us all much to think about. These essays should be discussed and considered by criminal justice professionals, lawmakers and academic thinkers everywhere.” — David Waksman, Author and Ass’t State Attorney, Miami, Florida “Marshall Frank challenges conventional thought and policies that are not working. He uses the criminal justice system as a mirror of where our society has been, and a window of where we should be going. Buckle up for a thought-provoking episode of Frank talk.” — Douglas W. Hughes, Retired Police Major, former Florida Drug Czar In Criminal InJustice In America, author Marshall Frank presents a powerful argument for amending laws and process regarding the war on drugs, prostitution, abortion, capital punishment, sex offenses and more. Frank points out how narrow thinking has created an irreversible justice quagmire which not only creates more crime, it serves a prison industrial complex that has grown into a cheap labor pool for corporate America. Only a non-politically correct, thirty-year career cop with the muzzle removed can dare offer such candid and startling alternatives to a failed system that now houses 2.3 million inmates in America’s prisons, at least a third of whom do not belong there. Readers with interest in the American justice system will find this a stimulating and fascinating collection of essays on subjects never before tackled in this manner. Definitely a book for thinkers. www.marshallfrank.com
"Crime does not come cheap. It is actually a deadly poison that is crippling all the structures of our society. Each an every single day, it is causing weeping and gnashing of teeth in our communities and nations. From the poor to the rich, from shack-dwellers and mansion-owners, tuck shop to big businesses, every citizen and every entity is counting the cost to crime. In spite of all that is being done by the government in trying to combat crime, two compelling questions beckon to asked: Why is there no considerable decrease in the crime rates and really is the power behind our appalling crime statistics? This book, provides an in-depth answer to those questions, revealing the main cause of crime and offering key strategies that need to be put in place in order to experience significant reduction of crime in our societies."--Back cover
In 1969, the world was shocked by a series of murders committed by Charles Manson and his “family” of followers. Although the defendants were sentenced to death in 1971, their sentences were commuted to life with parole in 1972; since 1978, they have been regularly attending parole hearings. Today all of the living defendants remain behind bars. Relying on nearly fifty years of parole hearing transcripts, as well as interviews and archival materials, Hadar Aviram invites readers into the opaque world of the California parole process—a realm of almost unfettered administrative discretion, prison programming inadequacies, high-pitched emotions, and political pressures. Yesterday’s Monsters offers a fresh longitudinal perspective on extreme punishment.
