Crime and Justice in the City as Seen Through The Wire
Crime and Justice in the City as Seen Through The Wire

Author: Peter Alan Collins

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781611630336

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Since the hit HBO show The Wire premiered on June 2, 2002, it was viewed as much more than a typical police procedural. Over its five-season run it was praised by critics for its intricate examination of crime, life in the inner city, the criminal justice system, and the functioning of public institutions and the people who work in them. However, unlike other police and crime dramas, the police in The Wire did not solve cases on a weekly basis. The hardships faced by millions of people struggling to survive in the inner city were not softened. Rather than portraying characters as good or bad, The Wire does not flinch from portraying the good and bad sides of the police, criminals, educators, judges, lawyers, elected officials, or labor unions. Indeed, it presents an unvarnished view of the complex nature of the criminal justice system and the web of institutional linkages that impact individuals and society. The show's willingness to take the time to address complex issues and institutions in non-simplistic ways, has led academics and scholars from myriad disciplines to make The Wire a component of their scholarship and university teaching. While this book examines the problem of urban crime and an inefficient criminal justice system from the perspective of legal and social science scholars, it presents divergent and unique examinations of these oft-studied issues. This anthology is organized into four main sections. The first section features a socio-legal presentation of the interconnectedness of the criminal justice system, followed by an explanation of the negative impacts of urban inequality and poverty; it also highlights many institutional failures as well as the impact that systematic pressures have on individuals. The second and third sections cover topics such as police culture and practice, the War on Drugs and the repercussions of drug war policies, government and politics, and harm reduction strategies. The final section provides excellent linkages from the various scenes and themes from The Wire to criminological theory and practice. All of the chapters in this volume are useful in linking material from the show to academic concepts. Each chapter tackles a different topical focus area and they all do an excellent job in citing the relevant research as well as contemporary issues surrounding the chosen subject matter.

Tapping into The Wire
Tapping into The Wire

Author: Peter L. Beilenson

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2012-08-15

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1421407507

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Did Omar Little die of lead poisoning? Would a decriminalization strategy like the one in Hamsterdam end the War on Drugs? What will it take to save neglected kids like Wallace and Dukie? Tapping into 'The Wire' uses the acclaimed television series as a road map for exploring connections between inner-city poverty and drug-related violence. Past Baltimore City health commissioner Peter Beilenson teams up with former Baltimore Sun reporter Patrick A. McGuire to deliver a compelling, highly readable examination of urban policy and public health issues affecting cities across the nation. Each chapter recounts scenes from episodes of the HBO series, placing the characters' challenges into the broader context of public policy. A candid interview with the show’s co-creator David Simon reveals that one of the intentions of the series is to expose gross failures of public institutions, including criminal justice, education, labor, the news media, and city government. Even if readers haven’t seen the series, the book’s detailed summaries of scenes and characters brings them up to speed and engages them in both the story and the issues. With a firm grasp on the hard truths of real-world problems, Tapping into 'The Wire' helps undo misconceptions and encourage a dialogue of understanding. -- John A. Rich, author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men

The New Jim Crow
The New Jim Crow

Author: Michelle Alexander

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2020-01-07

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1620971941

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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

Author: James Forman, Jr.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2017-04-18

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0374712905

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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.

Cop in the Hood
Cop in the Hood

Author: Peter Moskos

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-08-03

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1400832268

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When Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos left the classroom to become a cop in Baltimore's Eastern District, he was thrust deep into police culture and the ways of the street--the nerve-rattling patrols, the thriving drug corners, and a world of poverty and violence that outsiders never see. In Cop in the Hood, Moskos reveals the truths he learned on the midnight shift. Through Moskos's eyes, we see police academy graduates unprepared for the realities of the street, success measured by number of arrests, and the ultimate failure of the war on drugs. In addition to telling an explosive insider's story of what it is really like to be a police officer, he makes a passionate argument for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence--and let cops once again protect and serve. In a new afterword, Moskos describes the many benefits of foot patrol--or, as he calls it, "policing green."

We Own This City
We Own This City

Author: Justin Fenton

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2022-03-15

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0593133684

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NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • The astonishing true story of “one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation” (The New York Times), from the Pulitzer Prize–nominated reporter who exposed a gang of criminal cops and their yearslong plunder of an American city NOW AN HBO SERIES FROM THE WIRE CREATOR DAVID SIMON AND GEORGE PELECANOS “A work of journalism that not only chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt police unit but can stand as the inevitable coda to the half-century of disaster that is the American drug war.”—David Simon Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging, and Baltimore will reach its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people. Facing pressure from the mayor’s office—as well as a federal investigation of the department over Gray’s death—Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street. But behind these new efforts, a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scale was unfolding within the police department. Entrusted with fixing the city’s drug and gun crisis, Jenkins chose to exploit it instead. With other members of the empowered Gun Trace Task Force, Jenkins stole from Baltimore’s citizens—skimming from drug busts, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes, and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Their brazen crime spree would go unchecked for years. The results were countless wrongful convictions, the death of an innocent civilian, and the mysterious death of one cop who was shot in the head, killed just a day before he was scheduled to testify against the unit. In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal. The result is an astounding, riveting feat of reportage about a rogue police unit, the city they held hostage, and the ongoing struggle between American law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve.

Convicting the Innocent
Convicting the Innocent

Author: Brandon L. Garrett

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-08-04

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0674060989

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On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.

Don't Shoot
Don't Shoot

Author: David M. Kennedy

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2011-11-07

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1408828898

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The remarkable story of David Kennedy's crusade to combat America's plague of gang- and drug-related violence - with methods that have been astonishingly effective across the country. 'If you want to read a book on urban gangs and find out why they exist and why they kill each other, read this ... this is a sociology book, but it's like immersing yourself in The Wire ... When Kennedy says something, you believe him' Scotsman Gang- and drug-related inner-city violence, with its attendant epidemic of incarceration, is the defining crime problem in our country. In some neighborhoods in America, one out of every two hundred young black men is shot to death every year, and few initiatives of government and law enforcement have made much difference. But when David Kennedy, a self-taught and then-unknown criminologist, engineered the "Boston Miracle" in the mid-1990s, he pointed the way toward what few had imagined: a solution. Don't Shoot tells the story of Kennedy's long journey. Riding with beat cops, hanging with gang members, and stoop-sitting with grandmothers, Kennedy found that all parties misunderstood each other, caught in a spiral of racialized anger and distrust. He envisioned an approach in which everyone-gang members, cops, and community members-comes together in what is essentially a huge intervention. Offenders are told that the violence must stop, that even the cops want them to stay alive and out of prison, and that even their families support swift law enforcement if the violence continues. In city after city, the same miracle has followed: violence plummets, drug markets dry up, and the relationship between the police and the community is reset. This is a landmark book, chronicling a paradigm shift in how we address one of America's most shameful social problems. A riveting, page-turning read, it combines the street vérité of The Wire, the social science of Gang Leader for a Day, and the moral urgency and personal journey of Fist Stick Knife Gun. But unlike anybody else, Kennedy shows that there could be an end in sight.

Law Street
Law Street

Author: Wim J.M. Touw

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2011-06-14

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1462008755

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The American legal system is far from perfect. High standards of fairness and equal justice for all are lacking, and conflicts of interest are an integral part of the systems practitioners. In Law Street, author Wim J.M. Touw discusses the ills of the American legal system and investigates the roots of its dysfunction. In his analysis Touw argues that American lawyers have lost their moral and ethical moorings; he provides a unique perspective of how American lawyers have manipulated the British common law system for their own financial benefit or to advance their careers. He compares the legal system of the United States with systems in the worlds foremost democracies to illustrate how American jurisprudence has strayed from its mission. Finally, he examines the criminal law system that puts innocent people in jail and explains in detail how the tort system, the contingency fee, and the loser pays laws have turned the once noble profession of lawyering into a profitable, unregulated business corrupting the legal process. Touw argues that what is good for Wall Street is good for Law Street and explains why American bar associations do not provide proper oversight. With thorough explanations and examples, Law Street tells a story about serious flaws in the American legal system and provides a wake-up call for Americas dysfunctional and often corrupt legal system.