"This book provides readers with information covering all aspects of the criminal justice system in the state of Georgia. Sections include: crime in Georgia; substantive and procedural law; Georgia law enforcement, court systems, and corrections; juvenile justice in Georgia; Georgia's response to crime victims; and criminal justice education in Georgia. This text is appropriate for introductory courses in criminal justice, criminology, law enforcement, courts, corrections, and juvenile justice, as well as upper level courses in these same areas"--
Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in Georgia’s Criminal Justice System is the most comprehensive study of the criminal justice system of a slave state to date. McNair traces the evolution of Georgia’s legal culture by examining its use of slave codes and slave patrols, as well as presenting data on crimes prosecuted, trial procedures and practices, conviction rates, the appellate process, and punishment. Based on more than four hundred capital cases, McNair’s study deploys both narrative and quantitative analysis to get at both the theory and the reality of the criminal procedure for slaves in the century leading up to the Civil War. He shows how whites moved from the utopian innocence of the colony’s original Trustees, who envisioned a society free of slavery and the depravity it inculcated in masters, to one where slaveholders became the enforcers of laws and informal rules, the severity of which was limited only by the increasing economic value of their slaves as property. The slaves themselves, regarded under the law both as moveable property and--for the purposes of punishment--as moral agents, had, inevitably, a radically different view of Georgia’s slave criminal justice system. Although the rules and procedures were largely the same for both races, the state charged and convicted blacks more frequently and punished them more severely than whites for the same crimes. Courts were also more punitive in their judgment and punishment of black defendants when their victims were white, a pattern of disparate treatment based on race that persists to this day. Informal systems of control in urban households and on rural plantations and farms complemented the formal system and enhanced the power of slaveowners. Criminal Injustice shows how the prerogatives of slavery and white racial domination trumped any hope for legal justice for blacks.
The Criminal Justice System in Georgia, by Sandra S. Stone, Ph.D. of the State University of West Georgia, is your one-stop resource for adding state-specific content to your criminal justice course. The book provides a brief history of the major influences on the criminal justice system in Georgia. Also included are detailed descriptions of the structure and functions of its four major components: law enforcement, courts, corrections and juvenile justice.
The Criminal Justice system is broken: both the ideal of justice and that of rehabilitation have been lost, but there is hope. Everyone can agree on that. Right now, criminal justice costs too much, it punishes those with drug problems and mental illness who commit crimes, but doesn't offer them the help that they need, and often, it merely slaps the wrist of violent offenders who go on to offend over and over again. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and the public can all agree that "the system" isn't working. Georgia Criminal Defense Attorney, Jason W. Swindle, Sr. has stepped up in The Verdict Is In: Fix the Criminal Justice System to offer innovative new ideas and a fresh vision for fixing the broken criminal justice system in an effort to get this important national conversation started. The Verdict Is In pulls back the curtain of the legal system itself for the uninitiated to see "how it really works in real life."
