Unwarranted

Unwarranted

Author: Barry Friedman

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2017-02-21

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0374710902

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“At a time when policing in America is at a crossroads, Barry Friedman provides much-needed insight, analysis, and direction in his thoughtful new book. Unwarranted illuminates many of the often ignored issues surrounding how we police in America and highlights why reform is so urgently needed. This revealing book comes at a critically important time and has much to offer all who care about fair treatment and public safety.” —Bryan Stevenson, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption In June 2013, documents leaked by Edward Snowden sparked widespread debate about secret government surveillance of Americans. Just over a year later, the shooting of Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, set off protests and triggered concern about militarization of law enforcement and discriminatory policing. In Unwarranted, Barry Friedman argues that these two seemingly disparate events are connected—and that the problem is not so much the policing agencies as it is the rest of us. We allow these agencies to operate in secret and to decide how to police us, rather than calling the shots ourselves. And the courts, which we depended upon to supervise policing, have let us down entirely. Unwarranted tells the stories of ordinary people whose lives were torn apart by policing—by the methods of cops on the beat and those of the FBI and NSA. Driven by technology, policing has changed dramatically. Once, cops sought out bad guys; today, increasingly militarized forces conduct wide surveillance of all of us. Friedman captures the eerie new environment in which CCTV, location tracking, and predictive policing have made suspects of us all, while proliferating SWAT teams and increased use of force have put everyone’s property and lives at risk. Policing falls particularly heavily on minority communities and the poor, but as Unwarranted makes clear, the effects of policing are much broader still. Policing is everyone’s problem. Police play an indispensable role in our society. But our failure to supervise them has left us all in peril. Unwarranted is a critical, timely intervention into debates about policing, a call to take responsibility for governing those who govern us.


Magistrates, Police and People

Magistrates, Police and People

Author: Donald Fyson

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0802092233

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Based on extensive research in judicial and official sources, Donald Fyson offers the first comprehensive study of the everyday workings of criminal justice in Quebec and Lower Canada. Focusing on the justices of the peace and their police, Fyson examines both the criminal justice system itself, and the system in operation as experienced by those who participated in it. Fyson contends that, although the system was fundamentally biased, its flexibility provided a source of power for ordinary citizens. At the same time, the system offered the colonial state and its elites a powerful, though often faulty, means of imposing their will on Quebec society. This study will challenge many received historical interpretations, providing new insight into criminal justice in early Quebec.


Tried and Convicted

Tried and Convicted

Author: Michael D. Cicchini

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2012-07-12

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1442217197

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When an individual is accused of a crime he is provided, at least in theory, with numerous constitutional rights throughout the legal process. These constitutional rights, however, are soft and flexible, and are subject to a tremendous amount of manipulation by police, prosecutors, and judges. The result is that these government agents are easily able to bypass, and in fact destroy, our constitutional protections. This abuse of our fundamental rights is extremely dangerous. Far from being mere technicalities, constitutional rights benefit all citizens, not just the factually guilty, in ways that go unappreciated by most of us. In today’s hyper-vigilant, tough-on-crime climate, many good people from all walks of life find themselves charged with serious crimes for behaving in ways that most of us would be shocked to learn are criminal. For these reasons, it is in all of our interests to ensure strong constitutional safeguards for everyone. Tried and Convicted explains several individual constitutional rights that are intended to protect us from the vagaries of the criminal justice system, and gives detailed examples of how government agents routinely circumvent those rights. It also exposes the underlying problems that enable government agents to circumvent the constitution, and concludes by offering potential solutions to these problems. Using real life examples throughout, Cicchini provides a wake-up call for all of us.


Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781590318737

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.


Privilege and Punishment

Privilege and Punishment

Author: Matthew Clair

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-06-21

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 069123387X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How the attorney-client relationship favors the privileged in criminal court—and denies justice to the poor and to working-class people of color The number of Americans arrested, brought to court, and incarcerated has skyrocketed in recent decades. Criminal defendants come from all races and economic walks of life, but they experience punishment in vastly different ways. Privilege and Punishment examines how racial and class inequalities are embedded in the attorney-client relationship, providing a devastating portrait of inequality and injustice within and beyond the criminal courts. Matthew Clair conducted extensive fieldwork in the Boston court system, attending criminal hearings and interviewing defendants, lawyers, judges, police officers, and probation officers. In this eye-opening book, he uncovers how privilege and inequality play out in criminal court interactions. When disadvantaged defendants try to learn their legal rights and advocate for themselves, lawyers and judges often silence, coerce, and punish them. Privileged defendants, who are more likely to trust their defense attorneys, delegate authority to their lawyers, defer to judges, and are rewarded for their compliance. Clair shows how attempts to exercise legal rights often backfire on the poor and on working-class people of color, and how effective legal representation alone is no guarantee of justice. Superbly written and powerfully argued, Privilege and Punishment draws needed attention to the injustices that are perpetuated by the attorney-client relationship in today’s criminal courts, and describes the reforms needed to correct them.


Chokehold

Chokehold

Author: Paul Butler

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1620974983

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Finalist for the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency’s Media for a Just Society Awards Nominated for the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction) A 2017 Washington Post Notable Book A Kirkus Best Book of 2017 “Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men.” —The Washington Post “The most readable and provocative account of the consequences of the war on drugs since Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow . . . .” —The New York Times Book Review “Powerful . . . deeply informed from a legal standpoint and yet in some ways still highly personal” —The Times Literary Supplement (London) With the eloquence of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the persuasive research of Michelle Alexander, a former federal prosecutor explains how the system really works, and how to disrupt it Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread—all with the support of judges and politicians. In his no-holds-barred style, Butler, whose scholarship has been featured on 60 Minutes, uses new data to demonstrate that white men commit the majority of violent crime in the United States. For example, a white woman is ten times more likely to be raped by a white male acquaintance than be the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a black man. Butler also frankly discusses the problem of black on black violence and how to keep communities safer—without relying as much on police. Chokehold powerfully demonstrates why current efforts to reform law enforcement will not create lasting change. Butler's controversial recommendations about how to crash the system, and when it's better for a black man to plead guilty—even if he's innocent—are sure to be game-changers in the national debate about policing, criminal justice, and race relations.


The Bail Book

The Bail Book

Author: Shima Baradaran Baughman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1107131367

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.