An "admirable, courageous, and meticulously fair and honest book” (New York Times Book Review) in which “one of our most important and perceptive writers on race" (The Washington Post) takes on a highly complex issue in a way that no one has before. "This book should be a standard for all law students."—Boston Globe In this groundbreaking, powerfully reasoned, lucid work that is certain to provoke controversy, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy takes on a highly complex issue in a way that no one has before. Kennedy uncovers the long-standing failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals, probing allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments, but he also engages the debate over the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection. He analyzes the responses of the legal system to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice have rendered trials unfair, and examines the idea that, under certain circumstances, members of one race are statistically more likely to be involved in crime than members of another.
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.
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.
In this book, Mary Bosworth and Jeanne Flavin bring together twelve original essays by prominent scholars to examine not only the discrimination that is evident, but also the structural and cultural forces that have influenced and continue to perpetuate the current situation. Contributors point to four major factors that have impacted public sentiment and criminal justice policy: colonialism, slavery, immigration, and globalization. In doing so they reveal how practices of punishment not only need particular ideas about race to exist, but they also legitimate them.
Researchers have long noted that rates of reported crime and punishment are higher for some ethnic and racial groups in the U.S. than for others. Comparatively high rates of crime have been reported for white ethnic Americans during the past and some groups of racial minorities today. These observations have prompted much public debate and acrimony, but surprisingly little research. Contributors include Thomas A. Regulus; Joan McCord; M. Craig Brown and Barbara D. Warner; Eric Monkkonen; E. M. Beck and Stewart E. Tolnay; Martha A. Myers; Gary LaFree; Robert D. Crutchfield; Dorothy Lockwood, Anne E. Pottieger, and James A. Inciardi; William Chambliss; Coramae Richey Mann; Theodore G. Chiricos and Charles Crawford; Zoann Snyder Joy; Roland Chilton, Raymond Teske, and Harald Arnold; Pamela Irving Jackson; and Darnell F. Hawkins
Criminal justice practices such as policing and imprisonment are integral to the creation of racialized experiences in U.S. society. Race as an important category of difference, however, did not arise here with the criminal justice system but rather with the advent of European colonial conquest and the birth of the U.S. racial state. Race and Crime examines how race became a defining feature of the system and why mass incarceration emerged as a new racial management strategy. This book reviews the history of race and criminology and explores the impact of racist colonial legacies on the organization of criminal justice institutions. Using a macrostructural perspective, students will learn to contextualize issues of race, crime, and criminal justice. Topics include: How “coloniality” explains the practices that reproduce racial hierarchies The birth of social science and social programs from the legacies of racial science The defining role of geography and geographical conquest in the continuation of mass incarceration The emergence of the logics of crime control, the War on Drugs, the redefinition of federal law enforcement, and the reallocation of state resources toward prison building, policing, and incarceration How policing, courts, and punishment perpetuate the colonial order through their institutional structures and policies Race and Crime will help students understand how everyday practices of punishment and surveillance are employed in and through the police, courts, and community to create and shape the geographies of injustice in the United States today.
"In recent years, there has been renewed attention to problems pervading the criminal justice system in the United States. The prison population has grown exponentially since 1970 due to the war on drugs, minimum sentencing laws, and other crime control measures instituted in the 1980s and 1990s. The U.S. now incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world, over 2 million in 2016. African Americans constitute nearly half of those prisoners. This volume contributes to current debates on the criminal justice system by filling a crucial gap in scholarship with ten original essays by both established and up-and-coming historians on the topics of crime and state punishment in the Jim Crow era. In particular, these essays address the relationship between the modern state, crime control, and white supremacy. Essays in the collection show that the development of the modern penal system was part and parcel of Jim Crow, and so are the racial injustices endemic to it. The essays that Wood and Ring have curated enrich our understanding of how the penal system impacted the New South; demonstrate the centrality of the carceral regime in producing racial, gender, and legal categories in the New South; provide insightful analysis of intellectual work around the U.S. prison regime; use the penal system to make a case for Southern exceptionalism; and extend conversations about the penal system's restriction of African American political and civil rights. As a whole, the volume provides a nuanced portrait of the dynamic between state power and white supremacy in the South beyond a story of top-down social control"--
In a post-Macpherson, post-9/11 world, criminal justice agencies are adapting their responses to criminal behaviour across diverse ethnic groups. Race, Crime and Resistance draws on contemporary theory and a range of case studies to consider racial inequalities within the criminal justice system and related organisations. Exploring the mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion, the book goes beyond superficial assumptions to examine the ensuing processes of mobilisation and resistance across disadvantaged groups. Empirically grounded and theoretically informed, the book critically unpicks the persisting concepts of race and ethnicity in the perceptions and representations of crime. Articulate and sensitive, the book clarifies complex ideas through the use of chapter summaries, case studies, further reading and study questions. It is essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, race and ethnicity, and sociology.