Criminal Justice: Books & eBooks

The Punitive Turn in American Life offers a political and cultural history of the ways in which punishment and surveillance have moved to the center of American life and become imbued with militarized language and policies. Today, the connections between war-fighting and crime-fighting remained powerful, evident in campaigns against undocumented immigrants and the militarized police response to the nationwide uprisings after George Floyd's murder. From the racist system of mass incarceration and the militarization of criminal justice to gated communities, public schools patrolled by police, and armies of private security, Sherry chronicles the United States' slide into becoming a meaner, punishment-obsessed nation.

Research on women and policing is often fragmented; focusing on one particular country, or at most, comparing one or two countries across continents. This book aims to close the loop by examining policing within several countries on all five continents. Discussions include the sociology of gender, attitudes towards women in policing, best practice strategies for improvement, and issues faced by working mothers.

The death of Michael Brown at the hands of a white Ferguson police officer has uncovered an apparent legitimacy crisis at the heart of American policing. Some have claimed that de-policing may have led officers to become less proactive.How exactly has the policing of gangs and violence changed in the post-Ferguson era? This book explores this question, drawing on participant observation field notes and in-depth interviews with officers, offenders, practitioners, and community members in a Southern American state.

Police Visibility presents empirically grounded research into how police officers experience and manage the information politics of surveillance and visibility generated by the introduction of body cameras into their daily routines and the increasingly common experience of being recorded by civilian bystanders. Newell elucidates how these activities intersect with privacy, free speech, and access to information law and argues that rather than being emancipatory systems of police oversight, body-worn cameras are an evolution in police image work and state surveillance expansion. Throughout the book, he catalogs how surveillance generates information, the control of which creates and facilitates power, and potentially fuels state domination. The antidote, he argues, is a robust information law and policy that puts the power to monitor and regulate the police squarely in the hands of citizens.  

This work offers a thorough introduction to the field of criminal justice, including types of crime; policing; courts and sentencing; landmark legal decisions; and local, state, and federal corrections systems--and the key topics and issues within each of these important areas. It provides a complete overview and understanding of the many terms, jobs, procedures, and issues surrounding this growing field of study. Another major focus of the work is to examine ethical questions related to policing and courts, trial procedures, law enforcement and corrections agencies and responsibilities, and the complexion of criminal justice in the United States in the 21st century. Finally, this title emphasizes coverage of such politically charged topics as drug trafficking and substance abuse, immigration, environmental protection, government surveillance and civil rights, deadly force, mass incarceration, police militarization, organized crime, gangs, wrongful convictions, racial disparities in sentencing, and privatization of the U.S. prison system.

2020-06-30