Sentencing Inequality and Incarceration culture
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing by
This book explores s a wide diversity of opinions on the impact of mandatory minimum sentencing on crime, including the three strikes law. It discusses the inherent fairness of mandatory sentences: Are they discriminatory? Do they usurp judicial power and result in overcrowd prisons? Or do they protect children and deter repeat offenders? Readers will also look at alternatives to mandatory minimums, such as drug court supervision or extended treatment options.
Call Number: KF9685 .M335 2010ISBN: 9780737747768Publication Date: 2010-04-26
Ordinary Injustice by
From an award-winning lawyer-reporter, a radically new explanation for America's failing justice system The stories of grave injustice are all too familiar: the lawyer who sleeps through a trial, the false confessions, the convictions of the innocent. Less visible is the chronic injustice meted out daily by a profoundly defective system.In a sweeping investigation that moves from small-town Georgia to upstate New York, from Chicago to Mississippi, Amy Bach reveals a judicial process so deeply compromised that it constitutes a menace to the people it is designed to serve. Here is the public defender who pleads most of his clients guilty; the judge who sets outrageous bail for negligible crimes; the prosecutor who brings almost no cases to trial; the court that works together to achieve a wrong verdict. Going beyond the usualexplanations of bad apples and meager funding, Bach identifies an assembly-line approach that rewards shoddiness and sacrifices defendants to keep the court calendar moving, and she exposes the collusion between judge, prosecutor, and defense that puts the interests of the system above the obligation to the people. It is time, Bach argues, to institute a new method of checks and balances that will make injustice visible-the first and necessary step to any reform.Full of gripping human stories, sharp analyses, and a crusader's sense of urgency, Ordinary Injustice is a major reassessment of the health of the nation's courtrooms.
Call Number: 9780805074475ISBN: 9780805074475Publication Date: 2009-09-01
Unusually Cruel by
But the extent of American cruelty goes beyond simply locking people up. At every stage of the criminal justice process - plea bargaining, sentencing, prison conditions, rehabilitation, parole, and societal reentry - the U.S. is harsher and more punitive than other comparable countries. In Unusually Cruel, Marc Morjé Howard argues that the American criminal justice and prison systems are exceptional - in a truly shameful way.
ISBN: 9780190659349Publication Date: 2017-07-17
Bail Reform
Not a Crime to Be Poor by
In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn't just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city's poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors' prisons of the twenty-first century.
Call Number: eBook HV95ISBN: 9781620975480Publication Date: 2019-07-02
The Bail Book by
Mass incarceration is one of the greatest social problems facing the United States today. America incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country and is one of only two countries that requires arrested individuals to pay bail to be released from jail while awaiting trial. After arrest, the bail decision is the single most important cause of mass incarceration, yet this decision is often neglected since it is made in less than two minutes. Shima Baradaran Baughman draws on constitutional rights and new empirical research to show how we can reform bail in America. Tracing the history of bail, she demonstrates how it has become an oppressive tool of the courts that disadvantages minority and poor defendants and shows how we can reform bail to alleviate mass incarceration. By implementing these reforms, she argues, we can restore constitutional rights and release more defendants, while lowering crime rates.
ISBN: 9781107579156Publication Date: 2018-09-20
13th: Documentary directed by Ava Duvernay
TED Talk: What if we ended the injustice of bail?
Articles and other online resources
Video: Vox Journalism Piece on Mandatory Minimums
- How Mandatory Minimums helped drive Mass IncarcerationVox journalism explores how mandatory minimum sentences were supposed to help crack down on drug crime in the 80s. But there have been huge consequences and failures. The use of mandatory minimums continues to have harmful and long-lasting consequences that far exceed fair punishment for accused crime offenses.