MOST RECENT REVIEWS
 The Collapse of American Criminal JusticeAuthor: William J. Stuntz Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. 413p. Reviewer: Samuel W. Buell | March 2012 Harvard Law Professor William Stuntz's posthumously published The Collapse of American Justice is a book, says our reviewer, Sam Buell, that “all of us in the field will dog-ear and cite for the rest of our careers.” The summation of a brilliant, if all too short, career, Collapse is “provocative, daring, and sweeping," though at times, Buell says, its reach is longer than the evidence would support. Read On » |
What role should mercy play in our system of criminal justice? Linda Ross Meyer, defying the conventional view, seeks to make mercy not “the madwoman in the attic of law,” but "the lady of the house.” The account that emerges, says our reviewer, Carol Steiker, is "beautiful, moving, and at times even lyrical," but it "may nonetheless fail to convince the mercy skeptic, because it sometimes slights the things that would be lost if justice, rather than mercy, became supererogatory or dispensable." Read On » |
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness has received widespread attention and media coverage. Johnna Christian says that Alexander conveys a disturbing message that forces the reader to confront issues of race and racism that we may have thought were long since left behind. Read On » |
 The City That Became SafeAuthor: Franklin E. Zimring New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 257p. Reviewer: Richard Allinson | March 2012 “Professor Franklin Zimring’s new study of New York City’s remarkable drop in crime since the 1990s may be the most upbeat book ever written by an American criminologist,” says our reviewer Richard Allinson. The City That Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control is, according to Allinson, a “bold and provocative” book. Read On » |
The Reasoning Criminologist: Essays in Honour of Ronald V. Clarke The Reasoning Criminologist: Essays in Honour of Ronald V. Clarke, is a festschrift recognizing the work of the principal originator of the rational choice theory of crime, and its policy derivation situational crime prevention. Contrary to some works in the festschrift genre, reviewer Jackson Toby points out that this book has true intellectual coherence. Read On » |
Crime in the Art and Antiquities World: Illegal trafficking in Cultural Property Transnational crime and global black and grey markets are receiving ever increasing attention. Crime in the Art and Antiquities World: Illegal Trafficking in Cultural Property focuses on one particular form of such crimes – namely the trafficking in cultural artifacts. The book will be of particular interest to scholars investigating the illicit nature of market systems, according to reviewer Gisela Bichler. Read On » |
Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in Rural America Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in Rural America by William Garriott is an examination of the U.S. war on drugs and its context of “narcopolitics,” in microcosm. As the reviewer Rashi Shukla points out, few areas of the country are immune from the impacts of narcopolitics and its ripple effects on the administration of justice. Read On » |
A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America Ernest Drucker, in A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America takes a somewhat different perspective on America’s war on drugs. Using New York State’s Rockefeller drug laws as a case in point, Drucker examines the effects of the mandatory punishments prescribed on prison populations. Reviewer Shenique Thomas lauds the author’s epidemiological approach as significantly contribut[ing] to the ongoing effort to frame mass incarceration as a public health issue.” Read On » |
Sentencing and the Legitimacy of Trial Justice To what extent does the legitimacy of a given system of criminal justice depends on individual decisions at sentencing? In his book, Sentencing and the Legitimacy of Trial Practice, Ralph Henham says that sentencing is the crucial "point in the trial where the aims of punishment are given concrete and public expression.” Our reviewer, Wes Porter, offers an admiring assessment of this "wonderfully eye-opening" book. Read On » |
Juveniles at Risk In Juveniles at Risk, Chris Slobogin and Mark Fondacaro propose scrapping the existing punishment- and treatment-focused apparatus of juvenile justice and replacing it with an “individual prevention” approach, which would focus instead on reducing future recidivism. Our reviewer, Laura Cohen, finds the work approach intriguing and provocative, but she is ultimately left “troubled” by what she sees as the “abandonment of due process” that lies at the heart of their approach. Read On » |
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