Books Received
January 2019

Listed below are books received for review over the last two months. Entries include publishing information as well as a description of the book. Unless otherwise stated, the book description is taken from the publisher’s website or the book jacket. Selected titles from this list will be chosen for a full review in forthcoming issues of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books. Previous books received are available from the links below.

Addicted to Incarceration: Corrections Policy and the Politics of Misinformation in the United States, by Travis C. Pratt. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2018.

“In Addicted to Incarceration, author Travis C. Pratt uses an evidence-based approach to explore the consequences of what he terms America’s “addiction to incarceration.” Highlighting the scope of the issue, the nature of the political discussions surrounding criminal justice policy in general and corrections policy in particular, and the complex social cost of incarceration, this book takes an incisive look at the approach to corrections in the United States.

The Second Edition demonstrates that the United States’ addiction to incarceration has been fueled by American citizens’ opinions about crime and punishment, the use of incarceration as a means of social control, and perhaps most important, by policies legitimized by faulty information. Analyzing crime policies as they relate to crime rates and society’s ability to both lower the crime rate and address the role of incarceration in preventing future crime, this book shows students how ineffective the rush to incarcerate has been in the past and offers recommendations and insights to navigate this significant problem going forward.” From Publisher’s Website.

American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts, by Chris McGreal. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2018. 336p.

“The opioid epidemic has been described as “one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine.” But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world’s opioid painkillers.

Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs, but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.

The starting point for McGreal’s deeply reported investigation is the miners promised that opioid painkillers would restore their wrecked bodies, but who became targets of “drug dealers in white coats.”

A few heroic physicians warned of impending disaster. But American Overdose exposes the powerful forces they were up against, including the pharmaceutical industry’s coopting of the Food and Drug Administration and Congress in the drive to push painkillers–resulting in the resurgence of heroin cartels in the American heartland. McGreal tells the story, in terms both broad and intimate, of people hit by a catastrophe they never saw coming. Years in the making, its ruinous consequences will stretch years into the future.” From Publisher’s Website.

Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States, by Tony Platt. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018. 366p.

“Beyond These Walls is an ambitious and far-ranging exploration that tracks the legacy of crime and imprisonment in the United States, from the historical roots of the American criminal justice system to our modern state of over-incarceration, and offers a bold vision for a new future. Author Tony Platt, a recognized authority in the field of criminal justice, challenges the way we think about how and why millions of people are tracked, arrested, incarcerated, catalogued, and regulated in the United States.

Beyond These Walls traces the disturbing history of punishment and social control, revealing how the criminal justice system attempts to enforce and justify inequalities associated with class, race, gender, and sexuality. Prisons and police departments are central to this process, but other institutions – from immigration and welfare to educational and public health agencies – are equally complicit.

Platt argues that international and national politics shape perceptions of danger and determine the policies of local criminal justice agencies, while private policing and global corporations are deeply and undemocratically involved in the business of homeland security.

Finally, Beyond These Walls demonstrates why efforts to reform criminal justice agencies have often expanded rather than contracted the net of social control. Drawing upon a long tradition of popular resistance, Platt concludes with a strategic vision of what it will take to achieve justice for all in this era of authoritarian disorder.” From Publisher’s Website.

Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking and the Politics of Freedom, by Elizabeth Bernstein. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. 316p.

“Brokered Subjects digs deep into the accepted narratives of sex trafficking to reveal the troubling assumptions that have shaped both right- and left-wing agendas around sexual violence. Drawing on years of in-depth fieldwork, Elizabeth Bernstein sheds light not only on trafficking but also on the broader structures that meld the ostensible pursuit of liberation with contemporary techniques of power. Rather than any meaningful commitment to the safety of sex workers, Bernstein argues, what lies behind our current vision of trafficking victims is a transnational mix of putatively humanitarian militaristic interventions, feel-good capitalism, and what she terms carceral feminism: a feminism compatible with police batons.” From Publisher’s Website.

Climate Change Criminology, by Rob White. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2019. 176p.

“Leading green criminologist Rob White asks what can be learned from the problem-solving focus of crime prevention to help face the challenges of climate change in this call to arms for criminology and criminologists. Industries such as energy, food and tourism and the systematic destruction of the environment through global capitalism are scrutinized for their contribution to global warming. Ideas of ‘state-corporate crime’ and ’ecocide’ are introduced and explored in this concise overview of criminological writings on climate change. This sound and robust application of theoretical concepts to this ‘new’ area also includes commentary on topical issues such as the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate agreement.” From Publisher’s Website.

Criminal Juries in the 21st Century: Contemporary Issues, Psychological Science, and the Law, edited by Cynthia J. Najdowski and Margaret C. Stevenson. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 352p.

“The jury is often hailed as one of the most important symbols of American democracy. Yet much has changed since the Sixth Amendment in 1791 first guaranteed all citizens the right to a jury trial in criminal prosecutions. Experts now have a much more nuanced understanding of the psychological implications of being a juror, and advances in technology and neuroscience make the work of rendering a decision in a criminal trial more complicated than ever before.

Criminal Juries in the 21st Century explores the increasingly wide gulf between criminal trial law, procedures, and policy, and what scientific findings have revealed about the human experience of serving as a juror. Readers will contemplate myriad legal issues that arise when jurors decide criminal cases as well as cutting-edge psychological research that can be used to not only understand the performance and experience of the contemporary criminal jury, but also to improve it. Chapter authors grapple with a number of key issues at the intersection of psychology and law, guiding readers to consider everything from the factors that influence the initial selection of the jury to how jurors cope with and reflect on their service after the trial ends. Together the chapters provide a unique view of criminal juries with the goal of increasing awareness of a broad range of current issues in great need of theoretical, empirical, and legal attention. Criminal Juries in the 21st Century will identify how social science research can inform law and policy relevant to improving justice within the jury system, and is an essential resource for those who directly study jury decision making as well as social scientists generally, attorneys, judges, students, and even future jurors.” From Publisher’s Website.

Dark Commerce: How the New Illicit Economy is Threatening Our Future, by Louise I. Shelley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 376p.

“Though mankind has traded tangible goods for millennia, recent technology has changed the fundamentals of trade, in both legitimate and illegal economies. In the past three decades, the most advanced forms of illicit trade have broken with all historical precedents and, as Dark Commerce shows, now operate as if on steroids, tied to computers and social media. In this new world of illicit commerce, which benefits states and diverse participants, trade is impersonal and anonymized, and vast profits are made in short periods with limited accountability to sellers, intermediaries, and purchasers.

Louise Shelley examines how new technology, communications, and globalization fuel the exponential growth of dangerous forms of illegal trade—the markets for narcotics and child pornography online, the escalation of sex trafficking through web advertisements, and the sale of endangered species for which revenues total in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The illicit economy exacerbates many of the world’s destabilizing phenomena: the perpetuation of conflicts, the proliferation of arms and weapons of mass destruction, and environmental degradation and extinction. Shelley explores illicit trade in tangible goods—drugs, human beings, arms, wildlife and timber, fish, antiquities, and ubiquitous counterfeits—and contrasts this with the damaging trade in cyberspace, where intangible commodities cost consumers and organizations billions as they lose identities, bank accounts, access to computer data, and intellectual property.

Demonstrating that illicit trade is a business the global community cannot afford to ignore and must work together to address, Dark Commerce considers diverse ways of responding to this increasing challenge.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Digital Street, by Jeffrey Lane. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 258p.

“The social impact of the Internet and new digital technologies is irrefutable, especially for adolescents. It is simply no longer possible to understand coming of age in the inner city without an appreciation of both the face-to-face and online relations that structure neighborhood life. The Digital Street is the first in-depth exploration of the ways digital social media is changing life in poor, minority communities. Based on five years of ethnographic observations, dozens of interviews, and analyses of social media content, Jeffrey Lane illustrates a new street world where social media transforms how young people experience neighborhood violence and poverty. Lane examines the online migration of the code of the street and its consequences, from encounters between boys and girls, to the relationship between the street and parents, schools, outreach workers, and the police. He reveals not only the risks youths face through surveillance or worsening violence, but also the opportunities digital social media use provides for mitigating danger. Granting access to this new world, Jeffrey Lane shows how age-old problems of living through poverty, especially gangs and violence, are experienced differently for the first generation of teenagers to come of age on the digital street.” From Publisher’s Website.

Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City, Clarence Taylor. New York: New York University Press, 2018. 336p.

“The 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri was the catalyst for a national conversation about race, policing, and injustice. The subsequent killings of other black (often unarmed) citizens led to a surge of media coverage which in turn led to protests and clashes between the police and local residents that were reminiscent of the unrest of the 1960s.

Fight the Power examines the explosive history of police brutality in New York City and the black community’s long struggle to resist it. Taylor brings this story to life by exploring the institutions and the people that waged campaigns to end the mistreatment of people of color at the hands of the police, including the black church, the black press, black communists and civil rights activists. Ranging from the 1940s to the mayoralty of Bill de Blasio, Taylor describes the significant strides made in curbing police power in New York City, describing the grassroots street campaigns as well as the accomplishments achieved in the political arena and in the city’s courtrooms.

Taylor challenges the belief that police reform is born out of improved relations between communities and the authorities arguing that the only real solution is radically reducing the police domination of New York’s black citizens.” From Publisher’s Website.

From Asylum to Prison: Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Mass Incarceration after 1945, by Anne E. Parsons. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 240p.

“To many, asylums are a relic of a bygone era. State governments took steps between 1950 and 1990 to minimize the involuntary confinement of people in psychiatric hospitals, and many mental health facilities closed down. Yet, as Anne Parsons reveals, the asylum did not die during deinstitutionalization. Instead, it returned in the modern prison industrial complex as the government shifted to a more punitive, institutional approach to social deviance. Focusing on Pennsylvania, the state that ran one of the largest mental health systems in the country, Parsons tracks how the lack of community-based services, a fear-based politics around mental illness, and the economics of institutions meant that closing mental hospitals fed a cycle of incarceration that became an epidemic.

This groundbreaking book recasts the political narrative of the late twentieth century, as Parsons charts how the politics of mass incarceration shaped the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals and mental health policy making. In doing so, she offers critical insight into how the prison took the place of the asylum in crucial ways, shaping the rise of the prison industrial complex.” From Publisher’s Website.

Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin, by Lee Server. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018. 544p.

“A singular figure in the annals of the American underworld, Johnny Rosselli’s career flourished for an extraordinary fifty years, from the bloody years of bootlegging in the Roaring Twenties–the last protégé of Al Capone—to the modern era of organized crime as a dominant corporate power. The Mob’s “Man in Hollywood,” Johnny Rosselli introduced big-time crime to the movie industry, corrupting unions and robbing moguls in the biggest extortion plot in history. A man of great allure and glamour, Rosselli befriended many of the biggest names in the movie capital—including studio boss Harry Cohn, helping him to fund Columbia Pictures–and seduced some of its greatest female stars, including Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe. In a remarkable turn of events, Johnny himself would become a Hollywood filmmaker—producing two of the best film noirs of the 1940s.

Following years in federal prison, Rosselli began a new venture, overseeing the birth and heyday of Las Vegas. Working for new Chicago boss Sam Giancana, he became the gambling mecca’s behind-the-scenes boss, running the town from his suites and poolside tables at the Tropicana and Desert Inn, enjoying the Rat Pack nightlife with pals Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. In the 1960s, in the most unexpected chapter in an extraordinary life, Rosselli became the central figure in a bizarre plot involving the Kennedy White House, the CIA, and an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. Based upon years of research, written with compelling style and vivid detail, Handsome Johnny is the great telling of an amazing tale.” From Publisher’s Website.

Illicit Markets, Organized Crime, and Global Security, by Hanna Samir Kassab and Jonathon D. Rosen. Cham, SWIT: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 198p.

“This book explains the existence of illicit markets throughout human history and provides recommendations to governments. Organized criminal networks increased in strength after the enforcement of prohibition, eventually challenging the authority of the state and its institutions through corruption and violence. Criminal networks now organize under cyber-infrastructure, what we call the Deep or Dark Web. The authors analyze how illicit markets come together, issues of destabilization and international security, the effect of legitimate enterprises crowded out of developing countries, and ultimately, illicit markets’ cost to human life.” From Publisher’s Website.

Justice in Plain Sight: How a Small-Town Newspaper and its Unlikely Lawyer Opened America’s Courtrooms, by Dan Bernstein. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. 280p.

“Justice in Plain Sight is the story of a hometown newspaper in Riverside, California, that set out to do its job: tell readers about shocking crimes in their own backyard. But when judges slammed the courtroom door on the public, including the press, it became impossible to tell the whole story. Pinning its hopes on business lawyer Jim Ward, whom Press-Enterprise editor Tim Hays had come to know and trust, the newspaper took two cases to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s. Hays was convinced that the public—including the press—needed to have these rights and needed to bear witness to justice because healing in the aftermath of a horrible crime could not occur without community catharsis. The newspaper won both cases and established First Amendment rights that significantly broadened public access to the judicial system, including the right for the public to witness jury selection and preliminary hearings.

Justice in Plain Sight is a unique story that, for the first time, details two improbable journeys to the Supreme Court in which the stakes were as high as they could possibly be (and still are): the public’s trust in its own government.” From Publisher’s Website.

Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till, by Elliot J. Gorn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 392p.

“The world knows the story of young Emmett Till. In August 1955, the fourteen-year-old Chicago boy supposedly flirted with a white woman named Carolyn Bryant, who worked behind the counter of a country store, while visiting family in Mississippi. Three days later, his mangled body was recovered in the Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a cotton-gin fan. Till’s killers, Bryant’s husband and his half-brother, were eventually acquitted on technicalities by an all-white jury despite overwhelming evidence. It seemed another case of Southern justice.

Then details of what had happened to Till became public, which they did in part because Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted that his casket remain open during his funeral. The world saw the horror, and Till’s story gripped the country and sparked outrage. Black journalists drove down to Mississippi and risked their lives interviewing townsfolk, encouraging witnesses, spiriting those in danger out of the region, and above all keeping the news cycle turning. It continues to turn. In 2005, fifty years after the murder, the FBI reopened the case. New papers and testimony have come to light, and several participants, including Till’s mother, have published autobiographies. Using this new evidence and a broadened historical context, Elliott J. Gorn delves more fully than anyone has into how and why the story of Emmett Till still resonates, and always will. Till’s murder marked a turning point, Gorn shows, and yet also reveals how old patterns of thought and behavior endure, and why we must look hard at them.” From Publisher’s Website.

Lives in Transit: Violence and Intimacy on the Migrant Journey, by Wendy A. Vogt. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 272p.

“Lives in Transit chronicles the dangerous journeys of Central American migrants in transit through Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork in humanitarian aid shelters and other key sites, Wendy A. Vogt examines the multiple forms of violence that migrants experience as their bodies, labor, and lives become implicated in global and local economies that profit from their mobility as racialized and gendered others. She also reveals new forms of intimacy, solidarity, and activism that have emerged along transit routes over the past decade. Through the stories of migrants, shelter workers, and local residents, Vogt encourages us to reimagine transit as a site of both violence and precarity as well as social struggle and resistance.” From Publisher’s Website.

Lost Childhoods: Poverty, Trauma, and Violent Crime in the Post-Welfare Era, by Michaela Soyer. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 154p.

“Lost Childhoods focuses on the life-course histories of thirty young men serving time in the Pennsylvania adult prison system for crimes they committed when they were minors. The narratives of these young men, their friends, and relatives reveal the invisible yet deep-seated connection between the childhood traumas they suffered and the violent criminal behavior they committed during adolescence. By living through domestic violence, poverty, the crack epidemic, and other circumstances, these men were forced to grow up fast all while familial ties that should have sustained them were broken at each turn. The book goes on to connect large-scale social policy decisions and their effects on family dynamics and demonstrates the limits of punitive justice.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Meaning of Life: The Case for Abolishing Life Sentences, by Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis. New York: The New Press, 2018. 224p.

“Most Western democracies have few or no people serving life sentences, yet here in the United States more than 200,000 people are sentenced to such prison terms.

Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis of The Sentencing Project argue that there is no practical or moral justification for a sentence longer than twenty years. Harsher sentences have been shown to have little effect on crime rates, since people “age out” of crime—meaning that we’re spending a fortune on geriatric care for older prisoners who pose little threat to public safety. Extreme punishment for serious crime also has an inflationary effect on sentences across the spectrum, helping to account for severe mandatory minimums and other harsh punishments.

A thoughtful and stirring call to action, The Meaning of Life also features moving profiles of a half dozen people affected by life sentences, written by former “lifer” and award-winning writer Kerry Myers. The book will tie in to a campaign spearheaded by The Sentencing Project and offers a much-needed road map to a more humane criminal justice system.” From Publisher’s Website.

Mortal Doubt: Transnational Gangs and Social Order in Guatemala City, by Anthony W. Fontes. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 336p.

“The fear of violent crime dominates Guatemala City. In the midst of unprecedented levels of postwar violence, Guatemalans struggle to fathom the myriad forces that have made life in this city so deeply insecure. Born out of histories of state terror, migration, and US deportation, maras (transnational gangs) have become the face of this new era of violence. They are brutal organizations engaged in extortion, contract killings, and the drug trade, and yet they have also become essential to the emergence of a certain kind of social order.

Drawing on years of fieldwork inside prisons, police precincts, and gang-dominated neighborhoods, Anthony W. Fontes demonstrates how gang violence has become indissoluble from contemporary social imaginaries and how these gangs provide cover for a host of other criminal actors. Ethnographically rich and unflinchingly critical, Mortal Doubt illuminates the maras’ role in making and mooring collective terror in Guatemala City while tracing the ties that bind this violence to those residing in far safer environs.” From Publisher’s Website.

No Place on the Corner: The Costs of Aggressive Policing, by Jan Haldipur. New York: New York University Press, 2018. 224p.

“What’s it like to be stopped and frisked by the police while walking home from the supermarket with your young children? How does it feel to receive a phone call from your fourteen-year-old son who is in the back of a squad car because he laughed at a police officer? How does a young person of color cope with being frisked several times a week since the age of 15? These are just some of the stories in No Place on the Corner, which draws on three years of intensive ethnographic fieldwork in the South Bronx before and after the landmark 2013 Floyd v. City of New York decision that ruled that the NYPD’s controversial “stop and frisk” policing methods were a violation of rights.

Through riveting interviews and with a humane eye, Jan Haldipur shows how a community endured this aggressive policing regime. Though the police mostly targeted younger men of color, Haldipur focuses on how everyone in the neighborhood—mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, even the district attorney’s office—was affected by this intense policing regime and thus shows how this South Bronx community as a whole experienced this collective form of punishment. One of Haldipur’s key insights is to demonstrate how police patrols effectively cleared the streets of residents and made public spaces feel off-limits or inaccessible to the people who lived there. In this way community members lost the very ‘street corner’ culture that has been a hallmark of urban spaces. This profound social consequence of aggressive policing effectively keeps neighbors out of one another’s lives and deeply hurts a community’s sense of cohesion.

No Place on the Corner makes it hard to ignore the widespread consequences of aggressive policing tactics in major cities across the United States.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Oxford Handbook of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology, edited by David P. Farrington, Lila Kazemian, and Alex R. Piquero. Oxford, UK: New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 800p.

“Developmental and life-course criminology are both concerned with the study of changes in offending and problem behaviors over time. Developmental studies in criminology focus on psychological factors that influence the onset and persistence of criminal behavior, while life-course studies analyze how changes in social arrangements, like marriage, education or social networks, can lead to changes in offending. Though each perspective is clearly concerned with patterns of offending and problem behavior over time, the literature on each is spread across various disciplines, including criminology & criminal justice, psychology, and sociology.

The Oxford Handbook on Developmental and Life-Course Criminology offers the first comprehensive survey of these two approaches together. Edited by three noted authorities in the field, the volume provides in-depth critical reviews of the development of offending, developmental and life-course theories, development correlates and risk/protective factors, life transitions and turning points, and effective developmental interventions from the world’s leading scholars. In the first two sections, the contributors provide overviews of specific criminal career parameters, including age-crime curve, prevalence/frequency of offending, and co-offending, and review the main theoretical frameworks in the developmental and life-course criminology areas. They further summarize some of the empirical literature on known developmental correlates and risk/protective factors associated with longitudinal patterns of offending in the next section. The fourth section focuses on life transitions and turning points as they may relate to persistence in-or desistance from-criminal activity into adulthood, while the final section examines the genesis of antisocial, delinquent, and criminal activity, its maintenance, and its cessation.” From Publisher’s Website.

Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 392p.

“When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up frustration with employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty. But the more immediate grievance was anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department. Yet in the decades after Watts, the LAPD resisted all but the most limited demands for reform made by activists and residents of color, instead intensifying its power.

In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic history of policing, anti-police abuse movements, race, and politics in Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of the city’s expansive police power through a range of previously unused and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.” From Publisher’s Website.

Prisons, Punishment, and the Family: Towards a New Sociology of Punishment, edited by Rachel Condry and Peter Scharff Smith. Oxford UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 336p.

“Every year millions of families are affected by the imprisonment of a family member. Children of imprisoned parents alone can be counted in millions in the USA and in Europe. It is a bewildering fact that while we have had prisons for centuries, and the deprivation of liberty has been a central pillar in the Western mode of punishment since the early nineteenth century, we have only relatively recently embarked upon a serious discussion of the severe effects of imprisonment for the families and relatives of offenders and the implications this has for society.

This book draws together some of the excellent research that addresses the impact of criminal justice and incarceration in particular upon the families of offenders. It assembles examples of recent and ongoing studies from eight different countries in order to not only learn about the secondary effects and ‘collateral consequences’ of imprisonment but also to understand what the experiences and lived realities of prisoners’ families means for the sociology of punishment and our broader understanding of criminal justice systems. While punishment and society scholarship has gained significant ground in recent years it has often remained silent on the ways in which the families of prisoners are affected by our practices of punishment. This book provides evidence of the importance of including families within this scholarship and explores themes of legitimacy, citizenship, human rights, marginalization, exclusion, and inequality.” From Publisher’s Website.

Punishment and Citizenship: A Theory of Criminal Disenfranchisement, by Milena Tripkovic Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University press. 2018. 192p.

“Criminal disenfranchisement-the practice of restricting electoral rights following criminal conviction-is the only surviving electoral restriction of adult, mentally competent citizens in contemporary democracies. Despite the strong devotion to the principle of universal suffrage, criminal offenders are still routinely deprived of active and passive franchise, while the justifications for such limitations remain elusive and incoherent.

In Punishment and Citizenship, Milena Tripkovic develops an empirical and normative account of criminal disenfranchisement. Starting from historical precedents of such restrictions and examining the current policies of a number of European countries, Tripkovic argues that while criminal disenfranchisement is considered a form of punishment, it should instead be viewed as a citizenship sanction imposed when a citizen fails to perform their role as a member of a political community. In order to determine the justifications of disenfranchisement, Tripkovic explores various citizenship ideals and examines whether criminal offenders comply with the expectations that are posed before them. After developing a theoretical framework of citizenship duties, Tripkovic concludes that very few criminal offenders fail to satisfy fundamental citizenship conditions and exhaustive voting restrictions cannot ultimately be justified.

A comprehensive assessment of criminal disenfranchisement, Punishment and Citizenship offers concrete policy suggestions to determine the limited circumstances under which electoral rights could justifiably be withheld from criminal offenders.” From Publisher’s Website.

Risk-Based Policing: Evidence-Based Crime Prevention with Big Data and Spatial Analytics, by Leslie W. Kennedy, Joel M. Caplan, and Eric L. Piza. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 168p.

“Risk-based policing is a research advancement that improves public safety, and its applications prevent crime specifically by managing crime risks. In Risk-Based Policing, the authors analyze case studies from a variety of city agencies including Atlantic City, New Jersey; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Glendale, Arizona; Kansas City, Missouri; Newark, New Jersey; and others. They demonstrate how focusing police resources on risky places and basing police work on smart uses of data can address the worst effects of disorder and crime while improving community relations and public safety. Topics include the role of big data; the evolution of modern policing; dealing with high-risk targets; designing, implementing, and evaluating risk-based policing strategies; and the role of multiple stakeholders in risk-based policing. The book also demonstrates how risk terrain modeling can be extended to provide a comprehensive view of prevention and deterrence.” From Publisher’s Website.

Too Easy to Keep: Life-Sentenced Prisoners and the Future of Mass Incarceration, by Steve Herbert. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019. 184p.

“’Some guys don’t break any rules. They do their jobs, they go to school, they don’t commit any infractions, they keep their cells clean and tidy, and they follow the rules. And usually those are our LWOPs [life without parole]. They’re usually our easiest keepers.’

Too Easy to Keep directs much-needed attention toward a neglected group of American prisoners—the large and growing population of inmates serving life sentences. Drawing on extensive interviews with lifers and with prison staff, Too Easy to Keep charts the challenges that a life sentence poses—both to the prisoners and to the staffers charged with caring for them. Surprisingly, many lifers show remarkable resilience and craft lives of notable purpose. Yet their eventual decline will pose challenges to the institutions that house them. Rich in data, Too Easy to Keep illustrates the harsh consequences of excessive sentences and demonstrates a keen need to reconsider punishment policy.” From Publisher’s Website.

Treatment for Crime: Philosophical Essays on Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice, edited by David Birks and Thomas Douglas. Oxford, UK: New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 384p.

“Preventing recidivism is one of the aims of criminal justice, yet existing means of pursuing this aim are often poorly effective, highly restrictive of basic freedoms, and significantly harmful. Incarceration, for example, tends to be disruptive of personal relationships and careers, detrimental to physical and mental health, restrictive of freedom of movement, and rarely more than modestly effective at preventing recidivism. Crime-preventing neurointerventions (CPNs) are increasingly being advocated, and there is a growing use of testosterone-lowering agents to prevent recidivism in sexual offenders, and strong political and scientific interest in developing pharmaceutical treatments for psychopathy and anti-social behaviour. Future neuroscientific advances could yield further CPNs; we could ultimately have at our disposal a range of drugs capable of suppressing violent aggression and it is not difficult to imagine possible applications of such drugs in crime prevention.

Neurointerventions hold out the promise of preventing recidivism in ways that are both more effective, and more humane. But should neurointerventions be used in crime prevention? And may the state ever permissibly impose CPNs as part of the criminal justice process, either unconditionally, or as a condition of parole or early release? The use of CPNs raises several ethical concerns, as they could be highly intrusive and may threaten fundamental human values, such as bodily integrity and freedom of thought. In the first book-length treatment of this topic, Treatment for Crime, brings together original contributions from internationally renowned moral and political philosophers to address these questions and consider the possible issues, recognizing how humanity has a track record of misguided, harmful and unwarrantedly coercive use of neurotechnological ‘solutions’ to criminality.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Trial of the Kaiser, by William A. Scabas. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 432p.

“In the immediate aftermath of the armistice that ended the First World War, the Allied nations of Britain, France, and Italy agreed to put the fallen German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II on trial, in what would be the first ever international criminal tribunal. In Britain, Lloyd George campaigned for re-election on the slogan ‘hang the Kaiser’, but the Italians had only lukewarm support for a trial, and there was outright resistance from the United States.

During the Peace Conference, international lawyers gathered for the first time to debate international criminal justice. They recommended trial of the Kaiser by an international tribunal for war crimes, and the Americans relented, agreeing to a trial for a ‘supreme offence against international morality’. However, the Kaiser had fled to the Netherlands where he obtained asylum, and though the Allies threatened a range of measures if the former Emperor was not surrendered, the Dutch refused and the demands were dropped in March 1920.

This book, from renowned legal scholar William A. Schabas, sheds light on perhaps the most important international trial that never was. Schabas draws on numerous primary sources hitherto unexamined in published work, including transcripts which vividly illuminate this period of international law making. As such, he has written a book which constitutes a history of the very beginnings of international criminal justice, a history which has never before been fully told.” From Publisher’s Website.

Violence and the Quest for Justice in South Asia, edited by Deepak Mehta and Rahul Roy. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2018. 381p.

“A first of its kind, this timely volume provides a series of case studies from South Asia that detail the quest for justice, the links that can be drawn from different countries in the region and the points of contact and divergences in the enunciation and practice of law. A second theme that runs through the book discusses the corrosive and affective power of violence in its ability to forge new solidary groups and communities. This is the first serious attempt by activists and scholars to think of South Asia as a region bound together through war and collective violence. It will be an invaluable read for postgraduate students and scholars of law and society, political philosophy, sociology and anthropology of violence, history and memory as well as political activists and government departments.” From Publisher’s Website.

Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances, by Tricia Bacon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 352p.

“Terrorist groups with a shared enemy or ideology have ample reason to work together, even if they are primarily pursuing different causes. Although partnering with another terrorist organization has the potential to bolster operational effectiveness, efficiency, and prestige, international alliances may expose partners to infiltration, security breaches, or additional counterterrorism attention. Alliances between such organizations, which are suspicious and secretive by nature, must also overcome significant barriers to trust—the exposure to risk must be balanced by the promise of increased lethality, resiliency, and longevity.

In Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances, Tricia Bacon argues that although it may seem natural for terrorist groups to ally, groups actually face substantial hurdles when attempting to ally and, when alliances do form, they are not evenly distributed across pairs. Instead, she demonstrates that when terrorist groups seek allies to obtain new skills, knowledge, or capacities for resource acquisition and mobilization, only a few groups have the ability to provide needed training, safe haven, infrastructure, or cachet. Consequently, these select few emerge as preferable partners and become hubs around which other groups cluster. According to Bacon, shared enemies and common ideologies do not cause alliances to form but create affinity to bind partners and guide partner selection.

Bacon examines partnerships formed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Al-Qaida, and Egyptian jihadist groups, among others, in a series of case studies spanning the dawn of international terrorism in the 1960s to the present. Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances advances our understanding of the motivations of terrorist alliances and offers insights useful to counterterrorism efforts to disrupt these dangerous relationships.” From Publisher’s Website.

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