Books Received
November 2015

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.

Access to Justice for Disadvantaged Communities, by Marjorie Mayo, Gerald Koessl, Matthew Scott and Imogen Slater. Bristol, UK: Policy Press (distributed in the U.S. by the University of Chicago Press), 2015. 176p.

“Justice is a basic human right in all democratic doctrines, but in Britain, where welfare has faced recent market-based reforms, it’s increasingly a right available only to those who can afford it. Professionals and volunteers are struggling to provide services such as legal counseling and representation to disadvantaged communities. This book explores how strategies to safeguard these vital services can strengthen, rather than undermine, the basic ethics and principles of public service provision. The authors show how such safeguarding might improve the positions of those who administer—as well as those who need—publicly provided legal services. Though focused on Britain, their findings reverberate to the United States and all democracies undergoing similar challenges in the public sphere.” From Publisher’s Website.

Al Qaeda: The Transformation of Terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa, by Denise N. Baken and Ioannis Mantzikos. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2015. 246p.

“What threat does Al Qaeda pose to the United States as it continues to evolve in the wake of the Arab Spring, and what are the group’s evolving strategies for growth and survival internationally? This book provides answers.

Ideal for both students of terrorism and general readers wanting to better understand modern terrorism, this book provides an in-depth look at Al Qaeda, including its origins, evolution, doctrines, structure, and terrorist operations. The authors examine Al Qaeda’s operational transitions over the last two decades, and consider these changes in terms of the impact of the Internet, the viciousness of the violence employed, the leverage of colonial past, and the subsequent international implications.

Particular attention is paid to Al Qaeda’s changing strategies for growth and survival across the Middle East and Africa as well as the threats that it poses to the United States as it continues to evolve in the wake of the Arab Spring. The work addresses why Al Qaeda—now both a professional force and a network of so-called “lone wolves”—must remain a primary focus of the United States and other Western states while also recognizing that the threat of terrorism goes beyond Al Qaeda.” From Publisher’s Website.

American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror: Falling Skies, Dark Knights Rising, and Collapsing Cultures, by Jesse Kavadlo. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2015. 212p.

“Bringing together the most popular genres of the 21st century, this book argues that Americans have entered a new era of narrative dominated by the fear—and wish fulfillment—of the breakdown of authority and terror itself.

Bringing together disparate and popular genres of the 21st century, American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror: Falling Skies, Dark Knights Rising, and Collapsing Cultures argues that popular culture has been preoccupied by fantasies and narratives dominated by the anxiety —and, strangely, the wish fulfillment—that comes from the breakdowns of morality, family, law and order, and storytelling itself. From aging superheroes to young adult dystopias, heroic killers to lustrous vampires, the figures of our fiction, film, and television again and again reveal and revel in the imagery of terror. Kavadlo’s single-author, thesis-driven book makes the case that many of the novels and films about September 11, 2001, have been about much more than terrorism alone, while popular stories that may not seem related to September 11 are deeply connected to it.

The book examines New York novels written in response to September 11 along with the anti-heroes of television and the resurgence of zombies and vampires in film and fiction to draw a correlation between Kavadlo’s “Era of Terror” and the events of September 11, 2001. Geared toward college students, graduate students, and academics interested in popular culture, the book connects multiple topics to appeal to a wide audience.” From Publisher’s Website.

Blaming the Poor: The Long Shadow of the Moynihan Report on Cruel Images about Poverty, by Susan D. Greenbaum. New Brunswick, NJ; London: Rutgers University Press, 2015. 190p.

“In 1965, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan—then a high-ranking official in the Department of Labor—sparked a firestorm when he released his report “The Negro Family,” which came to be regarded by both supporters and detractors as an indictment of African American culture. Blaming the Poor examines the regrettably durable impact of the Moynihan Report for race relations and social policy in America, challenging the humiliating image the report cast on poor black families and its misleading explanation of the causes of poverty.

A leading authority on poverty and racism in the United States, Susan D. Greenbaum dismantles Moynihan’s main thesis—that the so called matriarchal structure of the African American family “feminized” black men, making them inadequate workers and absent fathers, and resulting in what he called a tangle of pathology that led to a host of ills, from teen pregnancy to adult crime. Drawing on extensive scholarship, Greenbaum highlights the flaws in Moynihan’s analysis. She reveals how his questionable ideas have been used to redirect blame for substandard schools, low wages, and the scarcity of jobs away from the societal forces that cause these problems, while simultaneously reinforcing stereotypes about African Americans. Greenbaum also critiques current policy issues that are directly affected by the tangle of pathology mindset—the demonization and destruction of public housing; the criminalization of black youth; and the continued humiliation of the poor by entrepreneurs who become rich consulting to teachers, non-profits, and social service personnel.

A half century later, Moynihan’s thesis remains for many a convenient justification for punitive measures and stingy indifference to the poor. Blaming the Poor debunks this infamous thesis, proposing instead more productive and humane policies to address the enormous problems facing us today.” From Publisher’s Website.

Campus Rape Victims: How They See the Police, by Veronyka James. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2015. 176p.

“James attempts to accurately measure crimes that occur on a college campus and whether students’ perceptions of police influenced their decisions to report their victimization, specifically sexual assault victimization. Her study utilized a survey methodology to gather data which were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results of the analyses indicated that victimization reporting and satisfaction with the police was impacted by gender. Results also showed that fear of victimization and perceptions of crime influence satisfaction with the police. There was also limited support found for the proposition that perceptions of the police influence likelihood to report victimization.” From Publisher’s Website.

Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, by Talitha L. LeFlouria. Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. 280p.

“In 1868, the state of Georgia began to make its rapidly growing population of prisoners available for hire. The resulting convict leasing system ensnared not only men but also African American women, who were forced to labor in camps and factories to make profits for private investors. In this vivid work of history, Talitha L. LeFlouria draws from a rich array of primary sources to piece together the stories of these women, recounting what they endured in Georgia’s prison system and what their labor accomplished. LeFlouria argues that African American women’s presence within the convict lease and chain-gang systems of Georgia helped to modernize the South by creating a new and dynamic set of skills for black women. At the same time, female inmates struggled to resist physical and sexual exploitation and to preserve their human dignity within a hostile climate of terror. This revealing history redefines the social context of black women’s lives and labor in the New South and allows their stories to be told for the first time.” From Publisher’s Website.

Children and Justice: Overcoming Language Barriers. Cooperation in Interpreter-Mediated Questioning of Minors, edited by Katalin Balogh and Heidi Salaets. Cambridge, UK: Intersentia, 2015. 408p.

“Interpreter-mediated child interviews, by their nature, involve communication with vulnerable interviewees who need extra support for three main reasons: their age (under 18), their native language, and their procedural status (as vulnerable victims, witnesses, or suspects). The “CO-Minor-IN/QUEST” research project (JUST/2011/JPEN/AG/2961; January 2013-December 2014) studied the interactional dynamics of interpreter-mediated child interviews during the pre-trial phase of criminal proceedings. The project provides guidance in implementing the 2012/29/EU Directive establishing minimum standards on the rights, support, and protection of victims of crime. This book sets out the key findings from a survey conducted in the project partners’ countries (Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK), targeting the different professional groups involved in child interviewing. Both the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the respondents’ answers are discussed in detail. The book also provides hands-on chapters, addressing concrete cases of children involved in criminal procedures who required the assistance of an interpreter to ensure their rights were fully protected. Finally, a set of recommendations is offered to professionals working in this legal area.” From Publisher’s Website.

Comparative Executive Clemency: The Constitutional Pardon Power and the Prerogative of Mercy in Global Perspective, by Andrew Novak. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. 204p.

“Virtually every constitutional order in the common law world contains a provision for executive clemency or pardon in criminal cases. This facility for legal mercy is not limited to a single place in modern legal systems, but is instead realized through various practices such as a law enforcement officer’s decision to arrest, a prosecutor’s decision to prosecute, and a judge’s decision to convict and sentence. Doubts about legal mercy in any form as unfair, unguided, or arbitrary are as ubiquitous as the exercise of mercy itself.

This book presents a comparative analysis of the clemency and pardon power in the common law world. Andrew Novak compares the modern development, organization, and practice of constitutional and statutory schemes of clemency and pardon in the United Kingdom, United States, and Commonwealth jurisdictions. He asks whether the bureaucratization of the clemency power is in line with global trends, and explores how innovations in legislative involvement, judicial review, and executive consultation have made the mercy and pardon procedure more transparent. The book concludes with a discussion on the future of the clemency and pardon power given the decline of the death penalty in the Commonwealth and the rise of the modern institution of parole.

As a work concerned with the practice of mercy in the common law world, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students of international and comparative criminal justice and international human rights law.” From Publisher’s Website.

Confronting the Death Penalty: How Language Influences Jurors in Capital Cases, by Robin Conley. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 256p.

“Confronting the Death Penalty: How Language Influences Jurors in Capital Cases probes how jurors make the ultimate decision about whether another human being should live or die. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative linguistic methods, this book explores the means through which language helps to make death penalty decisions possible – how specific linguistic choices mediate and restrict jurors’, attorneys’, and judges’ actions and experiences while serving and reflecting on capital trials.

The analysis draws on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in diverse counties across Texas, including participant observation in four capital trials and post-verdict interviews with the jurors who decided those cases. Given the impossibility of access to actual capital jury deliberations, this integration of methods aims to provide the clearest possible window into jurors’ decision-making. Using methods from linguistic anthropology, conversation analysis, and multi-modal discourse analysis, Conley analyzes interviews, trial talk, and written legal language to reveal a variety of communicative practices through which jurors dehumanize defendants and thus judge them to be deserving of death.

By focusing on how language can both facilitate and stymie empathic encounters, the book addresses a conflict inherent to death penalty trials: jurors literally face defendants during trial and then must distort, diminish, or negate these face-to-face interactions in order to sentence those same defendants to death. The book reveals that jurors cite legal ideologies of rational, dispassionate decision-making – conveyed in the form of authoritative legal language – when negotiating these moral conflicts. By investigating the interface between experiential and linguistic aspects of legal decision-making, the book breaks new ground in studies of law and language, language and psychology, and the death penalty.” From Publisher’s Website.

Corporate and White-Collar Crime in Ireland: A New Architecture of Regulatory Enforcement, by Joe McGrath. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2015. 190p.

“This book explores the emergence of a new architecture of corporate enforcement in Ireland. It is demonstrated that the State has transitioned from one contradictory model of corporate enforcement to another. Traditionally, the State invoked its most powerful weapon of state censure, the criminal law, but was remarkably lenient in practice because the law was not enforced. The contemporary model is much more reliant on cooperative measures and civil orders, but also contains remarkably punitive and instrumental measures to surmount the difficulties of proving guilt in criminal cases.

Though corporate and financial regulation has become an area of significant interest for academics, researchers and those with an interest in corporate affairs, this sudden surge of interest lacks a tradition of scholarship or any deep empirical and contextual analysis in Ireland. This book provides that foundation. It is likely to stimulate an extensive conversation on corporate regulation and governance in Ireland. It is also likely to provide a platform for researchers further afield with an interest in comparative study with Ireland.” From Publisher’s Website.

Crime, Justice and Society in Scotland, edited by Hazel Croall, Gerry Mooney and Mary Munro. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. 236p.

“Crime, Justice and Society in Scotland is an edited collection of chapters from leading experts that builds and expands upon the success of the 2010 publication Criminal Justice in Scotland to offer a comprehensive and critical overview of Scottish criminal justice and its relation to wider social inequalities and social justice.

This new volume considers criminal justice in the context of the Scottish politics and the recent referendum on independence and it includes a discussion of the complex relationships between criminal justice and devolution, nationalism and nation building. There are new chapters on research and policy, sectarianism, gangs, victims and justice, organised crime and crimes of the powerful in Scotland, as well as chapters reflecting on the use of electronic monitoring, desistance and practice, and major changes in the structure of Scottish policing.

Comprehensive and topical, this book is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of criminal justice, criminology, law, social science and social policy. It will also be of interest to practitioners, researchers, policymakers, civil servants and politicians.” From Publisher’s Website.

Crime, Disorder and Symbolic Violence: Governing the Urban Periphery, by Matt Bowden. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 248p.

“This timely book provides a theoretical and empirical engagement with contemporary understandings of the governance of crime, safety and security. In the last two decades, criminological narratives have advanced a series of propositions on the nature of the late modern risk society. These narratives have based their observations primarily upon trends in the core, developed societies. This book presents an alternative perspective, exploring the nuances of the smaller scale and offering a rich insight into the historical and spatial specifics leading to the emergence of social crime prevention as a form of governing.

Using a Bourdieuian framework, Bowden shows how concepts such as capital, habitus and symbolic power can provide an analytic tool-kit for a critically engaged public criminology. This book argues that crime prevention can mobilise a type of moral curriculum and as such is a symbolic struggle for the domination of the subject and the domination of territory. Revealing a counter-practice which has the ability to reinvigorate social citizenship, this book will appeal to scholars across Criminology, Sociology, Crime Prevention and Community Safety.” From Publisher’s Website.

Criminal Justice in Transition: The Northern Ireland Context, edited by Anne-Marie McAlinden and Clare Dwyer. London; Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2015. 416p.

“This book represents a critical examination of key aspects of crime and criminal justice in Northern Ireland which will have resonance elsewhere. It considers the core aspects of criminal justice policy-making in Northern Ireland which are central to the process of post-conflict transition, including reform of policing, judicial decision-making and correctional services such as probation and prisons. It examines contemporary trends in criminal justice in Northern Ireland as related to various dimensions of crime relating to female offenders, young offenders, sexual and violent offenders, race and criminal justice, community safety and restorative justice. The book also considers the extent to which crime and criminal justice issues in Northern Ireland are being affected by the broader processes of ‘policy transfer’, globalisation and transnationalism and the extent to which criminal justice in Northern Ireland is divergent from the other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom. Written by leading international authorities in the field, the book offers a snapshot of the cutting edge of critical thinking in criminal justice practice and transitional justice contexts.” From Publisher’s Website.

Cybercriminology and Digital Investigation, by Kyung-shick Choi. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2015. 352p.

“Cybercrime issues can potentially impact anyone in the world anywhere in the world. Nations are expanding their technological capability to monitor cybercrime issues. This naturally requires international cooperation and constant efforts from government agencies, private sectors, and educational institutes.

The book demonstrates empirical assessment of cybercrime victimizations via the application of Routine Activity Theory (RAT). The concept of three main risk factors, i) Motivated Offenders, ii) Suitable Target, and iii) Capable Guardianship, which contribute to computer crime/cybercrime, was used to assess the new theoretical model advanced in my research by providing an overall picture of the relationship among the causal factors and computer-crime/ cybercrime victimization.” From Publisher’s Website.

Deadly Injustice: Trayvon Martin, Race, and the Criminal Justice System, edited by Devon Johnson, Patricia Y. Warren and Amy Farrell. New York: New York University Press, 2015. 384p.

“The murder of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin and the subsequent trial and acquittal of his assailant, George Zimmerman, sparked a passionate national debate about race and criminal justice in America that involved everyone from bloggers to mayoral candidates to President Obama himself. With increased attention to these causes, from St. Louis to Los Angeles, intense outrage at New York City’s Stop and Frisk program and escalating anger over the effect of mass incarceration on the nation’s African American community, the Trayvon Martin case brought the racialized nature of the American justice system to the forefront of our national consciousness. Deadly Injustice uses the Martin/Zimmerman case as a springboard to examine race, crime, and justice in our current criminal justice system.

Contributors explore how race and racism informs how Americans think about criminality, how crimes are investigated and prosecuted, and how the media interprets and reports on crime. At the center of their analysis sit examples of the Zimmerman trial and Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, providing current and resonant examples for readers as they work through the bigger-picture problems plaguing the American justice system. This important volume demonstrates how highly publicized criminal cases go on to shape public views about offenders, the criminal process, and justice more generally, perpetuating the same unjust cycle for future generations. A timely, well-argued collection, Deadly Injustice is an illuminating, headline-driven text perfect for students and scholars of criminology and an important contribution to the discussion of race and crime in America.” From Publisher’s Website.

Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age, by Bernard E. Harcourt. Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Harvard University Press, 2015. 384p.

“Social media compile data on users, retailers mine information on consumers, Internet giants create dossiers of who we know and what we do, and intelligence agencies collect all this plus billions of communications daily. Exploiting our boundless desire to access everything all the time, digital technology is breaking down whatever boundaries still exist between the state, the market, and the private realm. Exposed offers a powerful critique of our new virtual transparence, revealing just how unfree we are becoming and how little we seem to care.

Bernard Harcourt guides us through our new digital landscape, one that makes it so easy for others to monitor, profile, and shape our every desire. We are building what he calls the expository society—a platform for unprecedented levels of exhibition, watching, and influence that is reconfiguring our political relations and reshaping our notions of what it means to be an individual.

We are not scandalized by this. To the contrary: we crave exposure and knowingly surrender our privacy and anonymity in order to tap into social networks and consumer convenience—or we give in ambivalently, despite our reservations. But we have arrived at a moment of reckoning. If we do not wish to be trapped in a steel mesh of wireless digits, we have a responsibility to do whatever we can to resist. Disobedience to a regime that relies on massive data mining can take many forms, from aggressively encrypting personal information to leaking government secrets, but all will require conviction and courage.” From Publisher’s Website.

Extreme Punishment: Comparative Studies in Detention, Incarceration and Solitary Confinement, edited by Keramet Reiter and Alexa Koenig. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 288p.

“Extreme Punishment examines the erosion of the legal boundaries that traditionally divide civil detention from criminal punishment. This collection of empirical studies illustrates how the mentally ill, non-citizen immigrants, and enemy combatants are treated as criminals in three of the world’s oldest and wealthiest democracies: Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Each chapter relies on unprecedented access to the administrative black holes that increasingly characterize punishment. Together, the contributors explore how punishers exert power and how the punished experience that power. The book demonstrates that, through consolidated administrative power, new laws nominally focused on managing risk and preventing harm produce new criminal categories and newly criminalized people.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Financial War on Terrorism: A Review of Counter-terrorist Financing Strategies since 2001, by Nicholas Ryder. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. 320p.

“On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists committed the largest and deadliest terrorist attack in the United States of America. The response from the inter-national community, and in particular the US, was swift. President George Bush declared what has commonly been referred to as either the ‘War on Terror’ or the ‘Global War on Terror’ on September 20, 2001. Four days later, he instigated the ‘Financial War on Terrorism’. This book defines and identifies the so-called ‘Financial War on Terrorism’. It provides a critical review of the impact of counter-terrorist financing strategies enacted by both individual jurisdictions and international organisations.

Taking a comparative approach, the book highlights the levels of compliance in each selected jurisdiction and organisation with the requirements of the ‘Financial War on Terrorism’. The book analyses measures introduced by the United Nations, including the UN sanctions against terrorists and the operation of its anti-terrorist sanctions committees, and the Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force. It also reviews the counter-terrorist financing measures of the European Union and the Council of Europe, paying particular attention to the Framework Decisions on Combating Terrorism, the Council Common Positions on Combating Terrorism and the EU Anti-Terrorism Sanctions Regime. The book goes on to review the measures put in place in the US following September 11, 2001.

Offering a much-needed legal analysis of the measures enacted under the ‘Financial War on Terrorism’, this book is a valuable resource for those researching in law, terrorism studies, criminal justice, and finance.” From Publisher’s Website.

Gangster States: Organized Crime, Kleptocracy and Political Collapse, by Katherine Hirschfeld. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 192p.

“Gangsterism, extortion and racketeering are currently viewed as deviant, pathological behaviors that are disconnected from formal political and economic structures, and often excluded from analysis in the fields of political science and economics. A critical reconsideration of organized crime reveals that the evolution of racketeering in systems of exchange should be understood as a natural phenomenon that can be predicted with tools from behavioral ecology originally developed to model the dynamics of predator-prey relations. These models predict the conditions under which unregulated markets evolve into hierarchical criminal syndicates, and how established organized crime groups expand and intrude into formal systems of government, creating chimeric ‘gangster-states’. This book outlines the parameters of this process, and uses archival research to explore case studies of organized crime and kleptocratic state formation. A final section proposes redefining state formation as part of a longitudinal cycle of political-economic evolution that includes phases of racketeering, instability, collapse and regeneration.” From Publisher’s Website.

Genetics, Crime and Justice, by Debra Wilson. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2015. 272p.

“As our understanding of genetics increases, its application to criminal justice becomes more significant. This timely book examines the use of genetic information both in criminal investigations and during the trial process. It discusses current scientific understanding and considers some potential legal, ethical and sociological issues with the use of genetic information.

The author draws together debates from scientists, ethicists, sociologists and lawyers in order to understand how the criminal justice system currently reacts, and ought to react, to the new challenges presented by genetic evidence. She asks the important question of where priorities should lie: whether with society’s desire to be protected from crime, or with an individual’s desire to be protected from an unwanted intrusion into his or her genome. Topics include rights of privacy and consent in obtaining DNA samples, evidentiary issues in court, the impact of genetic evidence on punishment theory and sentencing, and genetic discrimination.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Geometry of Genocide: A Study in Pure Sociology, by Bradley Campbell. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2015. 272p.

“In The Geometry of Genocide, Bradley Campbell argues that genocide is best understood not as deviant behavior but as social control—a response to perceived deviant behavior on the part of victims. Using Donald Black’s method of pure sociology, Campbell considers genocide in relation to three features of social life: diversity, inequality, and intimacy. According to this theory, genocidal conflicts begin with changes in diversity and inequality, such as when two previously separated ethnic groups come into contact, or when a subordinate ethnic group attempts to rise in status. Further, conflicts are more likely to result in genocide when they occur in a context of social distance and inequality and when aggressors and victims cannot be easily separated.
Campbell applies his approach to five cases: the killings of American Indians in 1850s California, Muslims in 2002 India and 1992 Bosnia, Tutsis in 1994 Rwanda, and Jews in 1940s Europe. These case studies, which focus in detail on particular incidents within each instance of genocide, demonstrate the theory’s ability to explain an array of factors, including why genocide occurs and who participates. Campbell’s theory uniquely connects the study of genocide to the larger study of conflict and social control. By situating genocide among these broader phenomena, The Geometry of Genocide provides a novel and compelling explanation of genocide, while furthering our understanding of why humans have conflicts and why they respond to conflict as they do.” From Publisher’s Website.

A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse, edited by Richard Ward. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 336p.

“Across many different times and places the criminal corpse has been harnessed for the ends of state power, medical science, criminal justice, and political subversion, amongst other things. This collection of essays for the first time examines execution practice and the punishment of the criminal corpse across a wide chronological and geographical span, ranging from eighteenth-century England to nineteenth-century India and twentieth-century Africa. Through studies of beheaded Irish traitors, smugglers hung in chains on the English coast, suicides subjected to the surgeon’s knife in Dresden and the burial of executed Nazi war criminals, this volume provides a fresh perspective on the history of capital punishment which forces us to rethink current metanarratives of penal practice and change.” From Publisher’s Website.

The Governance of Female Drug Users: Women’s Experiences of Drug Policy, by Natasha Du Rose. Bristol, UK: Policy Press (distributed in U.S. by University of Chicago Press), 2015. 224p.

“This book is the first to examine how female drug users’ identities, and hence their experiences, are shaped by drug policies. Drawing from in-depth accounts from forty-one drug-using women, it offers an empirical analysis of the subjectivities current drug policies ascribe to women users and how these prolong—rather than end—their problematic drug use while reinforcing their social exclusion. Challenging popular misconceptions of female users, The Governance of Female Drug Users calls for the reformulation of drug policies based on gender equity and social justice.” From Publisher’s Website.

Illinois Justice: The Scandal of 1969 and the Rise of John Paul Stevens, by Kenneth A. Manaster.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 336p
.

“Illinois political scandals reached new depths in the 1960s and ’70s. In Illinois Justice, Kenneth Manaster takes us behind the scenes of one of the most spectacular. The so-called Scandal of 1969 not only ended an Illinois Supreme Court justice’s aspirations to the US Supreme Court, but also marked the beginning of little-known lawyer John Paul Stevens’s rise to the high court.

In 1969, citizen gadfly Sherman Skolnick accused two Illinois Supreme Court justices of accepting valuable bank stock from an influential Chicago lawyer in exchange for deciding an important case in the lawyer’s favor. The resulting feverish media coverage prompted the state supreme court to appoint a special commission to investigate. Within six weeks and on a shoestring budget, the commission mobilized a small volunteer staff to reveal the facts. Stevens, then a relatively unknown Chicago lawyer, served as chief counsel. His work on this investigation would launch him into the public spotlight and onto the bench.

Manaster, who served on the commission, tells the real story of the investigation, detailing the dead ends, tactics, and triumphs. Manaster expertly traces Stevens’s masterful courtroom strategies and vividly portrays the high-profile personalities involved, as well as the subtleties of judicial corruption. A reflective foreword by Justice Stevens himself looks back at the case and how it influenced his career.” From Publisher’s Website.

Now the subject of the documentary Unexpected Justice: The Rise of John Paul Stevens, Manaster’s book is both a fascinating chapter of political history and a revealing portrait of the early career of a Supreme Court justice.

Japan and Civil Jury Trials: The Convergence of Forces, by Matthew J. Wilson, Hiroshi Fukurai, and Takashi Maruta. Cheltenham, UK: Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2015. 200p.
“As societies around the world increasingly face complex challenges, effective solutions are at a premium. In response, reformers have advanced varied forms of jury systems as means of fostering positive political, economic, and social change. Many countries have recently integrated lay participation into their justice systems to effect fundamental societal change, advance public policymaking, and manifest popular sovereignty. This book showcases Japan’s successes and challenges in recently adopting a quasi-jury system for serious criminal trials, and advocates that the convergence of various forces makes this an ideal time for Japan to expand lay participation into the civil realm.” From Publisher’s Website.
Judicial Orientation: The Black Box of Drug Court, by Kathleen M. Contrino. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2015. 270p.

“Drug court teams seek to ensure client compliance with rules and mandated treatment through a series of rewards and graduated sanctions. Drug court judges are the critical key component of drug court as well as the central authority figure for clients. Contrino examines judicial orientation in drug court. Judicial orientation is identified by specific policies and procedures that each court has incorporated into their court and ordered by the judge from the bench. Data from court observation, staff interviews, and client outcomes are analyzed to provide a more contextual understanding of how drug court judges can impact client success.” From Publisher’s Website.

Juvenile Offenders and Guns: Voices behind Gun Violence, by Diane Marano. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 256p.

“Juvenile Offenders and Guns explores how and why twenty-five incarcerated young men of color acquired and used guns, how guns made them feel, and how they felt about the violence in which they participated as well as the violence to which they were exposed as victims and witnesses. Through their narratives, patterns emerge of boys attempting to become men in homes headed by mothers who struggled financially, the multiple attractions of the street that exceeded those of school, and the risks of the street lifestyle that prompted these youth to arm themselves. Guns, long a part of both American history and myth, arise here as having multiple meanings and serving many symbolic and practical purposes for these youth, from protection to constructing a capable masculinity adapted to their lifestyle in the streets.” From Publisher’s Website.

Liberalizing Lynching: Building a New Racialized State, by Daniel Kato. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

“Presents the new theory of constitutional anarchy to explain the dynamics between the federal government and lynching

Challenges conventional thinking about lynching

Features research from newspaper articles, legal cases, and presidential correspondence over the course of almost 100 years of American history
Creates important new avenues for future research regarding the law, government, and racial violence

In spite of America’s identity as a liberal democracy, the vile act of lynching happened frequently in the Southern United States over the course of the nation’s history. Indeed, lynchings were very public events, and were even advertised in newspapers, begging the question of how such a brazen disregard for the law could have occurred so freely and openly.

Liberalizing Lynching: Building a New Racialized State seeks to explain the seemingly paradoxical relationship between the American liberal regime and the illiberal act of lynching. Drawing on legal cases, congressional documents, presidential correspondence, and newspaper reports, Daniel Kato explores the federal government’s pattern of non-intervention regarding lynchings of African Americans from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s. Although popular belief holds that the federal government was unable to address racial violence in the South, this book argues that the actions and decisions of the federal government from the 1870s through the 1960s reveal that federal inaction was not primarily a consequence of institutional or legal incapacities, but rather a decision that was supported and maintained by all three branches of the federal government. Inaction stemmed from the decision not to intervene, not the powerlessness of the federal government.

To cement his argument, Kato develops the theory of constitutional anarchy, which crystallizes the ways in which federal government had the capacity to intervene, yet relinquished its responsibility while nonetheless maintaining authority. A bold challenge to conventional knowledge about lynching, Liberalizing Lynching will serve as a useful tool for students and scholars of political science, legal history, and African American studies.” From Publisher’s Website.

Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion, by Judah Schept. New York: New York University Press, 2015. 320p.

“The growth of mass incarceration in the United States eludes neat categorization as a product of the political Right. Liberals played important roles in both laying the foundation for and then participating in the conservative tough on crime movement that is largely credited with the rise of the prison state. But what of those politicians and activists on the Left who reject punitive politics in favor of rehabilitation and a stronger welfare state? Can progressive policies such as these, with their benevolent intentions, nevertheless contribute to the expansion of mass incarceration?

In Progressive Punishment, Judah Schept offers an ethnographic examination into the politics of incarceration in Bloomington, Indiana in order to consider the ways that liberal discourses about therapeutic justice and rehabilitation can uphold the logics, practices and institutions that comprise the carceral state. Schept examines how political leaders on the Left, despite being critical of mass incarceration, advocated for a “justice campus” that would have dramatically expanded the local criminal justice system. At the root of this proposal, Schept argues, is a confluence of neoliberal-style changes in the community that naturalized prison expansion as political common sense among leaders negotiating crises of deindustrialization, urban decline, and the devolution of social welfare. In spite of the momentum that the proposal gained, Schept uncovers resistance among community organizers, who developed important strategies and discourses to challenge the justice campus, disrupt some of the logics that provided it legitimacy, and offer new possibilities for a non-carceral community. A well-researched and well-narrated study, Progressive Punishment offers a novel perspective on the relationship between liberal politics, neoliberalism, and mass incarceration.” From Publisher’s Website.

Punitivity and Punishment Results from Different Countries, edited by Helmut Kury. Bochum : Universitätsverlag Brockmeyer, 2015. 146p.

“The discussion about crime and security in society and in particular about the role of punishment in reducing crime depends on different variables. Of prime importance in this context is, for instance, the penal mentality in a society, which is influenced by such factors as media reporting, the level of education, a functional welfare system for people in need or the confidence of citizens in their government and justice system. International changes of living conditions can impact on the feelings of security and the level of fear of crime, for instance if these changes lead to high immigration- or refugee rates. This can cause a higher punitiveness especially if people are not informed and included in decision processes. This volume brings together articles from very different countries about their handling of the crime problem . Iran for example is a country about which we have little information, with a different criminal justice system and a religious background that is different from most European states. The death penalty, for instance, is still in frequent use and the victim s family has a central role in the prosecution and imposition of punishment. Indian criminologists discuss the lower crime and recidivism rates in this country compared to the United States and Japan. Criminologists from Hungary, a former Soviet state, present data about people s feelings and attitudes towards crime and punishment and how these have been transformed over time by political change. A chapter about alternatives to harsh punishment concentrates on mediation and Restorative Justice and evaluates their effectiveness compared to traditional criminal sanctions. Criminologists and criminal lawyers from different countries present data about the greater leniency of criminal courts in comparison to the public, the attitudes to the death penalty among students and the effects of youth custody on the crime rate.” From Publisher’s Website.

Runaway Wives, Urban Crime, and Survival Tactics in Wartime Beijing, 1937-1949, by Zhao Ma. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. 380p.

“From 1937 to 1949, Beijing was in a state of crisis. The combined forces of Japanese occupation, civil war, runaway inflation, and reformist campaigns and revolutionary efforts wreaked havoc on the city’s economy, upset the political order, and threatened the social and moral fabric as well. Women, especially lower-class women living in Beijing’s tenement neighborhoods, were among those most affected by these upheavals. Delving into testimonies from criminal case files, Zhao Ma explores intimate accounts of lower-class women’s struggles with poverty, deprivation, and marital strife. By uncovering the set of everyday tactics that women devised and utilized in their personal efforts to cope with predatory policies and crushing poverty, this book reveals an urban underworld that was built on an informal economy and conducted primarily through neighborhood networks. Where necessary, women relied on customary practices, hierarchical patterns of household authority, illegitimate relationships, and criminal entrepreneurship to get by. Women’s survival tactics, embedded in and reproduced by their everyday experience, opened possibilities for them to modify the male-dominated city and, more importantly, allowed women to subtly deflect, subvert, and “escape without leaving” powerful forces such as the surveillance state, reformist discourse, and revolutionary politics during and beyond wartime Beijing.” From Publisher’s Website.

Rural Crime and Community Safety, by Vania Ceccato. London; New York: Routledge, 2015. 394p.

“Crime is often perceived as an urban issue rather than a problem that occurs in rural areas, but how far is this view tenable? This book explores the relationship between crime and community in rural areas and addresses the notion of safety as part of the community dynamics in such areas.

“Rural Crime and Community Safety makes a significant contribution to crime science and integrates a range of theories to understand patterns of crime and perceived safety in rural contexts. Based on a wealth of original research, Ceccato combines spatial methods with qualitative analysis to examine, in detail, farm and wildlife crime, youth related crimes and gendered violence in rural settings.

Making the most of the expanding field of Criminology and of the growing professional inquiry into crime and crime prevention in rural areas; rural development; and the social sustainability of rural areas, this book builds a bridge by connecting Criminology and Human Geography. This book will be suitable for academics, students and practitioners in the fields of criminology, community safety, rural studies, rural development and gender studies.” From Publisher’s Website.

Sex, Slavery and the Trafficked Woman: Myths and Misconceptions about Trafficking and its Victims, by Ramona Vijeyarasa. Farnham, Surrey, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015. 284p.

“Sex, Slavery and the Trafficked Woman is a go-to text for readers who seek a comprehensive overview of the meaning of ‘human trafficking’ and current debates and perspectives on the issue. It presents a more nuanced understanding of human trafficking and its victims by examining – and challenging – the conventional assumptions that sit at the heart of mainstream approaches to the topic. A pioneering study, the arguments made in this book are largely drawn from the author’s fieldwork in Ukraine, Vietnam and Ghana. The author demonstrates to readers how a law enforcement and criminal justice-oriented approach to trafficking has developed at the expense of a migration and human rights perspective. She highlights the importance of viewing trafficking within a broad spectrum of migratory movement. The author contests the coerced, female victim archetype as stereotypical and challenges the reader to understand trafficking in an alternative manner, introducing the counterintuitive concept of the ‘voluntary victim’. Overall, this text provides readers of migration and development, gender studies, women’s rights and international law a comprehensive and multidisciplinary analysis of the concept of trafficking.” From Publisher’s Website.

Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago, by Rashad Shabazz. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 184p.

“Over 277,000 African Americans migrated to Chicago between 1900 and 1940, an influx unsurpassed in any other northern city. From the start, carceral powers literally and figuratively created a prison-like environment to contain these African Americans within the so-called Black Belt on the city’s South Side. A geographic study of race and gender, Spatializing Blackness casts light upon the ubiquitous–and ordinary–ways carceral power functions in places where African Americans live. Moving from the kitchenette to the prison cell, and mining forgotten facts from sources as diverse as maps and memoirs, Rashad Shabazz explores the myriad architectures of confinement, policing, surveillance, urban planning, and incarceration. In particular, he investigates how the ongoing carceral effort oriented and imbued black male bodies and gender performance from the Progressive Era to the present. The result is an essential interdisciplinary study that highlights the racialization of space, the role of containment in subordinating African Americans, the politics of mobility under conditions of alleged freedom, and the ways black men cope with–and resist–spacial containment. A timely response to the massive upswing in carceral forms within society, Spatializing Blackness examines how these mechanisms came to exist, why society aimed them against African Americans, and the consequences for black communities and black masculinity both historically and today.” From Publisher’s Website.

Speaking Freely: Whitney v. California and American Speech Law, by Philippa Strum. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2015. 200p.

“Anita Whitney was a child of wealth and privilege who became a vocal leftist early in the twentieth century, supporting radical labor groups such as the Wobblies and helping to organize the Communist Labor Party. In 1919 she was arrested and charged with violating California’s recently passed laws banning any speech or activity intended to change the American political and economic systems. The story of the Supreme Court case that grew out of Whitney’s conviction, told in full in this book, is also the story of how Americans came to enjoy the most liberal speech laws in the world.

In clear and engaging language, noted legal scholar Philippa Strum traces the fateful interactions of Whitney, a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrims; Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a brilliant son of immigrants; the teeming immigrant neighborhoods and left wing labor politics of the early twentieth century; and the lessons some Harvard Law School professors took from World War I-era restrictions on speech. Though the Supreme Court upheld Whitney’s conviction, it included an opinion by Justice Brandeis–joined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.–that led to a decisive change in the way the Court understood First Amendment free speech protections. Speaking Freely takes us into the discussions behind this dramatic change, as Holmes, Brandeis, Judge Learned Hand, and Harvard Law professors Zechariah Chafee and Felix Frankfurter debate the extent of the First Amendment and the important role of free speech in a democratic society. In Brandeis’s opinion, we see this debate distilled in a statement of the value of free speech and the harm that its suppression does to a democracy, along with reflections on the importance of freedom from government control for the founders and the drafters of the First Amendment.

Through Whitney v. California and its legacy, Speaking Freely shows how the American approach to speech, differing as it does that of every other country, reflects the nation’s unique history. Nothing less than a primer in the history of free speech rights in the US, the book offers a sobering and timely lesson as fear once more raises the specter of repression.” From Publisher’s Website.

Speaking Truths to Power: Policy Ethnography and Police Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Jarrett Blaustein. Oxford, UK: New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 272p.

“Presents an innovative study of two police capacity building projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2011 using ethnographic methods

Raises timely and thought provoking questions about the purpose of criminological engagement with transnational policing fields

Draws from comparative social policy studies in introducing the concept of ‘policy translation’ to the criminological lexicon

Provides an original, trans-disciplinary account of the origins of ‘glocal policing’ in developing and transitional countries

Speaking Truths to Power: Policy Ethnography and Police Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina presents a rigorous analysis of the effects of globalisation on local policing, drawing on data generated from two ethnographic case studies conducted in 2011 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. By examining structures, mentalities, and practices, it situates the phenomenon of ‘global policing’ in relation to the convergence of development and security discourses, and raises important questions about the purpose and value of criminological engagements with transnational policing fields.

The idea of ‘speaking truths to power’ (as opposed to a single ‘truth’) is illustrated by the author’s fieldwork, covering active police capacity building projects implemented by international development agencies. Both studies illustrate that global power inequalities affect police reform projects, but also that nodal opportunities exist for seemingly disempowered stakeholders, specifically international development workers and rank-and-file police officers to mediate their effects. This mediatory role is analysed through the conceptual lens of ‘policy translation’, providing an innovative framework for interpreting how policy meaning and content are altered as a result of their transmission between contexts.

Through detailed and persuasive investigation, Speaking Truths to Power argues that it is time for criminologists to look beyond the established structural critiques of transnational policing power in order to ensure that this growing body of research reflects the diverse interests, experiences, and understandings of the agents and institutions who collectively populate these fields of policy and practice. Conceptually sophisticated and thematically ambitious, the book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of criminology, sociaology, international relations and socio-legal studies as well as those who are researching and studying transnational policing, police reform, and the global governance of crime” From Publisher’s Website.

Structure Matters: Predicting Juvenile Justice System Behavior, by LaNina N. Cooke. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2015. 164p.

“Cooke examines the value of ecological structures in predicting juvenile justice system behavior, specifically during risk assessment, prosecution, and sanction determination. Her analysis considers religious establishments, public housing sites, and retail liquor stores as the ecological indicators and views them as stigmatizing and determinant of system behavior Through aggregating ecological, legal, and demographic data by zip code, the examination determined (a) associations between social ecology and juvenile justice decision points and (b) the degree to which juvenile probation officers and judges were more stringent and judgmental toward delinquents from neighborhoods with greater concentrations of the analyzed ecological structures.” From Publisher’s Website.

Terrorism and the Economy: Impacts on the Capital Market and the Global Tourism Industry, edited by Karin Glaser. The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2015. 190p.

“This unique anthology provides insight into the dynamics that shape the relationship between terrorism and the economy. The economic base of the Islamic State is addressed as well as its impacts on the economies of Syria and Iraq. Further contributions focus on the stock market and the tourism industry as these branches are most affected by terrorism and political violence. The book presents several case studies from around the globe which acknowledge the specific similarities and differences of terrorist activity in individual countries or conflict settings. By uniting the work of established scholars, practitioners, and young contributors, the book explores and explains a wide range of economic impacts of terrorism. Thereby, the authors provide guidance for the assessment of potential impacts.” From Publisher’s Website.

This is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927, by Brent M.S. Campney. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 296p.

“Often defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere. Brent M. S. Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of freedom with an in-depth study of assaults both active and threatened faced by African Americans in post–Civil War Kansas.

Campney’s capacious definition of white-on-black violence encompasses not only sensational demonstrations of white power like lynchings and race riots, but acts of threatened violence and the varied forms of pervasive routine violence–property damage, rape, forcible ejection from towns–used to intimidate African Americans. As he shows, such methods were a cornerstone of efforts to impose and maintain white supremacy. Yet Campney’s broad consideration of racist violence also lends new insights into the ways people resisted threats. African Americans spontaneously hid fugitives and defused lynch mobs while also using newspapers and civil rights groups to lay the groundwork for forms of institutionalized opposition that could fight racist violence through the courts and via public opinion.

Ambitious and provocative, This Is Not Dixie rewrites fundamental narratives on mob action, race relations, African American resistance, and racism’s grim past in the heartland.” From Publisher’s Website.

Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury, by J.M. Bernstein. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 408p.

“In this unflinching look at the experience of suffering and one of its greatest manifestations—torture—J.M. Bernstein critiques the repressions of traditional moral theory, showing that our morals are not immutable ideals but fragile constructions that depend on our experience of suffering itself. Morals, Bernstein argues, not only guide our conduct but also express the depth of mutual dependence that we share as vulnerable and injurable individuals.

Beginning with the attempts to abolish torture in the eighteenth century, and then sensitively examining what is suffered in torture and related transgressions, such as rape, Bernstein elaborates a powerful new conception of moral injury. Crucially, he shows, moral injury always involves an injury to the status of an individual as a person—it is a violent assault against his or her dignity. Elaborating on this critical element of moral injury, he demonstrates that the mutual recognitions of trust form the invisible substance of our moral lives, that dignity is a fragile social possession, and that the perspective of ourselves as potential victims is an ineliminable feature of everyday moral experience.” From Publisher’s Website.

Trafficking Justice: How Russian Police Enforce New Laws, from Crime to Courtroom, by Lauren A. McCarthy. Ithaca, NY: London: Cornell University Press, 2015. 304p.

“Using a combination of interview data, participant observation, and an original dataset of more than 5,500 Russian news media articles on human trafficking cases, McCarthy explores how trafficking cases make their way through the criminal justice system, covering multiple forms of the crime—sexual, labor, and child trafficking—over the period 2003–2013. She argues that to understand how law enforcement agencies have dealt with trafficking, it is critical to understand how their “institutional machinery”—the incentives, culture, and structure of their organizations—channels decision-making on human trafficking cases toward a familiar set of routines and practices and away from using the new law. As a result, law enforcement often chooses to charge and prosecute traffickers with related crimes, such as kidnapping or recruitment into prostitution, rather than under the 2003 trafficking law because these other charges are more familiar and easier to bring to a successful resolution. In other words, after ten years of practice, Russian law enforcement has settled on a policy of prosecuting traffickers, not trafficking.” From Publisher’s Website.

Understanding Suicide Terrorism: Psychosocial Dynamics, edited by Updesh Kumar and Manas K. Mandal. Los Angeles: Sage, 2015. 300p.

“This book is a comprehensive compilation of articles by experts in the field of suicide terrorism from across the world and across disciplines with a focus on suicide missions. It provides an insightful perspective on suicide terror as a phenomenon and as a process, and suggests psychosocial pathways for understanding the enigma that suicide terror poses.

Understanding Suicide Terrorism delves upon the enigmatic issue of suicide terrorism. The book is an interdisciplinary multi-faceted venture that brings together scholarly work from across the world, across cultures and societies on the issue of suicide terror. The common thread weaving through all the articles is the notion of suicide terror as a complex phenomenon that defies easy explanation, prediction or controllability. Informed by theoretical stances of not only psychological sciences, but other social sciences like political science, criminology, military and sociology the book is an insightful reading.” From Publisher’s Website.

Undocumented Immigrants in an Era of Arbitrary Law: The Flight and the Plight of People Deemed “Illegal”, by Robert F. Barsky. Abingdon, Oxon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2015. 220p.

“This book describes the experiences of undocumented migrants, all around the world, bringing to life the challenges they face from the moment they consider leaving their country of origin, until the time they are deported back to it. Drawing on a broad array of academic studies, including law, interpretation and translation studies, border studies, human rights, communication, critical discourse analysis and sociology, Robert Barsky argues that the arrays of actions that are taken against undocumented migrants are often arbitrary, and exercised by an array of officials who can and do exercise considerable discretion, both positive and negative.

Employing insights from a decade-long research project, Barsky also finds that every stop along the migrant’s pathway into, and inside of, the host country is strewn with language issues, relating to intercultural communication, interpretation, gossip, hearsay, and the challenges of peddling of linguistic wares in the social discourse marketplace. These language issues are almost always impediments to anodyne or productive interactions with host country officials, particularly on the “front-lines” where migrants encounter border patrol and law enforcement officers without adequate means of communicating their situation or understanding their rights. Since undocumented people are categorized as ‘illegal’, they can be subjected to abuse and exploitation by host country officials, who can choose to either tolerate or punish them on the basis of unpredictable, changeable, and even illusory or “arbitrary” laws and regulations.

Citing experts at every level of the undocumented immigrant apparatuses worldwide, from public defenders to interpreters, Barsky concludes that the only viable policy to address prevailing abuses and inequalities is to move towards open borders, an approach that would address prevailing issues and, surprisingly, provide security and economic benefits to both host and home countries.” From Publisher’s Website.

White Privilege and Black Rights: The Injustice of U.S. Police Racial Profiling and Homicide, by Naomi Zack. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. 154p.

“Examining racial profiling in American policing, Naomi Zack argues against white privilege discourse while introducing a new theory of applicative justice. Zack draws clear lines between rights and privileges and between justice and existing laws to make sense of the current crisis. This urgent and immediate analysis of the killings of unarmed black men by police officers shows how racial profiling matches statistics of the prison population with disregard for the constitutional rights of the many innocent people of all races. Moving the discussion from white privilege discourse to the rights of blacks, from ideas of white supremacy to legally protected police impunity, and from ideal and non-ideal justice theory to existing injustice, White Privilege and Black Rights examines the legal structure that has permitted the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and others. Deepening understanding without abandoning hope, Zack shows why it is more important to consider black rights than white privilege as we move forward through today’s culture of inequality.” From Publisher’s Website.

Why “Good Kids” Turn into Deadly Terrorists: Deconstructing the Accused Boston Marathon Bombers and Others Like Them, by Alice LoCiccerro. Santa Monica, CA: Praeger, 2015. 178p.

“The shock of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings was soon followed by a revelation initially disturbing and mystifying: two apparently unremarkable brothers—one a teenager, the other a young adult; both well-liked immigrants and longtime U.S. residents—had allegedly triggered the bombs. Why were these two seemingly “normal” individuals driven to commit such acts of coldblooded violence? This book examines not only the lives, motivations, and key influences of these infamous brothers, but those of other young, unexpected terrorists worldwide, comparing factors that contributed to their decisions to become terrorists and identifying methods used to recruit them into that deadly fold.

The chapters teach readers warning signs that youths are being drawn in to terrorism and serve to spur meaningful conversations among citizens, politicians, and policymakers about what we can do to prevent such recruitment of youths and young adults, including other U.S. residents who might consider emulating the Tsarnaev brothers. The book also addresses larger, related questions, such as whether humans are naturally violent, who benefits when young individuals engage in terrorism, and why minors are recruited to become killers.” From Publisher’s Website.

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