As scores of death row inmates are exonerated by DNA evidence and innocence commissions are set up across the country, conviction of the innocent has become a well-recognized problem. But our justice system makes both kinds of errors—we acquit the guilty and convict the innocent—and exploring the reasons why people are acquitted can help us to evaluate the efficiency and fairness of our criminal justice system. Not Guilty provides a sustained examination and analysis of the...
Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list for 2013 The development of a legal regime to combat domestic violence in the United States has been lauded as one of the feminist movement’s greatest triumphs. But, Leigh Goodmark argues, the resulting system is deeply flawed in ways that prevent it from assisting many women subjected to abuse. The current legal response to domestic violence is excessively focused on physical violence; this narrow definition of abuse fails to provide...
With the rise of surveillance technology in the last decade, police departments now have an array of sophisticated tools for tracking, monitoring, even predicting crime patterns. In particular crime mapping, a technique used by the police to monitor crime by the neighborhoods in their geographic regions, has become a regular and relied-upon feature of policing. Many claim that these technological developments played a role in the crime drop of the 1990s, and yet no study of these techniques and...
Despite increasingracial tolerance and national diversity, neighborhood segregation remains avery real problem in cities across America. Scholars, government officials, andthe general public have long attempted to understand why segregation persistsdespite efforts to combat it, traditionally focusing on the issue of “whiteflight,” or the idea that white residents will move to other areas if theirneighborhood becomes integrated. In HateThy Neighbor, Jeannine Bell expands upon...
The Constitution of the United States guarantees all Americans certain rights, such as the freedoms of speech and religious expression. But what guarantees our sexual freedoms? Sexual Rights in America presents a bold and intriguing look at the constitutional basis of sexual rights in America. Resurrecting the «forgotten» Ninth Amendment, which guarantees those fundamental rights not protected elsewhere in the Constitution, Abramson and colleagues argue that the freedom to choose how, when,...
Arizona’s controversial new immigration bill is just the latest of many steps in the new criminalization of immigrants. While many cite the presumed criminality of illegal aliens as an excuse for ever-harsher immigration policies, it has in fact been well-established that immigrants commit less crime, and in particular less violent crime, than the native-born and that their presence in communities is not associated with higher crime rates. Punishing Immigrants moves beyond debunking...
There is hardly a struggle aimed at upholding and extending therights embedded in the U.S. Constitution in which the Centerfor Constitutional Rights (CCR) has not played a central role,and yet few people have ever heard of it. Whether defendingthe rights of black people in the South, opponents of the war inVietnam and victims of torture worldwide, or fighting illegalactions of the U.S. government, the CCR has stood ready totake on all comers, regardless of their power and wealth. Whenthe United...
The number of people incarcerated in the U.S. now exceeds 2.3 million, due in part to the increasing criminalization of drug use: over 25% of people incarcerated in jails and prisons are there for drug offenses. Judging Addicts examines this increased criminalization of drugs and the medicalization of addiction in the U.S. by focusing on drug courts, where defendants are sent to drug treatment instead of prison. Rebecca Tiger explores how advocates of these courts make their case for what they...
In a country long associated with the trade in opiates, the Chinese government has for decades applied extreme measures to curtail the spread of illicit drugs, only to find that the problem has worsened. Burma is blamed as the major producer of illicit drugs and conduit for the entry of drugs into China. Which organizations are behind the heroin trade? What problems and prospects of drug control in the so-called “Golden Triangle” drug-trafficking region are faced by Chinese...