Not a Crime to Be Poor

Not a Crime to Be Poor PDF Author: Peter Edelman
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 162097553X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
Awarded "Special Recognition" by the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism Awards Finalist for the American Bar Association's 2018 Silver Gavel Book Award Named one of the "10 books to read after you've read Evicted" by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the demands of social justice in America."—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy Winner of a special Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the book that Evicted author Matthew Desmond calls "a powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty . . . lucid and troubling" In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn't just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city's poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors' prisons of the twenty-first century. The anti-tax revolution that began with the Reagan era led state and local governments, starved for revenues, to squeeze ordinary people, collect fines and fees to the tune of 10 million people who now owe $50 billion. Nor is the criminalization of poverty confined to money. Schoolchildren are sent to court for playground skirmishes that previously sent them to the principal's office. Women are evicted from their homes for calling the police too often to ask for protection from domestic violence. The homeless are arrested for sleeping in the park or urinating in public. A former aide to Robert F. Kennedy and senior official in the Clinton administration, Peter Edelman has devoted his life to understanding the causes of poverty. As Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy has said, "No one has been more committed to struggles against impoverishment and its cruel consequences than Peter Edelman." And former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes, "If there is one essential book on the great tragedy of poverty and inequality in America, this is it."

Not a Crime to Be Poor

Not a Crime to Be Poor PDF Author: Peter Edelman
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 162097553X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
Awarded "Special Recognition" by the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism Awards Finalist for the American Bar Association's 2018 Silver Gavel Book Award Named one of the "10 books to read after you've read Evicted" by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the demands of social justice in America."—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy Winner of a special Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the book that Evicted author Matthew Desmond calls "a powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty . . . lucid and troubling" In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn't just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city's poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors' prisons of the twenty-first century. The anti-tax revolution that began with the Reagan era led state and local governments, starved for revenues, to squeeze ordinary people, collect fines and fees to the tune of 10 million people who now owe $50 billion. Nor is the criminalization of poverty confined to money. Schoolchildren are sent to court for playground skirmishes that previously sent them to the principal's office. Women are evicted from their homes for calling the police too often to ask for protection from domestic violence. The homeless are arrested for sleeping in the park or urinating in public. A former aide to Robert F. Kennedy and senior official in the Clinton administration, Peter Edelman has devoted his life to understanding the causes of poverty. As Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy has said, "No one has been more committed to struggles against impoverishment and its cruel consequences than Peter Edelman." And former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes, "If there is one essential book on the great tragedy of poverty and inequality in America, this is it."

The Right Not to be Criminalized

The Right Not to be Criminalized PDF Author: Dennis J. Baker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317017773
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents arguments and proposals for constraining criminalization, with a focus on the legal limits of the criminal law. The book approaches the issue by showing how the moral criteria for constraining unjust criminalization can and has been incorporated into constitutional human rights and thus provides a legal right not to be unfairly criminalized. The book sets out the constitutional limits of the substantive criminal law. As far as specific constitutional rights operate to protect specific freedoms, for example, free speech, freedom of religion, privacy, etc, the right not to be criminalized has proved to be a rather powerful justice constraint in the U.S. Yet the general right not to be criminalized has not been fully embraced in either the U.S. or Europe, although it does exist. This volume lays out the legal foundations of that right and the criteria for determining when the state might override it. The book will be of interest to researchers in the areas of legal philosophy, criminal law, constitutional law, and criminology.

Not Guilty

Not Guilty PDF Author: Daniel Givelber
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814732178
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A brilliant book that masterfully debunks the conventional wisdom that those who are charged with crimes in our criminal justice system, even when they are acquitted at trial, are almost certainly guilty. It is a data-driven tour de force.” --Richard A. Leo, author of Police Interrogation and American Justice “Givelber and Farrell make a persuasive case that most jury acquittals are based on evidence not emotion, and that acquittals should be taken to mean what they say: that the defendant is Not Guilty.” --Samuel Gross, co-author of A Modern Approach to Evidence: Text, Problems, Transcripts, and Cases 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 factors that lead juries to find defendants “not guilty,” as well as the connection between those factors and the possibility of factual innocence, examining why some criminal trials result in not guilty verdicts and what those verdicts suggest about the accuracy of our criminal process.

Rap on Trial

Rap on Trial PDF Author: Erik Nielson
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620973413
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Get Book Here

Book Description
A groundbreaking exposé about the alarming use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence to convict and incarcerate young men of color Should Johnny Cash have been charged with murder after he sang, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"? Few would seriously subscribe to this notion of justice. Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted liberally from his album Shell Shocked. Mac was sentenced to thirty years in prison, where he remains. And his case is just one of many nationwide. Over the last three decades, as rap became increasingly popular, prosecutors saw an opportunity: they could present the sometimes violent, crime-laden lyrics of amateur rappers as confessions to crimes, threats of violence, evidence of gang affiliation, or revelations of criminal motive—and judges and juries would go along with it. Detectives have reopened cold cases on account of rap lyrics and videos alone, and prosecutors have secured convictions by presenting such lyrics and videos of rappers as autobiography. Now, an alarming number of aspiring rappers are imprisoned. No other form of creative expression is treated this way in the courts. Rap on Trial places this disturbing practice in the context of hip hop history and exposes what's at stake. It's a gripping, timely exploration at the crossroads of contemporary hip hop and mass incarceration.

"Illegal But Not Criminal"

Author: John E. Conklin
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Collapse of American Criminal Justice

The Collapse of American Criminal Justice PDF Author: William J. Stuntz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674051750
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

Get Book Here

Book Description
Rule of law has vanished in America’s criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide whom to punish; most accused never face a jury; policing is inconsistent; plea bargaining is rampant; and draconian sentencing fills prisons with mostly minority defendants. A leading criminal law scholar looks to history for the roots of these problems—and solutions.

Out-of-Control Criminal Justice

Out-of-Control Criminal Justice PDF Author: Daniel P. Mears
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110716169X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book shows how to reduce out-of-control criminal justice and create greater public safety, justice, and accountability at less cost.

Hearings

Hearings PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1358

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination and Criminal Justice

The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination and Criminal Justice PDF Author: Andrew Choo
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1782253211
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Get Book Here

Book Description
The privilege against self-incrimination is often represented in the case law of England and Wales as a principle of fundamental importance in the law of criminal procedure and evidence. A logical implication of recognising a privilege against self-incrimination should be that a person is not compellable, on pain of a criminal sanction, to provide information that could reasonably lead to, or increase the likelihood of, her or his prosecution for a criminal offence. Yet there are statutory provisions in England and Wales making it a criminal offence not to provide particular information that, if provided, could be used in a subsequent prosecution of the person providing it. This book examines the operation of the privilege against self-incrimination in criminal proceedings in England and Wales, paying particular attention to the influence of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. Among the questions addressed are how the privilege might be justified, and whether its scope is clarified sufficiently in the relevant case law (does the privilege apply, for example, to pre-existing material?). Consideration is given where appropriate to the treatment of aspects of the privilege in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the USA and elsewhere.

Criminal Law and the Man Problem

Criminal Law and the Man Problem PDF Author: Ngaire Naffine
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509918027
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
Men have always dominated the most basic precepts of the criminal legal world – its norms, its priorities and its character. Men have been the regulators and the regulated: the main subjects and objects of criminal law and by far the more dangerous sex. And yet men, as men, are still hardly talked about as the determining force within criminal law or in its exegesis. This book brings men into sharp focus, as the pervasively powerful interest group, whose wants and preoccupations have shaped the discipline. This constitutes the 'man problem' of criminal law. This new analysis probes the unacknowledged thinking of generations of influential legal men, which includes the psychological and legal techniques that have obscured the operation of bias, even to the legal experts themselves. It explains how men's interests have influenced the most cherished legal norms, especially the rules of human contact, which were designed to protect men from other men, while specifically securing lawful sexual access to at least one woman. The aim is to test the discipline's broadest commitments to civility, and its trajectory towards the final resolution, when men and women were declared to be equal and equivalent legal persons. In the process it exposes the morally and intellectually limiting consequences of male power.