Social Worlds of Sentencing

Social Worlds of Sentencing PDF Author: Jeffery T. Ulmer
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791434970
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Combines quantitative and qualitative data in a careful investigation of sentencing processes and context under Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines.

Social Worlds of Sentencing

Social Worlds of Sentencing PDF Author: Jeffery T. Ulmer
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791434970
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Combines quantitative and qualitative data in a careful investigation of sentencing processes and context under Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines.

Divergent Social Worlds

Divergent Social Worlds PDF Author: Ruth D. Peterson
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610446771
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
More than half a century after the first Jim Crow laws were dismantled, the majority of urban neighborhoods in the United States remain segregated by race. The degree of social and economic advantage or disadvantage that each community experiences—particularly its crime rate—is most often a reflection of which group is in the majority. As Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo note in Divergent Social Worlds, "Race, place, and crime are still inextricably linked in the minds of the public." This book broadens the scope of single-city, black/white studies by using national data to compare local crime patterns in five racially distinct types of neighborhoods. Peterson and Krivo meticulously demonstrate how residential segregation creates and maintains inequality in neighborhood crime rates. Based on the authors' groundbreaking National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS), Divergent Social Worlds provides a more complete picture of the social conditions underlying neighborhood crime patterns than has ever before been drawn. The study includes economic, social, and local investment data for nearly nine thousand neighborhoods in eighty-seven cities, and the findings reveal a pattern across neighborhoods of racialized separation among unequal groups. Residential segregation reproduces existing privilege or disadvantage in neighborhoods—such as adequate or inadequate schools, political representation, and local business—increasing the potential for crime and instability in impoverished non-white areas yet providing few opportunities for residents to improve conditions or leave. And the numbers bear this out. Among urban residents, more than two-thirds of all whites, half of all African Americans, and one-third of Latinos live in segregated local neighborhoods. More than 90 percent of white neighborhoods have low poverty, but this is only true for one quarter of black, Latino, and minority areas. Of the five types of neighborhoods studied, African American communities experience violent crime on average at a rate five times that of their white counterparts, with violence rates for Latino, minority, and integrated neighborhoods falling between the two extremes. Divergent Social Worlds lays to rest the popular misconception that persistently high crime rates in impoverished, non-white neighborhoods are merely the result of individual pathologies or, worse, inherent group criminality. Yet Peterson and Krivo also show that the reality of crime inequality in urban neighborhoods is no less alarming. Separate, the book emphasizes, is inherently unequal. Divergent Social Worlds lays the groundwork for closing the gap—and for next steps among organizers, policymakers, and future researchers. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology

Privilege and Punishment

Privilege and Punishment PDF Author: Matthew Clair
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069123387X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
How the attorney-client relationship favors the privileged in criminal court—and denies justice to the poor and to working-class people of color The number of Americans arrested, brought to court, and incarcerated has skyrocketed in recent decades. Criminal defendants come from all races and economic walks of life, but they experience punishment in vastly different ways. Privilege and Punishment examines how racial and class inequalities are embedded in the attorney-client relationship, providing a devastating portrait of inequality and injustice within and beyond the criminal courts. Matthew Clair conducted extensive fieldwork in the Boston court system, attending criminal hearings and interviewing defendants, lawyers, judges, police officers, and probation officers. In this eye-opening book, he uncovers how privilege and inequality play out in criminal court interactions. When disadvantaged defendants try to learn their legal rights and advocate for themselves, lawyers and judges often silence, coerce, and punish them. Privileged defendants, who are more likely to trust their defense attorneys, delegate authority to their lawyers, defer to judges, and are rewarded for their compliance. Clair shows how attempts to exercise legal rights often backfire on the poor and on working-class people of color, and how effective legal representation alone is no guarantee of justice. Superbly written and powerfully argued, Privilege and Punishment draws needed attention to the injustices that are perpetuated by the attorney-client relationship in today’s criminal courts, and describes the reforms needed to correct them.

The Contours of Justice

The Contours of Justice PDF Author: James Eisenstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
The Contours of Justice provides a framework for describing and understanding criminal courts throughout the United States by depicting the functions of criminal courts in nine middle-sized counties in three states. It integrates concepts from each of the three traditional theoretical approaches to court analysis: the individual, organizational, and environmental approaches. The authors approach the courts as communities composed of judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys rather than as "legal institutions" applying formal law. They analyze the differences in culture, technology, physical setting, the customary ways of arriving at guilty pleas, as well as other aspects of the courts. The authors also incorporate information about the political and economic characteristics of the communities that the courts serve, along with the basic functions of scheduling cases and assigning personnel to cases. The portraits of the nine courts present the day-to-day activities of judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys that lead to the decisions about the fates of the defendants brought to the courts. This comparison not only provides a vivid picture of actual court function, but allows an assessment of the process that leads to ideas for reform.

Handbook on Punishment Decisions

Handbook on Punishment Decisions PDF Author: Jeffery T. Ulmer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315410354
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
Handbook on Punishment Decisions: Locations of Disparity provides a comprehensive assessment of the current knowledge on sites of disparity in punishment decision-making. This collection of essays and reports of original research defines disparity broadly to include the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, age, citizenship/immigration status, and socioeconomic status, and it examines dimensions such as how pretrial or guilty plea processes shape exposure to punishment, how different types of sentencing decisions and/or policy structures (sentencing guidelines, mandatory minimums, risk assessment tools) might shape and condition disparity, and how post-sentencing decisions involving probation and parole contribute to inequalities. The sixteen contributions pull together what we know and what we don’t about punishment decision-making and plow new ground for further advances in the field. The ASC Division on Corrections & Sentencing Handbook Series publishes volumes on topics ranging from violence risk assessment to specialty courts for drug users, veterans, or people with mental illness. Each thematic volume focuses on a single topical issue that intersects with corrections and sentencing research.

Crime and Punishment in America

Crime and Punishment in America PDF Author: Elliott Currie
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250024218
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Argues that a policy of mass incarceration is ineffective and that prison expenditures could have greater impact on criminal violence if spent on prevention and rehabilitation programs.

Transforming Criminal Justice

Transforming Criminal Justice PDF Author: Jon B. Gould
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147981881X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
"America's criminal justice system requires reform, but those efforts too often rest on anecdotes or assumptions. Drawing on the contributions of America's top justice researchers, this compendium provides an evidence-based blueprint to guide the movement toward criminal justice reform"--

Selective Incapacitation and Public Policy

Selective Incapacitation and Public Policy PDF Author: Kathleen Auerhahn
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486419
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
From the 1970s to the new millennium, the prison population in the United States has quadrupled while an unprecedented amount of sentencing reform has taken place, largely intended to protect the public from dangerous criminals. This book details the California experience, including the history and politics of criminal sentencing policy reform, as well as the consequences of this activity to the criminal justice system. Using cutting-edge computer simulation modeling, Kathleen Auerhahn explores the impact that sentencing reforms dating back to the 1970s have had on the composition and structure of the criminal justice system, with specific focus on prison populations. She illustrates how dynamic systems simulation modeling is used to both examine "possible futures" under a variety of sentencing structures and sentencing policy alternatives, including narrowing "strike zones" and the early release of elderly offenders, in order to more effectively target the dangerous criminals these policies promise to remove from society via incarceration.

Judging Juveniles

Judging Juveniles PDF Author: Aaron Kupchik
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814747744
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
2007 Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award presented by the American Society of Criminology 2007 American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang Award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Research in Criminology By comparing how adolescents are prosecuted and punished in juvenile and criminal (adult) courts, Aaron Kupchik finds that prosecuting adolescents in criminal court does not fit with our cultural understandings of youthfulness. As a result, adolescents who are transferred to criminal courts are still judged as juveniles. Ultimately, Kupchik makes a compelling argument for the suitability of juvenile courts in treating adolescents. Judging Juveniles suggests that justice would be better served if adolescents were handled by the system designed to address their special needs.

Routledge Handbook on American Prisons

Routledge Handbook on American Prisons PDF Author: Laurie A. Gould
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429674473
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook on American Prisons is an authoritative volume that provides an overview of the state of U.S. prisons and synthesizes the research on the many facets of the prison system. The United States is exceptional in its use of incarceration as punishment. It not only has the largest prison population in the world, but also the highest per-capita incarceration rate. Research and debate about mass incarceration continues to grow, with mounting bipartisan agreement on the need for criminal justice reform. Divided into four sections (Prisons: Security, Operations and Administration; Types of Offenders and Populations; Living and Dying in Prison; and Release, Reentry, and Reform), the volume explores the key issues fundamental to understanding the U.S. prison system, including the characteristics of facilities; inmate risk assessment and classification, prison administration and employment, for-profit prisons, special populations, overcrowding, prison health care, prison violence, the special circumstances of death row prisoners, collateral consequences of incarceration, prison programming, and parole. The final section examines reform efforts and ideas, and offers suggestions for future research and attention. With contributions from leading correctional scholars, this book is a valuable resource for scholars with an interest in U.S. prisons and the issues surrounding them. It is structured to serve scholars and graduate students studying corrections, penology, institutional corrections, and other related topics.