The Machinery of Criminal Justice

The Machinery of Criminal Justice PDF Author: Stephanos Bibas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190236760
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Two centuries ago, American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But since then, lawyers have gradually taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting plea bargaining for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a result, victims rarely hear defendants express remorse and apologize, and defendants rarely receive forgiveness. This lawyerized machinery has purchased efficient, speedy processing of many cases at the price of sacrificing softer values, such as reforming defendants and healing wounded victims and relationships. In other words, the U.S. legal system has bought quantity at the price of quality, without recognizing either the trade-off or the great gulf separating lawyers' and laymen's incentives, values, and powers. In The Machinery of Criminal Justice, author Stephanos Bibas surveys the developments over the last two centuries, considers what we have lost in our quest for efficient punishment, and suggests ways to include victims, defendants, and the public once again. Ideas range from requiring convicts to work or serve in the military, to moving power from prosecutors to restorative sentencing juries. Bibas argues that doing so might cost more, but it would better serve criminal procedure's interests in denouncing crime, vindicating victims, reforming wrongdoers, and healing the relationships torn by crime.

The Machinery of Criminal Justice

The Machinery of Criminal Justice PDF Author: Stephanos Bibas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190236760
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Two centuries ago, American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But since then, lawyers have gradually taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting plea bargaining for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a result, victims rarely hear defendants express remorse and apologize, and defendants rarely receive forgiveness. This lawyerized machinery has purchased efficient, speedy processing of many cases at the price of sacrificing softer values, such as reforming defendants and healing wounded victims and relationships. In other words, the U.S. legal system has bought quantity at the price of quality, without recognizing either the trade-off or the great gulf separating lawyers' and laymen's incentives, values, and powers. In The Machinery of Criminal Justice, author Stephanos Bibas surveys the developments over the last two centuries, considers what we have lost in our quest for efficient punishment, and suggests ways to include victims, defendants, and the public once again. Ideas range from requiring convicts to work or serve in the military, to moving power from prosecutors to restorative sentencing juries. Bibas argues that doing so might cost more, but it would better serve criminal procedure's interests in denouncing crime, vindicating victims, reforming wrongdoers, and healing the relationships torn by crime.

The Machinery of Criminal Justice

The Machinery of Criminal Justice PDF Author: Stephanos Bibas
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195374681
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Two centuries ago the criminal justice system was primarily run by laymen. In court, victims and defendants interacted face to face while lay jurors from the community sat in judgment. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, denounced guilty defendants, and reconciled and healed wounded relationships. But over the last two centuries, lawyers have taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting a plea-bargaining system for voice of the jury. This lawyerized machinery has purchased efficient, speedy processing of many cases at the price of sacrificing softer values, such as reforming defendants and healing wounded victims and relationships. In other words, the U.S. legal system has bought quantity at the price of quality, without recognizing either the trade-off or the great gulf separating lawyers' and laymen's incentives, interests, values, and powers. The Machinery of Criminal Justice explores these trends and considers how criminal justice could better accommodate lay participation, values, and relationships.

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

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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.

Punishment Without Crime

Punishment Without Crime PDF Author: Alexandra Natapoff
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093809
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A revelatory account of the misdemeanor machine that unjustly brands millions of Americans as criminals. Punishment Without Crime offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massive petty offense system that produces over 13 million cases each year. People arrested for minor crimes are swept through courts where defendants often lack lawyers, judges process cases in mere minutes, and nearly everyone pleads guilty. This misdemeanor machine starts punishing people long before they are convicted; it punishes the innocent; and it punishes conduct that never should have been a crime. As a result, vast numbers of Americans -- most of them poor and people of color -- are stigmatized as criminals, impoverished through fines and fees, and stripped of drivers' licenses, jobs, and housing. For too long, misdemeanors have been ignored. But they are crucial to understanding our punitive criminal system and our widening economic and racial divides. A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018

Comparative Criminology in Asia

Comparative Criminology in Asia PDF Author: Jianhong Liu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319549421
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
This edited volume presents the diversity of comparative criminology research in Asia, and the complex theoretical and methodological issues involved in conducting comparative research. With contributors both from the West and the East exploring these questions, the Editors have created a balanced resource, as well as set an agenda for future research. The increasing pace of globalization means that researchers should be armed with an understanding of how criminal justice systems work across the world. In the past, comparative research largely compared Western countries to each other, or involve d researchers from a Western perspective examining an Asian country, with models and theories developed in the West considered to have universal applications. This work aims to correct that gap, by providing a critical examination of comparative research, presenting quantitative and qualitative research data, and asking new questions that challenge prevailing research norms and provide an agenda for future research. This work will be of interest for researchers across the field of Criminology, particularly those with an interest in International and Comparative Research, research on or about Asia, and related disciplines such as Sociology, Demography, and Social Policy. “This fine collection that goes to the rich distinctiveness of Asian criminology. The editors have brought together a wonderful collection of authors mainly from the region. The distinctiveness of values and relational practices in Asia are recurrent themes that are well developed in this book and help us to make sense of patterns of crime and criminal justice in Asia.” John Braithwaite, Australian National University “What theoretical, methodological, and practical issues must we confront in conducting cross-cultural studies encompassing Western and Asian countries? Comparative Criminology in Asia discusses these issues and presents exemplary comparative research. The introductory chapter and the introduction to each part by the co-editors are lucid and highly educational. This collection must be required reading for every serious scholar and aspiring graduate student in Asian countries so that criminological and criminal justice studies will be brought to a much higher level o f sophistication.” Setsuo Miyazawa, UC Hastings “Can there be – and should there be -- a distinctive Asian criminology? What would this involve? The answer depends on what one thinks of the universalistic explanatory claims of Western criminology. Will these claims become self- fulfilling as these societies add to colonial influences a more deliberate borrowing of criminal justice models and established ways of pursuing discipline of criminology? Or will a more critical spirit prevail? This welcome edited collection by Liu, Travers and Chang provides an excellent starting point for reflecting on these and other questions. Rather than attempting to provide descriptions of the variety of similarities and differences in this region (though there are some fascinating case studies of these) the focus is even more on exploring the theoretical approa ches and methodologies used in comparing institutional and cultural differences by Asian criminologists and others.” David Nelken, King’s College, London “Criminologists can no longer ignore the impact of globalization on the pattern and amount of crime as we experienced recently, nor can we ignore the global change of criminal justice policies to deal with crime. There is, therefore, a desperate need to collect data on how crime and criminal justice are influenced by globalization across Asian countries. On the other hand, there are debates on the issue of culture-specific vs. pan-culture theories of crime. This collection addresses both issues in an interesting way. Its publication is timely and welcome.” Chuen-Jim Sheu, National Taipei University

Rights, Deportation, and Detention in the Age of Immigration Control

Rights, Deportation, and Detention in the Age of Immigration Control PDF Author: Tom K. Wong
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080479457X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Immigration is among the most prominent, enduring, and contentious features of our globalized world. Yet, there is little systematic, cross-national research on why countries "do what they do" when it comes to their immigration policies. Rights, Deportation, and Detention in the Age of Immigration Control addresses this gap by examining what are arguably the most contested and dynamic immigration policies—immigration control—across 25 immigrant-receiving countries, including the U.S. and most of the European Union. The book addresses head on three of the most salient aspects of immigration control: the denial of rights to non-citizens, their physical removal and exclusion from the polity through deportation, and their deprivation of liberty and freedom of movement in immigration detention. In addition to answering the question of why states do what they do, the book describes contemporary trends in what Tom K. Wong refers to as the machinery of immigration control, analyzes the determinants of these trends using a combination of quantitative analysis and fieldwork, and explores whether efforts to deter unwanted immigration are actually working.

Criminal Justice in America

Criminal Justice in America PDF Author: Roscoe Pound
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412820653
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Roscoe Pound believed that unless the criminal justice system maintains stability while adapting to change, it will either fossilize or be subject to the whims of public opinion. In Criminal Justice in America, Pound recognizes the dangers law faces when it does not keep pace with societal change. When the home, neighborhood, and religion are no longer capable of social control, increased conflicts arise, laws proliferate, and new menaces wrought by technology, drugs, and juvenile delinquency flourish. Where Pound saw the influence of the motion pictures as part of the "multiplication of the agencies of menace," today we might cite television and the Internet. His point still holds true: The "old machinery" cannot meet the evolving needs of society. In Criminal Justice in America, Pound points out that one aspect of the criminal justice problem is a rigid mechanical approach that resists change. The other dimension of the problem is that change, when it comes, will result from the pressure of public opinion. Justice suffers when the public is moved by the oldest of public feelings, vengeance. This can result in citizens taking the law into their own hands—from tax evasion to mob lynchings—as well as in altering the judicial system—from sensationalizing trials to producing wrongful convictions. Ron Christenson, in his new introduction, discusses the evolution of Roscoe Pound's career and thought. Pound's theories on jurisprudence were remarkably prescient. They continue to gain resonance as crimes become more and more sensationalized by the media. Criminal Justice in America is a fascinating study that should be read by legal scholars and professionals, sociologists, political theorists, and philosophers.

Machinery of Death

Machinery of Death PDF Author: David Dow
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415932677
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Usual Cruelty

Usual Cruelty PDF Author: Alec Karakatsanis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781620979143
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A "searing, searching, and eloquent" (Martha Minow, Harvard Law School) investigation into the role of the legal profession in perpetuating mass incarceration--now in an accessible paperback format from the award-winning civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings--an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color, for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification. Usual Cruelty offers a radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively--and wildly successfully--challenging it. Hailed by luminaries from James Forman Jr. and Vanita Gupta to U.S. Circuit Judge Bernice Donald, and MacArthur Award-winning poet and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts, Usual Cruelty offers a condemnation of the whole deplorable enterprise, starting with profound questions about the specific things our system chooses to criminalize (marijuana plants, low-level gambling, petty theft) versus those we don't (tobacco plants, high-level gambling by bankers, massive wage theft by employers). It calls out a bail system that charges people money to go free despite the lack of any evidence this will make them more likely to show up in court or make anybody safer. And it explores the everyday brutality of our courts, prisons, and jails, and the ways in which the legal profession has allowed itself to become desensitized to the everyday pain these institutions inflict on our most vulnerable populations. Now in an accessible paperback format, Usual Cruelty will cement Karakatsanis's reputation as one of the most inspiring civil rights lawyers of our time.

The Supreme Court’s Role in Mass Incarceration

The Supreme Court’s Role in Mass Incarceration PDF Author: William T. Pizzi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000180468
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
The Supreme Court’s Role in Mass Incarceration illuminates the role of the United States Supreme Court’s criminal procedure revolution as a contributing factor to the rise in U.S. incarceration rates. Noting that the increase in mass incarceration began climbing just after the Warren Court years and continued to climb for the next four decades—despite the substantial decline in the crime rate—the author posits that part of the explanation is the Court’s failure to understand that a trial system with robust rights for defendants is not a strong trial system unless it is also reliable and efficient. There have been many explanations offered for the sudden and steep escalation in the U.S. incarceration rate, such as "it was the war on drugs" to "it was our harsh sentencing statutes." Those explanations have been shown to be inadequate. This book contends that we have overlooked a more powerful force in the rise of our incarceration rate—the long line of Supreme Court decisions, starting in the Warren Court era, that made the criminal justice system so complicated and expensive that it no longer serves to protect defendants. For the vast majority of defendants, their constitutional rights are irrelevant, as they are forced to accept plea bargains or face the prospect of a comparatively harsh sentence, if convicted. The prospect of a trial, once an important restraint on prosecutors in charging, has disappeared and plea-bargaining rules. This book is essential reading for both graduate and undergraduate students in corrections and criminal justice courses as well as judges, attorneys, and others working in the criminal justice system.