Cruel and Unusual

Cruel and Unusual PDF Author: Anne-Marie Cusac
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300155492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
The statistics are startling. Since 1973, America’s imprisonment rate has multiplied over five times to become the highest in the world. More than two million inmates reside in state and federal prisons. What does this say about our attitudes toward criminals and punishment? What does it say about us? This book explores the cultural evolution of punishment practices in the United States. Anne-Marie Cusac first looks at punishment in the nation’s early days, when Americans repudiated Old World cruelty toward criminals and emphasized rehabilitation over retribution. This attitude persisted for some 200 years, but in recent decades we have abandoned it, Cusac shows. She discusses the dramatic rise in the use of torture and restraint, corporal and capital punishment, and punitive physical pain. And she links this new climate of punishment to shifts in other aspects of American culture, including changes in dominant religious beliefs, child-rearing practices, politics, television shows, movies, and more. America now punishes harder and longer and with methods we would have rejected as cruel and unusual not long ago. These changes are profound, their impact affects all our lives, and we have yet to understand the full consequences.

Cruel and Unusual

Cruel and Unusual PDF Author: Anne-Marie Cusac
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300155492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
The statistics are startling. Since 1973, America’s imprisonment rate has multiplied over five times to become the highest in the world. More than two million inmates reside in state and federal prisons. What does this say about our attitudes toward criminals and punishment? What does it say about us? This book explores the cultural evolution of punishment practices in the United States. Anne-Marie Cusac first looks at punishment in the nation’s early days, when Americans repudiated Old World cruelty toward criminals and emphasized rehabilitation over retribution. This attitude persisted for some 200 years, but in recent decades we have abandoned it, Cusac shows. She discusses the dramatic rise in the use of torture and restraint, corporal and capital punishment, and punitive physical pain. And she links this new climate of punishment to shifts in other aspects of American culture, including changes in dominant religious beliefs, child-rearing practices, politics, television shows, movies, and more. America now punishes harder and longer and with methods we would have rejected as cruel and unusual not long ago. These changes are profound, their impact affects all our lives, and we have yet to understand the full consequences.

Unusual Punishment

Unusual Punishment PDF Author: Christopher Murray
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780874223392
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Unusual Punishment bares the explosive story of failed reform at one Washington State penitentiary as well as the complex, challenging, and painful path back from chaos.

Cruel & Unusual

Cruel & Unusual PDF Author: John D. Bessler
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1555537170
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
This indispensable history of the Eighth Amendment and the founders' views of capital punishment is also a passionate call for the abolition of the death penalty based on the notion of cruel and unusual punishment

No Cruel or Unusual Punishment

No Cruel or Unusual Punishment PDF Author: David Machajewski
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1538343118
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
When the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, it had a major flaw: it failed to acknowledge individual rights. Early Americans were not pleased. They didn't believe their new government was respecting their freedoms. Thus, the Bill of Rights was created. Readers will explore the history, significance, and controversy surrounding the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel or unusual punishment. Primary sources, sidebars, and compelling stories, demonstrate how the amendment protects, and potentially harms, criminals. Historic and present-day examples of long-standing debates about the amendment's controversial "cruel and unusual" clause further illustrate the amendment's importance.

The Story of Cruel and Unusual

The Story of Cruel and Unusual PDF Author: Colin Dayan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262260581
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
A searing indictment of the American penal system that finds the roots of the recent prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in the steady dismantling of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment. The revelations of prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib and more recently at Guantánamo were shocking to most Americans. And those who condemned the treatment of prisoners abroad have focused on U.S. military procedures and abuses of executive powers in the war on terror, or, more specifically, on the now-famous White House legal counsel memos on the acceptable limits of torture. But in The Story of Cruel and Unusual, Colin Dayan argues that anyone who has followed U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment would recognize the prisoners' treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo as a natural extension of the language of our courts and practices in U.S. prisons. In fact, it was no coincidence that White House legal counsel referred to a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s and 1990s in making its case for torture.Dayan traces the roots of "acceptable" torture to slave codes of the nineteenth century that deeply embedded the dehumanization of the incarcerated in our legal system. Although the Eighth Amendment was interpreted generously during the prisoners' rights movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, this period of judicial concern was an anomaly. Over the last thirty years, Supreme Court decisions have once again dismantled Eighth Amendment protections and rendered such words as "cruel" and "inhuman" meaningless when applied to conditions of confinement and treatment during detention. Prisoners' actual pain and suffering have been explained away in a rhetorical haze—with rationalizations, for example, that measure cruelty not by the pain or suffering inflicted, but by the intent of the person who inflicted it. The Story of Cruel and Unusual is a stunningly original work of legal scholarship, and a searing indictment of the U.S. penal system.

Unusually Cruel

Unusually Cruel PDF Author: Marc Morjé Howard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190659343
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The United States incarcerates far more people than any other country in the world, at rates nearly ten times higher than other liberal democracies. Indeed, while the U.S. is home to 5 percent of the world's population, it contains nearly 25 percent of its prisoners. But the extent of American cruelty goes beyond simply locking people up. At every stage of the criminal justice process - plea bargaining, sentencing, prison conditions, rehabilitation, parole, and societal reentry - the U.S. is harsher and more punitive than other comparable countries. In Unusually Cruel, Marc Morjé Howard argues that the American criminal justice and prison systems are exceptional - in a truly shameful way. Although other scholars have focused on the internal dynamics that have produced this massive carceral system, Howard provides the first sustained comparative analysis that shows just how far the U.S. lies outside the norm of established democracies. And, by highlighting how other countries successfully apply less punitive and more productive policies, he provides plausible solutions to addressing America's criminal justice quagmire.

The Concept of Cruel and Unusual Punishment

The Concept of Cruel and Unusual Punishment PDF Author: Larry Charles Berkson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description


Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Cruel and Unusual Punishment PDF Author: Joseph A. Melusky
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1576076059
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
In one of the lengthiest, noisiest, and hottest legal debates in U.S. history, Cruel and Unusual Punishment stands out as a levelheaded, even-handed, and thorough analysis of the issue. The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution created one of the nation's most valued freedoms but, at the same time, one of its most persistent controversies. On 184 separate occasions, the Supreme Court attempted to decide what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment." Constitutional scholars Joseph A. Melusky and Judge Keith A. Pesto help readers make sense of the controversy. The authors begin by sketching the context of the debate in a general overview that addresses issues such as excessive bails and fines, and noncapital offenses. But their primary focus is capital punishment. In a detailed, chronologically ordered discussion, they trace the evolving opinion of the nation's highest court from the late 19th century to the present, analyzing issues, arguments, holdings, and outcomes.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Cruel and Unusual Punishment PDF Author: Sanaz Alasti
Publisher: Vandeplas Pub.
ISBN: 9781600420689
Category : Capital punishment
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Cruel and unusual punishment is one of the most contentious issues in modern times. The condemnation of cruel and unusual punishment is universal. But, what exactly is cruel and unusual punishment? In national and international law the definition of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment is highly subjective. Almost all countries prohibit inhuman punishments. Countries vary in the extent to which they legally permit what would commonly be considered cruel and degrading punishment or treatment. Most countries absolutely prohibit any form of torture. This book examines which kinds of punishments constitute cruel and unusual, whether these punishments are inherently cruel and unusual, excessive, disproportionate, or unnecessary to society, or inflicted arbitrary. The primary aim of this book is to demonstrate that harshness in the law of punishment such as corporal punishment, long sentences of imprisonment and harshness in the inflexibility of punishment, contradicts with the universal declaration of human rights, and every other law concerning this matter. Another aim of this book is to use a comparative historical approach in illustrating the similarities and differences in cruel and unusual punishments over time and place. In order to achieve this aim, the current practices of harsh punishments in both Iran and United States have been critically reviewed. Through this comparative historical perspective, the reader can gain appreciation of the western and Islamic nature of these punishment practices. About the author: Sanaz Alasti received a S.J.D. (Scientiae Juridicae Doctor) from Golden Gate University School of Law, San Francisco, CA; after obtaining LL.M from Tehran University, and her LL.B with Honors in Tehran, Iran. Dr. Alasti has experience in both criminal justice system of United States and Iran. She has written numerous books and articles on various aspects of Comparative Criminal Justice & Penology. Her most recent books are "Pioneer Criminologists" & "Criminal law and Criminology Dictionary." She has been active in death penalty projects challenging the unfairness and arbitrariness of capital punishment and currently working on: "Teaching Abolition" a project proposing death penalty curriculum to stimulate broader exploration and discussion of capital punishment topics in law schools.

Concrete Mama

Concrete Mama PDF Author: John A. McCoy
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295743999
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Journalists John McCoy and Ethan Hoffman spent four months inside the walls of the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla in 1978, just as Washington, once a leader in prison reform, abandoned its focus on reform and rehabilitation and returned to cell time and punishment. It was a brutal transition. McCoy and Hoffman roamed the maximum-security compound almost at will, observing and befriending prisoners and guards. The result is a striking depiction of a community in which there was little to do, much to fear, and a culture that both mimicked and scorned the outside world. McCoy�s unadorned prose and Hoffman�s stunning black-and-white photographs offer as authentic a portrayal of life in the Big House as �outsiders� are ever likely to experience. Originally published in 1981, Concrete Mama revealed a previously unseen stark and complex world of life on the inside, for which it won the Washington State Book Award. Long unavailable yet still relevant, it is revitalized in a second edition with an introduction by scholar Dan Berger that provides historical context for the book's ongoing resonance, along with several previously unpublished photographs.