CRJU 3070: Race and the Criminal Justice System

Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action." Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The New Jim Crow tells you what you need to know--before or after you read Michelle Alexander's book. Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.   This short summary and analysis of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander includes:   Historical context Chapter-by-chapter summaries Detailed timeline of key events Profiles of the main characters Important quotes Fascinating trivia Glossary of terms Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work   About The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander:   Legal scholar and civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander's invaluable and timely work, The New Jim Crow, examines what she calls the new racial caste system in United States: mass incarceration.   Following the practices of slavery and institutional discrimination, Alexander argues, mass incarceration is part of America's legacy to dehumanize and disenfranchise African Americans and Latinos. According to Alexander, "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it."   Thanks in a large part to the War on Drugs, more than two million people are in America's prisons today--an overwhelming majority of them are people of color who've been jailed for minor drug charges. When these adults leave prison, they are often denied employment, housing, the right to vote, and a quality education. As a result, they are rarely able to integrate successfully into society.   The New Jim Crow is a well-argued call to dismantle a system of policies that continues to deny civil rights, decades after the passing of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.   The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.

This extraordinary New York Times bestseller reexamines a pivotal event of the civil rights movement--the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till--"and demands that we do the one vital thing we aren't often enough asked to do with history: learn from it" (The Atlantic).

The murder of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin and the subsequent trial and acquittal of his assailant, George Zimmerman, sparked a passionate national debate about race and criminal justice in America that involved everyone from bloggers to mayoral candidates to President Obama himself.

Federal Reports on Police Killings is a collection of the complete reports from the Department of Justice's landmark investigations of police violence in three major American cities.

Why are some crimes identified as acts of terrorism, while others are not? How are critical terms like «terrorism» and «mass shooting» defined and understood in the 21st century? What are some of the causes of the unique American epidemic of mass shootings and gun violence? This book explores media coverage of five mass shootings over a 20-year period, examining the role that race, religion, and gender play in framing some of the most high-profile crimes of American society.

This Brief provides specific recommendations for police professionals to reduce the influence of implicit bias on police practice, which will improve both effectiveness (in a shift towards evidence-based, rather than bias-based) practices and police legitimacy. The author is donating her proceeds from this book to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (nleomf.org). 

No policing tactic has been more controversial than "stop and frisk," whereby police officers stop, question and frisk ordinary citizens, who they may view as potential suspects, on the streets. As Michael White and Hank Fradella show in Stop and Frisk, the first authoritative history and analysis of this tactic, there is a disconnect between our everyday understanding and the historical and legal foundations for this policing strategy.

A thorough and captivating exploration of how mass incarceration and law and order policies of the past forty years have transformed immigration and border enforcement.

"In the past decade, no individual act of violence has killed more people in the United States than the mass shooting. This well-researched, forcefully argued book answers some of the most pressing questions facing our society- Why do people go on killing sprees? Are gun-free zones magnets for deadly rampages? What can we do to curb the carnage of this disturbing form of firearm violence?

Comprehensive and balanced, THE COLOR OF JUSTICE: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND CRIME IN AMERICA is the definitive introduction to current research and theories of racial and ethnic discrimination within America's criminal justice system. The sixth edition covers the best and the most recent research on patterns of criminal behavior and victimization, immigration and crime, drug use, police practices, court processing and sentencing, unconscious bias, the death penalty, and correctional programs, giving students the facts and theoretical foundation they need to make their own informed decisions about discrimination within the system.

""Table of Contents""; ""Introduction""; ""Warren McCleskey: The Man""; ""The Trial""; ""The Appeals""; ""Execution Day""; ""Coda to McCleskey v. Kemp""; ""

It isn't enough to celebrate the death penalty's demise. We must learn from it. When Henry McCollum was condemned to death in 1984 in rural North Carolina, death sentences were commonplace. In 2014, DNA tests set McCollum free. By then, death sentences were as rare as lethal lightning strikes. To most observers this national trend came as a surprise. What changed? Brandon Garrett hand-collected and analyzed national data, looking for causes and implications of this turnaround. End of Its Rope explains what he found, and why the story of who killed the death penalty, and how, can be the catalyst for criminal justice reform.

Discloses the names of the convicted criminals in the NFL, the stunning severity of their crimes, & why they're still playing.