The power of the modern prosecutor arises from several features of the criminal justice landscape: widespread use of law and order political rhetoric and heightened fear of crime among voters; legislatures' embrace of extreme sentencing ranges to respond to such concerns; and the uncertain or limited accountability of prosecutors to the electorate, the bar, or other political and professional constituencies. The convergence of these trends has transformed prosecution into an indispensable ...

A comprehensive, readable analysis of the key issues of the Black Lives Matter movement, this thought-provoking and compelling anthology features essays by some of the nation’s most influential and respected criminal justice experts and legal scholars.“Somewhere among the anger, mourning and malice that Policing the Black Man documents lies the pursuit of justice. This powerful book demands our fierce attention.” —Toni MorrisonPolicing the Blac...

**A groundbreaking reassessment of the American prison system, challenging the widely accepted explanations for our exploding incarceration rates“A must-read for anyone who dreams of an America that is not the world’s most imprisoned nation.” —Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC’s All In**In Locked In, John Pfaff argues that the factors most commonly cited to explain mass incarceration -- the failed War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, an increasing reliance on...

In his impassioned-yet-measured book, Rafael A. Mangual offers an incisive critique of America's increasingly radical criminal justice reform movement, and makes a convincing case against the pursuit of "justice" through mass-decarceration and depolicing.After a summer of violent protests in 2020—sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks—a dangerously false narrative gained mainstream acceptance: Criminal justice in the United S...

A brilliant overview of America’s defining human rights crisis and a “much-needed introduction to the racial, political, and economic dimensions of mass incarceration” (Michelle Alexander)Understanding Mass Incarceration offers the first comprehensive overview of the incarceration apparatus put in place by the world’s largest jailer: the United States.Drawing on a growing body of academic and professional work, Understanding Mass Incarceration

In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far-reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of “get tough on crime” attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and '90s, a range of strategies, from “three strikes” and “a war on drugs,” to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citi...

For nearly forty years the United States has been gripped by policies that have placed more than 2.5 million Americans in jails and prisons designed to hold a fraction of that number of inmates. Our prisons are not only vast and overcrowded, they are degrading—relying on racist gangs, lockdowns, and Supermax-style segregation units to maintain a tenuous order.Mass Incarceration on Trial examines a series of landmark decisions about prison conditions—culminating in Brow...

COURT REFORM ON TRIAL is a recognized study of innovation in the process of criminal justice, and why it so often fails—despite the best intentions of judges, administrators, and reformers. The arc of innovation to disappointment is analyzed for such ideas as bail reform, pretrial diversion, speedy trials, and determinate sentencing. A much-maligned system of plea bargaining shifts power to prosecutors away from judges, as formal trials recede in importance—but is that really the problem? ...

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. ...

A major reappraisal of crime and punishment in AmericaThe huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders, yet reforms to reduce the numbers of those incarcerated have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, an ever-widening carceral state has sprouted in the shadows, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship—posing a formidable political and social cha...

Almost everyone agrees--Right on Crime, the ACLU, Koch Industries, George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal--that America's current systems for sentencing criminal offenders are a shambles, with crazy quilts of incompatible and conflicting laws, policies, and practices in every state and the federal system. Most everyone agrees that punishments are too severe, and too many people are in prison. However,...

Acclaimed as the "the most objective prosecutors in the world", the German prosecution service has long attracted the attention in the past of comparative law scholars. At first glance, the institutional position and statutory mandate of German prosecutors indicate that that reputation is well-deserved. Unfortunately, the introduction of charge-bargaining has opened the door to criticism that German prosecutors have abandoned their role of objective decision-makers. Using interview data co...