The Injustice of Punishment

The Injustice of Punishment
Author: Bruce N. Waller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2017-10-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351378244

The Injustice of Punishment emphasizes that we can never make sense of moral responsibility while also acknowledging that punishment is sometimes unavoidable. Recognizing both the injustice and the necessity of punishment is painful but also beneficial. It motivates us to find effective means of minimizing both the use and severity of punishment, and encourages deeper inquiry into the causes of destructive behavior and how to change those causes in order to reduce the need for punishment. There is an emerging alternative to the comfortable but destructive system of moral responsibility and just deserts. That alternative is not the creation of philosophers but of sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and workplace engineers; it was developed, tested, and employed in factories, prisons, hospitals, and other settings; and it is writ large in the practices of cultures that minimize belief in individual moral responsibility. The alternative marks a promising path to less punishment, less coercive control, deeper common commitment, and more genuine freedom.

The Injustice of Punishment

The Injustice of Punishment
Author: Bruce N. Waller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2020-08-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367594183

The Injustice of Punishment emphasizes that we can never make sense of moral responsibility while also acknowledging that punishment is sometimes unavoidable. Recognizing both the injustice and the necessity of punishment is painful but also beneficial. It motivates us to find effective means of minimizing both the use and severity of punishment, and encourages deeper inquiry into the causes of destructive behavior and how to change those causes in order to reduce the need for punishment. There is an emerging alternative to the comfortable but destructive system of moral responsibility and just deserts. That alternative is not the creation of philosophers but of sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and workplace engineers; it was developed, tested, and employed in factories, prisons, hospitals, and other settings; and it is writ large in the practices of cultures that minimize belief in individual moral responsibility. The alternative marks a promising path to less punishment, less coercive control, deeper common commitment, and more genuine freedom.

Punishment Without Crime

Punishment Without Crime
Author: Alexandra Natapoff
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2018-12-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0465093809

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

The Politics of Injustice

The Politics of Injustice
Author: Katherine Beckett
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2004
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780761929949

Examines the US crime problem and the resulting policies as a political and cultural issue.

Criminal Injustice

Criminal Injustice
Author: Glenn McNair
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2009-04-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813929830

Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in Georgia’s Criminal Justice System is the most comprehensive study of the criminal justice system of a slave state to date. McNair traces the evolution of Georgia’s legal culture by examining its use of slave codes and slave patrols, as well as presenting data on crimes prosecuted, trial procedures and practices, conviction rates, the appellate process, and punishment. Based on more than four hundred capital cases, McNair’s study deploys both narrative and quantitative analysis to get at both the theory and the reality of the criminal procedure for slaves in the century leading up to the Civil War. He shows how whites moved from the utopian innocence of the colony’s original Trustees, who envisioned a society free of slavery and the depravity it inculcated in masters, to one where slaveholders became the enforcers of laws and informal rules, the severity of which was limited only by the increasing economic value of their slaves as property. The slaves themselves, regarded under the law both as moveable property and--for the purposes of punishment--as moral agents, had, inevitably, a radically different view of Georgia’s slave criminal justice system. Although the rules and procedures were largely the same for both races, the state charged and convicted blacks more frequently and punished them more severely than whites for the same crimes. Courts were also more punitive in their judgment and punishment of black defendants when their victims were white, a pattern of disparate treatment based on race that persists to this day. Informal systems of control in urban households and on rural plantations and farms complemented the formal system and enhanced the power of slaveowners. Criminal Injustice shows how the prerogatives of slavery and white racial domination trumped any hope for legal justice for blacks.

Popular Injustice

Popular Injustice
Author: Angelina Snodgrass Godoy
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2006
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780804753838

Popular Injustice focuses on the spread of highly punitive forms of social control (known locally as mano dura) in contemporary Latin America, with a particular focus on lynchings in postwar Guatemala.

The Limits of Blame

The Limits of Blame
Author: Erin I. Kelly
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-11-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674980778

Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Erin Kelly challenges the moralism behind harsh treatment of criminal offenders and calls into question our society’s commitment to mass incarceration. The Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of crimes. Kelly underscores the problems of exaggerating what criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the illusion that we know how long and in what ways criminals should suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes excessive punishment. Appreciating the limits of moral blame critically undermines a commonplace rationale for long and brutal punishment practices. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane, appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal justice.

Privilege and Punishment

Privilege and Punishment
Author: Matthew Clair
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2022-06-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 069123387X

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.

Injustice for All

Injustice for All
Author: Chris Surprenant
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2019-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000750523

American criminal justice is a dysfunctional mess. Cops are too violent, the punishments are too punitive, and the so-called Land of the Free imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Understanding why means focusing on color—not only on black or white (which already has been studied extensively), but also on green. The problem is that nearly everyone involved in criminal justice—including district attorneys, elected judges, the police, voters, and politicians—faces bad incentives. Local towns often would rather send people to prison on someone else’s dime than pay for more effective policing themselves. Local police forces can enrich themselves by turning into warrior cops who steal from innocent civilians. Voters have very little incentive to understand the basic facts about crime or how to fix it—and vote accordingly. And politicians have every incentive to cater to voters’ worst biases. Injustice for All systematically diagnoses why and where American criminal justice goes wrong, and offers functional proposals for reform. By changing who pays for what, how people are appointed, how people are punished, and which things are criminalized, we can make the US a country which guarantees justice for all. Key Features: Shows how bad incentives, not "bad apples," cause the dysfunction in American criminal justice Focuses not only on overincarceration, but on overcriminalization and other failures of the criminal justice system Provides a philosophical and practical defense of reducing the scope of what’s considered criminal activity Crosses ideological lines, highlighting both the weaknesses and strengths of liberal, conservative, and libertarian agendas Fully integrates tools from philosophy and social science, making this stand out from the many philosophy books on punishment, on the one hand, and the solely empirical studies from sociology and criminal science, on the other Avoids disciplinary jargon, broadening the book’s suitability for students and researchers in many different fields and for an interested general readership Offers plausible reforms that realign specific incentives with the public good.