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"Law's power to criminalize -- to turn a person into a criminal -- is formidable. Traditional legal doctrine argues that law dispenses justice in an impartial and unbiased fashion. Critical legal theorists claim that law reproduces gender, race and class inequalities. The Power to Criminalize offers an analysis that acknowledges the tensions between these two views of law. Drawing from crown attorneys' files on violent crime cases and interviews with defence lawyers, the authors reveal the complex ways in which discourses of masculinity, femininity, race, class and social space inform the strategies used to litigate these cases. This analysis raises questions about the prospects of challenging law to realize a more just society."--Pub. website.
Congress in the latter part of the nineteenth century decided to enact a series of statutes facilitating state enforcement of their respective criminal laws. Subsequently, Congress enacted statutes federalizing what had been solely state crimes, thereby establishing federal court and state court concurrent jurisdiction over these crimes. Federalization of state crimes has been criticized by numerous scholars, U.S. Supreme Court justices, and national organizations. Such federalization has congested the calendars of the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals leading to delays in civil cases because of the Speedy TrialAct that vacates a criminal indictment if a trial is not commenced within a specific number of days, resulted in over-crowded U.S. penitentiaries, and raises the issue of double jeopardy that is prohibited by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of each state. This book examines the impact of federalization of state crime and draws conclusions regarding its desirability. It also offers recommendations directed to Congress and the President, one recommendation direct to state legislatures for remedial actions to reduce the undesirable effects of federalized state crimes, and one recommendation that Congress and all states enter into a federal-interstate criminal suppression compact.
This groundbreaking book addresses the ominous trend of introducing and passing laws and court decisions regulating the actions of women and the control of their bodies. One of the few books published on the criminalization of women’s bodies, this timely book takes a serious look at the effect these laws would have on women and the threat to their autonomy, privacy, and control; their bodily integrity; control over reproductive capacities; and their constitutional rights. From ancient literature to the literature and law of contemporary society, a woman’s value has often rested on her fulfilling expected roles as wife and mother. The lack of respect for women inherent in this predominantly male-oriented line of thinking is reinforced in this new trend of legislation and court decisions attempting to regulate women’s behavior and reproductive capacity. The Criminalization of a Woman’s Body thoroughly discusses these special laws governing women’s personal choices and the threats these laws and court decisions pose to women’s autonomy and constitutional rights. Scholars from Israel, Italy, and the United States provide a multidimensional discussion of the problem facing women in many, if not all, countries. Contributors represent various disciplines including, law, philosophy, medicine, political science, sociology, women’s studies, and criminal justice. Articles analyze sensitive issues surrounding abortion and its impending criminalization in several countries; controversial topics on contract motherhood; the power of administrative agencies to control and informally criminalize pregnant women and new mothers; policies meant to protect the fetus from pregnant women who deviate from medically, socially, and legally sanctioned behavior which may deter women from seeking any medical care; and the destruction of families due to the criminalization of pregnant women and new mothers and the consequent removal of their children and placement into foster care. Professors, students, librarians, agency workers dealing with women’s issues, and women and men in the general public will find this important book a helpful tool in sorting through the complex issues on criminalizing women’s bodies.
Based on five years of ethnography, archival research, census data analysis, and interviews, Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries reveals how the LAPD, city prosecutors, and business owners struggled to control who should be considered “dangerous” and how they should be policed in Los Angeles. Sociologist Ana Muñiz shows how these influential groups used policies and everyday procedures to criminalize behaviors commonly associated with blacks and Latinos and to promote an exceedingly aggressive form of policing. Muñiz illuminates the degree to which the definitions of “gangs” and “deviants” are politically constructed labels born of public policy and court decisions, offering an innovative look at the process of criminalization and underscoring the ways in which a politically powerful coalition can define deviant behavior. As she does so, Muñiz also highlights the various grassroots challenges to such policies and the efforts to call attention to their racist effects. Muñiz describes the fight over two very different methods of policing: community policing (in which the police and the community work together) and the “broken windows” or “zero tolerance” approach (which aggressively polices minor infractions—such as loitering—to deter more serious crime). Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries also explores the history of the area to explain how Cadillac-Corning became viewed by outsiders as a “violent neighborhood” and how the city’s first gang injunction—a restraining order aimed at alleged gang members—solidified this negative image. As a result, Muñiz shows, Cadillac-Corning and other sections became a test site for repressive practices that eventually spread to the rest of the city.
Criminalizing Women introduces readers to the key issues addressed by feminists engaged in criminology research over the past four decades. Chapters explore how narratives that construct women as errant females, prostitutes, street gang associates and symbols of moral corruption mask the connections between women s restricted choices and the conditions of their lives."
This is the first book of a series on criminalization - examining the principles and goals that should guide what kinds of conduct are to be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. The first volume studies the scope and boundaries of the criminal law - asking what principled limits might be placed on criminalizing behaviour.
In Policing the Womb, Michele Goodwin explores how states abuse laws and infringe on rights to police women and their pregnancies. This book looks at the impact of these often arbitrary laws which can result in the punishment, incarceration, and humiliation of women, particularly poor women and women of color. Frequently based on unscientific claims of endangering a fetus, these laws allow extraordinary powers to state authorities over reproductive freedom and pregnancies. In this book, Michele Goodwin discusses real examples of women whose pregnancies have been controlled by the law and what has led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world for a woman to be pregnant.
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
I begin by introducing the main issues of the work, and inviting their consideration; as enticement, I offer a sketch of their practical importance, and of the philosophical challenge they present. And I provide a preview of the work's organization and central argument. There is something so obvious that it is easily-and often-overlooked: the enforcing of criminal statutes is the most intrusive and coercive exercise of domestic power by a state. Forcibly preventing people from doing that which they wish to do, forcibly compelling people to do that which they do not wish to do-and wielding force merely attempting to compel or prevent-these state activities have extraordinarily serious ramifications. Indeed, no state institutions are likely to have more profound an impact on the lives of individual citizens than those of the criminal justice system. I endorse Herbert Packer's assessment: The criminal sanction is the law's ultimate threat. Being punished for a crime is different from being regulated in the public interest, or being forced to compensate another who has been injured by one's conduct, or being treated for a disease. The sanction is at once l uniquely coercive and, in the broadest sense, uniquely expensive. As a consequence, these state activities are in special need of moral warrant. Given the great potential for doing grave injustice, the power of the state embodied in the criminal justice system ought not be exercised in the absence of a complete and compelling moral justification.