Criminal Justice System

The American legal system changed dramatically when the OJ Simpson trial became a television-ratings bonanza. Now it's all crime, all the time, from tabloid news to police procedurals. Americans now know more about the criminal justice system than ever before. Or do they?

On December 6, 1993, a drug dealer called Scrappy is shot and left for dead on the lawn outside her mother’s house in South Central Los Angeles. Augie, a heroin addict, witnesses the whole thing - before he steals all the drugs on her person as well as the gun that was dropped at the scene. When Augie gets busted, he names local gang members Wizard and Dreamer the shooters. But only one of them is guilty.

Combining wisdom drawn from over a dozen years as a public defender and cutting-edge research in the fields of organizational and cultural psychology, Jonathan Rapping proposes a radical cultural shift to a “fiercely client-based ethos” driven by values-based recruitment training, awakening defenders to their role in upholding an unjust status quo, and a renewed pride in the essential role of moral lawyering in a democratic society.

How can we be proud of a system of justice that often pressures the innocent to plead guilty? How can we claim that justice is equal when we imprison thousands of poor Black men for relatively modest crimes but rarely prosecute rich white executives who commit crimes having far greater impact? Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a leading authority on white-collar crime, explores these and other puzzles in Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free, a startling account of our broken legal system.

When The New Press, the Center for American Progress, and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples and Family Movement issued a call for innovative reform ideas, over 300 currently and formerly incarcerated individuals responded. What We Know collects two dozen of their best suggestions, each of which proposes a policy solution derived from their own lived experience.

Have you ever wondered what a judge is really thinking? To most people, judges are mysterious creatures. Judge Mader shines a bright spotlight on the hidden folds of the judging world. The old saying is that judges merely "follow the law". Yet following the law can produce wildly different results depending upon each judge's background, politics, and life experiences. Even the floor of the courthouse to which a case is assigned can mean the difference between prison and freedom. Never before has the judging world been laid bare for all to see.

Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California, in the 1980s and '90s. A former gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios managed to escape the bleak outcome of many of his friends and earned a PhD at Berkeley and returned to his hometown to study how inner-city young Latino and African American boys develop their sense of self in the midst of crime and intense policing. Punished examines the difficult lives of these young men.

Two days before the start of her junior year, 17-year-old Janelle Tenner is hit by a pickup truck and killed - as in blinding light, scenes of her life flashing before her, and then nothing. Except the next thing she knows, she's opening her eyes to find Ben Michaels, a loner from her high school whom Janelle has never talked to, leaning over her. And even though it isn't possible, she knows - with every fiber of her being - that Ben has somehow brought her back to life.

America’s criminal justice system perpetuates profound social and racial harms. But despite growing recognition of its destructiveness, the vast machinery of the carceral state remains very much intact. How can its damage be undone? In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates for change provide us with tools to move from critique to action and from despair to hope. Dismantling Mass Incarceration surveys various approaches to confronting the carceral state, exploring a wide range of bold but practical interventions.

It’s been four months since Janelle Tenner stopped the Earth’s destruction with the help of Ben, the boy who resurrected her after she died. Ben is gone now - disappeared through a portal to his home world. Even though Ben broke her heart, Janelle refuses to believe it when Interverse Agent Taylor Barclay tells her Ben is suspected of running a human-trafficking ring across several universes. She vows to uncover the true culprit and rescue the people who have been sold into slavery on alternate Earths - not to mention find Ben and prove his innocence.

The US has the largest criminal justice system in the world. Because they spend enough time in prison to disrupt their connections to their families and their communities, they are not prepared for the difficult and often life-threatening process of reentry. As a result, the percentage of these people who return to a life of crime and additional prison time escalates each year. Beyond Bars is the most current, practical, and comprehensive guide for ex-convicts and their families about managing a successful reentry into the community.

Powell and Silverglate shine a light on the defects of the federal criminal-justice system: overzealous prosecutors, perjury traps, negligent judges, perverse limits on self-defense, vague and overabundant criminal statutes, insufficient requirements for criminal intent, and no accountability for prosecutors. Most important, they provide a much-needed blueprint for reforming the Department of Justice and the criminal-justice system, including actions an average citizen can take to help restore justice.

In June 1985, a young Black man named Darryl Hunt was falsely convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a white copyeditor at the local paper. Many in the community believed him innocent and crusaded for his release even as subsequent trials and appeals reinforced his sentence. Finally, in 2003, the tireless efforts of his attorney combined with an award-winning series of articles by Phoebe Zerwick in the Winston-Salem Journal led to the DNA evidence that exonerated Hunt.

Hidden Behind the Robe is a tapestry of stranger-than-fiction scenes, observed over Matt Graham’s 43-year career in the criminal justice system. The story traverses the unexplored and overlooked inner workings of the raunchy, salacious, often hilarious, behind-the-scenes happenings of Los Angeles justice. Combining issues of privilege, race, and sexual misconduct, Hidden Behind the Robe provides a raw, behind-the-scenes perspective, and insight into the legal system that could only have been written by a Judge who has seen it all.

Recent reports show that women make up the fastest-growing population within the United States’ criminal justice system. And yet, despite necessary conversations about incarceration and prison abolition, their stories of abuse, neglect, poverty, and family separation often go untold. Now, through immersive storytelling and expert analysis of women’s lives after prison, anthropologist Jorja Leap explores their journeys into, through, and beyond the jail cell.