New Books: Criminal Justice

Raised in a poverty-stricken, largely immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn, and driven toward law enforcement by the hope of being a positive influence in his community, Raymond quickly learned that the problem with policing is a lot deeper than merely "a few bad apples" - the entire mechanism is set up to ensure that racial profiling is rewarded, and there are weighty consequences for cops who don't play along. Offering a rare, often shocking view of American policing through the eyes of an insider to the system, Raymond pulls back the curtain on the many injustices woven into the NYPD's training, data, and practices.

Forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in "expert witnesses" and innocent people have been condemned by their junk science. In 2012, the Innocence Project began searching for prisoners convicted by junk science, and three men, each convicted of capital murder, became M. Chris Fabricant's clients. This book chronicles the fights to overturn their wrongful convictions and to end the use of the "science" that destroyed their lives.

Perpetrators of mass violence are commonly regarded as evil. Upon close examination, however, perpetrators are contradictory human beings who often lead unsettlingly ordinary and uneventful lives. Through interlinked ethnographic essays, methodological and theoretical reflections, and dialogues between the two authors, this thought-provoking book conveys practical wisdom for the benefit of other researchers who face ruthless perpetrators and experience turbulent emotions when listening to perpetrators and their victims.

This is the untold story of the Border Patrol. It shines a light on this often secretive but powerful police force; how its agents are arrested for committing crimes five times more often than regular police officers, how its culture of racism and violence has proliferated over the last few decades, and how its power, oftentimes, goes unchecked. Reece Jones tells the history of the Border Patrol that has defined its culture and authority: mapping its Wild West beginnings, starting with a small cohort one hundred years ago, to its militarized force today, revealing the shocking true stories and characters behind its most dangerous policies.

In 2003, fresh out of NYU, Daniel Genis was hiding a serious heroin addiction that led him into debt and burglary. He was sentenced to twelve years (ten with good behavior), surviving the decade by reading 1,046 books, weightlifting, having philosophical discussions with various inmates, encountering violence on a daily basis, working at a serious of prison jobs, and in general observing an existence for which nothing in his life had prepared him. Genis describes in unsparing and vivid detail the realities of daily life in the New York penal system, from Rikers Island through a series of upstate institutions, and all he had to learn in order to survive.

Spinak rejects the foundational premise that family court can do good when intervening in family life. She illustrates how the procedures and policies of modern family court are deeply entwined in a heritage of racism, a profound disdain for poverty, and assimilationist norms intent on fixing children and families who are different. Spinak proposes concrete steps toward abolishing the court: shifting most family supports out of the court's sphere, vastly reducing the types and number of matters that need court intervention, and ensuring that any case that requires legal adjudication has the due process protections of a court of law.

Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin's drive to know her mother only intensifies. In the process, she reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be, what a "true" victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be.

This book examines how police-related deaths occur, and why officers are rarely held accountable for them. Each chapter begins with a case study of a specific police-related death and places issues within that case in the wider context of policing. Baker considers such deaths as being the result of structural and systemic factors in policing, the criminal justice system, and broader socio-political and socio-legal landscapes in the U.S. He argues that an increasingly aggressive police mindset allied with relatively toothless regulatory frameworks effectively lead to police being enabled by the criminal justice system to use lethal force with relative impunity.

No municipality has been under court oversight to reform its police department as long as the city of Oakland, California. The authors trace the history of Oakland since its inception through the lens of the city's police department, through the Palmer Raids, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights struggle, the Black Panthers and crack eras, to Oakland's present-day revival. Readers will be introduced to a group of sadistic cops known as "The Riders," whose disregard for the oath they took to protect and serve is on full, tragic, infuriating display.

Today, juries have become a symbol of democracy and popular legitimacy. But in English-speaking countries, jury trials are declining. Civil juries have been virtually abolished everywhere except the United States, and plea bargaining is taking the place of criminal jury trials. In this book, Renée Lettow Lerner describes the benefits and challenges of using juries, including jury nullification. Along the way, she charts the history of juries from antiquity through the English-speaking world and beyond.