New Books: Criminal Justice

The United States, alone, locks up a quarter of the world's incarcerated people. And yet there is little sense collectively in America what constitutes retribution or atonement. Ben Austen's powerful exploration offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of parole. Told through two men imprisoned for murder, and the parole board that holds their freedom in the balance, Austen's unflinching storytelling forces us to reckon with some of the most profound questions underlying the country's values around crime and punishment. What must someone who commits a terrible act do to get a second chance? What does incarceration seek to accomplish?

An original argument that the answer to mass incarceration lies not with experts and pundits, but with ordinary people taking extraordinary actions together in collective acts of resistance: paying bail for a stranger, using social media to let the public know what everyday courtroom proceedings are like, making a video about someone's life for a criminal court judge, presenting a budget proposal to the city council. When people join together to contest received ideas of justice and safety, they challenge the ideas that prosecutions and prisons make us safer; that public officials charged with maintaining "law and order" are carrying out the will of the people; and that justice requires putting people in cages.

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.

More than 3,000 sheriffs across the United States occupy a unique position in American politics, in offices with exceptional authority, enormous autonomy, and low visibility as elected law enforcement officials. Farris and Holman argue that the autonomy and authority granted to sheriffs in the United States creates an environment where sheriffs rarely change, elections do not create meaningful accountability, employees, budgets, and jails can be used for political gains, marginalized populations can be punished, right-wing extremism flourishes, and reforms fail.

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.