political science / political freedom & security / law enforcement

"An original and consequential argument about race, crime, and the law Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics -- and their impact on people of color -- are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime. As Forman shows, the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office around the country amid a surge in crime. Many came to believe that tough measures -- such as stringent drug and gun laws and "pretext traffic stops" in poor African American neighborhoods -- were needed to secure a stable future for black communities. Some politicians and activists saw criminals as a "cancer" that had to be cut away from the rest of black America. Others supported harsh measures more reluctantly, believing they had no other choice in the face of a public safety emergency. Drawing on his experience as a public defender and focusing on Washington, D.C., Forman writes with compassion for individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas -- from the young men and women he defended to officials struggling to cope with an impossible situation. The result is an original view of our justice system as well as a moving portrait of the human beings caught in its coils. "--.

"'Inside the Cell' exposes the truth about forensic DNA, and shows us what it will take to harness the power of genetic identification in service of accuracy and fairness"--Dust jacket.

"Historian Heather Ann Thompson offers the first definitive telling of the Attica prison uprising, the state's violent response, and the victims' decades-long quest for justice"--Provided by publisher.

"We all want to feel safe. But safe from what, and from whom? In his 60-plus years as a trial lawyer, Gerry Spence has never represented a person accused of a crime in which the police hadn't themselves violated the law. Whether by covering up their own corrupt dealings, by the falsification or manufacture of evidence, or by the outright murder of innocent civilians, those individuals charged with upholding the law break it every day, in ways more scandalous than the courts have dared admit. The police and prosecutors won't charge or convict themselves, and so the crimes of the criminal justice system are swept under the rug. Nothing changes. Too many police officers are killers on the loose, and every uninformed American is a potential next victim. Police culture is mired in the dead weight of precedent and ruled by trigger-happy tyrants. Power will march our nation over the police state precipice unless We the People take action. The FBI's massacre of the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge; the killing of mortally-wounded Fouad Kaady by a group of police officers; the torture of teenaged Dennis Williams by cops seeking a murder confession--again and again, the question arises: When the very men and women we pay to protect us instead persecute us every day, how can we be safe? In Police State, Spence slaps a stinging indictment upon the American justice system and puts forth a plan to restore liberty and justice for all"--.

Examines the relationship between the United States, and gun control.