An inside look at the struggles former prisoners face in reentering society Every year, roughly 650,000 people prepare to reenter society after being released from state and federal prisons. In Halfway House, Liam Martin shines a light on their difficult journeys, taking us behind the scenes at Bridge House, a residential reentry program near Boston, Massachusetts. Drawing on three years of research, Martin explores the obstacles these former prisoners face in the real world. From drug addiction to poverty, he captures the ups and downs of life after incarceration in vivid, engaging detail. He shows us what, exactly, it is like to live in a halfway house, giving us a rare, up-close view of its role in a dense and often confusing web of organizations governing prisoner reentry. Martin asks us to rethink the possibilities-and pitfalls-of using halfway houses to manage the worst excesses of mass incarceration. A portrait of life in the long shadow of the carceral state, Halfway House lets us see the struggles of reentry through the eyes of former prisoners.

Extremism in the United States presents students with a collection of articles that chronicle the development of violent white supremacist extremism in the United States from the Know-Nothing era to the January 6 insurrection. The book examines how right-wing groups mobilized in the last half of the 20th century to become a strong negative influence upon American society. The opening unit discusses the diversity of extremism in America and in the world, and how extremism has changed over time. Proceeding units examine the American Eugenics Movement; the mobilization of white supremacy through Neo-Nazis, Skinheads, and militiamen; the rise of the Alt-Right in the United States; and strategies for resisting extremism in the 21st century. In closing units, students read articles on lone wolf offenders, internet radicalization, and ways to combat white supremacist violence in the future. A timely and contemporary resource, Extremism in the United States is an ideal textbook for courses in sociology, criminal justice, and terrorism.

Criminal Law: The Essentials provides students with a concise and straightforward introduction to the world of criminal law. The textbook presents readers with brief case excerpts and statutes to demonstrate how criminal laws can align or diverge depending upon location and jurisdiction. The opening chapter discusses the emergence of law, philosophies on punishment in society, constitutional limitations on criminal law in the United States, the classification of crimes, and more. Additional chapters explore the elements of a crime, anticipatory offenses and parties to crimes, defenses to criminal culpability, and criminal homicide. Students learn about the nuances of various types of crime: against the person, property, crimes against public order and public decency, crimes against the government, and substance abuse crimes. The final chapter addresses sentencing. New and/or expanded topics for the fourth edition include the insanity defense; intimate partner violence; elder abuse; academic and related fraud; animal law; contempt of court; mandatory minimum sentencing; capital punishment; sex offender registration; and more. Additional statutes, cases, and other materials are available in an online supplement to the text.

The Forensic Studies Anthology provides students with highly valuable, class-tested readings that introduce them to forensic studies and underscore the importance of forensic evidence within the criminal justice system. The anthology features 12 chapters divided into three major parts. Unit I focuses on forensic thinking and the skills forensic scientists must possess to be successful in the field. These readings speak to the importance of preserving and recording evidence, the dangers of individualization fallacy, and how critical it is for politicians and leaders to invest in science and forensics to support the investigation and solving of crimes. In Unit II, students read articles about technology and science. They learn about the use of mobile data in criminal investigations, video forensics, forensic dentistry, and the careers of histotechnicians, who specialize in preparing biological slides for examination. The final section is focused on improving forensics and includes readings that discuss digital evidence, balancing fairness in cases involving DNA, post-conviction remedies, and using a logical framework in DNA cases, with the Amanda Knox case serving as an example. Designed to inspire critical thought and ethical practice, The Forensics Studies Anthology is an ideal supplementary resource for foundational courses in forensics, criminal justice, and criminology.

Examines the outsized influence of jurors on prosecutorial discretion Thanks to television and popular media, the jury is deeply embedded in the American public's imagination of the legal system. For the country's federal prosecutors, however, jurors have become an increasingly rare sight. Today, in fact, less than 2% of their cases will proceed to an actual jury trial. And yet, when federal prosecutors describe their jobs and what the profession means to them, the jury is a central theme. Anna Offit's The Imagined Juror examines the counterintuitive importance of jurors in federal prosecutors' work at a moment when jury trials are statistically in decline. Drawing on extensive field research among federal prosecutors, the book represents "the first ethnographic study of US attorneys," according to legal scholar Annelise Riles. It describes a world of legal practice in which jurors are frequently summoned-as make-believe audiences for proposed arguments, hypothetical evaluators of evidence, and invented decision-makers who would work together to reach a verdict. Even the question of moving forward with a prosecution often hinges on how federal prosecutors assume a jury will react to elements of the case-an exercise where the perspectives of the public are imagined and incorporated into every stage of trial preparation. Based on these findings, Offit argues that the decreasing number of jury trials at the federal level has not eliminated the influence of the jury but altered it. As imaginary figures, jurors continue to play an important and understudied role in shaping the work and professional identities of federal prosecutors. At the same time, imaginary jurors are not real jurors, and prosecutors at times caricature the public by leaning on stereotypes or preconceived and simplistic ideas about how laypeople think. Imagined jurors, it turns out, are a critical, if flawed, resource for introducing lay perspective into the legal process. As Offit shows, recentering laypeople and achieving the democratic promise of our legal system will require renewed commitment to the jury trial and juries that reflect the diversity of the American public.

Could the courts really order the death of your innocent baby? Was there an illegal immigrant who couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat? Are unelected judges truly enemies of the people?

Most of us think the law is only relevant to criminals, if we even think of it at all. But the law touches every area of our lives: from intimate family matters to the biggest issues in our society.

Our unfamiliarity is dangerous because it makes us vulnerable to media spin, political lies and the kind of misinformation that frequently comes from loud-mouthed amateurs and those with vested interests. This 'fake law' allows the powerful and the ignorant to corrupt justice without our knowledge – worse, we risk letting them make us complicit.

Thankfully, the Secret Barrister is back to reveal the stupidity, malice and incompetence behind many of the biggest legal stories of recent years. In Fake Law, the Secret Barrister debunks the lies and builds a defence against the abuse of our law, our rights and our democracy that is as entertaining as it is vital.

Treat yourself to Second Helpings and more choice cuts in the style of Simon Brown's much lauded first volume of memoirs, Playing off the Roof & Other Stories. Exuberantly revisiting his early years in National Service, at Oxford and as a young barrister, Lord Brown recalls matters grave and trivial from his time at the Bar and on the Bench, along the way regaling us with tales of Paddington Bear, Nigel Lawson and Mozart at the Warsaw opera. He also has something to say about the current legal scene and considers such thorny problems as the 2019 prorogation judgment and whether trial by jury might be dispensed with in order to clear a mounting backlog of criminal cases. Drawing witty lessons from a life of trials, Lord Brown finds time to muse on when a judge might choose to change a sentence already imposed, what to say after dinner and why the game of golf is strictly for the birds!

Essentials of Medicolegal Death Investigation uses a unique approach by combining medical issues, injury patterns, and investigative procedures to provide the reader with the basic fundamentals for a death investigation. The text introduces the reader to death investigation, common causes of death, and very specific types of death, including blunt-force injuries, gunshot wounds, and toxicology deaths. Each section includes case studies with written and visual descriptions. Written by a well-known and experienced medicolegal death investigator, the book fills a void in medicolegal literature for both students and professionals alike.

Legal precedents created during Prohibition have lingered, leaving search-and-seizure law much better defined than limits on police use of force, interrogation practices, or eyewitness identification protocols. An unlawful trunk search is thus guarded against more thoroughly than an unnecessary shooting or a wrongful conviction. Intrusive searches for alcohol during Prohibition destroyed middle-class Americans' faith in police and ushered in a new basis for controlling police conduct. State courts in the 1920s began to exclude perfectly reliable evidence obtained in an illegal search. Then, as Prohibition drew to a close, a presidential commission awakened the public to torture in interrogation rooms, prompting courts to exclude coerced confessions irrespective of whether the technique had produced a reliable statement. Prohibition's scheme lingered long past the Roaring '20s. Racial tensions and police brutality were bigger concerns in the 1960s than illegal searches, yet when the Supreme Court imposed limits on officers' conduct in 1961, searches alone were regulated. Interrogation law during the 1960s, fundamentally reshaped by the Miranda ruling, ensured that suspects who invoked their rights would not be subject to coercive tactics, but did nothing to ensure reliable confessions by those who were questioned. Explicitly recognizing that its decisions excluding evidence had not been well-received, the Court in the 1970s refused to exclude identifications merely because they were made in suggestive lineups. Perhaps a larger project awaits-refocusing our rules of criminal procedure on those concerns from which Prohibition distracted us: conviction accuracy and the use of force by police.

This edited volume seeks to reassess the old and to analyse and develop novel approaches to the notion of proportionality in criminal matters and the new security architecture. The discourse is not limited to conventional constitutional constellations and standard problems of sentencing in traditional criminal proceedings. Rather, the book offers an interdisciplinary and cross-jurisdictional exploration of highly topical, proportionality-related issues pertinent to penal theory and legal philosophy, criminalisation policies, security and anti-terrorism strategies, alternative types of justice delivery, and supranational enforcement as well as human rights and international criminal and humanitarian law. In today's global risk society, with its numerous visible and invisible enemies of the state and the individual, balancing freedom and security has become nothing less than an attempt at untying a Gordian knot. Against this background, the proportionality of measures of crime prevention and repression is unquestionably an issue of utmost importance, which basic research and legal policy in rule-of-law based systems are urgently called to address. The timely and fascinating contributions in this book, covering jurisdictions from both the common law and the civil law as well as hybrid and international jurisdictions, will appeal to academics, researchers, policy advisers and practitioners working in the areas of national and international criminal law, comparative criminal justice/criminology and legal philosophy as well as constitutional and security law.

This book presents the first detailed study of 'indirect criminalisation' (the legal treatment of antisocial behaviour through civil preventative measures such as the ASBO) in England and Wales. Since the late 20th century many Western jurisdictions introduced a range of civil preventive measures in order to prevent and deal with various types of criminality. Although the stated objective of these interventions is the prevention of crime, their implementation can result in the imposition of restrictions akin to criminal punishment leading to the indirect criminalisation of certain kinds of behaviour. Through the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach which combines criminal law theory and empirical criminology, this book engages with the phenomenon of indirect criminalisation using the legal framework on anti-social behaviour in England and Wales as a case study. It engages with central questions within legal theory: - what are the normative challenges posed by indirect criminalisation and mechanisms for distinguishing criminal from non-criminal rules? - how can such questions be tested and applied empirically? - has the ASBO's successor been operating as de facto criminal measure?

Step by Step: An Introduction to Conducting Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice is a collection of readings, materials, and application exercises designed to assist readers with understanding the value, importance, and process of conducting research within criminology and criminal justice. Exercises presented throughout the text guide students through the step-by-step process of developing a comprehensive research proposal or research study that aligns with their professional interests. The opening chapter introduces readers to the value and potential applications of research findings within criminology, criminal justice, and related fields, and summarizes different types of research which may be employed within these disciplines. Additional chapters address ethical considerations, the steps involved in the research process, the value of research partnerships with community organizations, and conducting a literature review. Students learn about research design and measurement, methods for primary and secondary data collection, and data analysis. The closing chapter focuses on writing and formatting the final research proposal or report. Emphasizing practical application and designed to help students develop competent research practices, Step by Step is an exceptional resource for students in criminology, criminal justice, victimology, and other social service majors or occupations.

Criminal proceedings, it is often now said, ought to be conducted with integrity. But what, exactly, does it mean for criminal process to have, or to lack, 'integrity'? Is integrity in this sense merely an aspirational normative ideal, with possibly diffuse influence on conceptions of professional responsibility? Or is it also a juridical concept with robust institutional purchase and enforceable practical consequences in criminal litigation? The 16 new essays contained in this collection, written by prominent legal scholars and criminologists from Australia, Hong Kong, the UK and the USA, engage systematically with - and seek to generate further debate about - the theoretical and practical significance of 'integrity' at all stages of the criminal process. Reflecting the flexibility and scope of a putative 'integrity principle', the essays range widely over many of the most hotly contested issues in contemporary criminal justice theory, policy and practice, including: the ethics of police investigations, charging practice and discretionary enforcement; prosecutorial independence, policy and operational decision-making; plea bargaining; the perils of witness coaching and accomplice testimony; expert evidence; doctrines of admissibility and abuse of process; lay participation in criminal adjudication; the role of remorse in criminal trials; the ethics of appellate judgment writing; innocence projects; and state compensation for miscarriages of justice.

Featuring chapters written by various experts in the discipline, Critical Issues in Criminal Justice: Historical Perspectives provides students with well-researched information regarding vital developments in the field of criminal justice, all the while framing these developments with historical context and insight. The book features five distinct sections. In Section I, chapters address the need for diversity in policing, the relationship between the economy, police staffing, and crime rates, use of force in policing, and terrorism. Section II offers chapters on the effects of mass incarceration on minorities and restorative justice. In Section III, students read about DNA evidence in court cases, the criminal justice system and the media, and the challenge of child pornography cases. Section IV addresses special topics, including criminal justice education, immigration policy, PTSD and healing in criminal justice personnel, and transitional justice. The final section provides perspectives on implicit bias in law enforcement, juvenile justice in California, and new standards and principles for policing. Critical Issues in Criminal Justice explores the history of the criminal justice system, both its trials and triumphs, in an effort to encourage future practitioners to learn from the past and move the discipline forward. It is ideal for criminal justice courses and programs.

In Corporate Criminal Liability and Compliance Management Systems: A Case Study of Spain, Santiago Wortman Jofre offers a case study where he examines the way in which Spain understands and implements Compliance Management Systems. Corporate criminal liability has become a matter of controversy in civil law countries since it challenges the traditional principle of societas delinquere non potest, by which corporations cannot be held criminally responsible. However, corporations have taken a new position in the world's political agenda, as evidenced by the 2017 G20's High Level Principles on the Liability of Legal Persons for Corruption. The new trend in criminal law advocates for the criminal responsibility of legal persons and pushes for the implementation of Compliance Management Systems as deterrent for corporate criminality. Santiago Wortman Jofre then presents evidence on the role of criminal justice and the importance of positive stimuli requirements as effective incentives to drive companies to implement compliance programs.