Criminal Justice System

The Price of Justice in America features a series of blogs I have written about problems in the criminal justice system and how they might be fixed. I have been writing these blogs for my website (www.americanjusticethebook.com) as a follow-up to my book American Justice?

If someone had told me in 2008 that the single most time-consuming issue facing me as one of the newest of America’s three thousand-and-eighty-one sheriffs would be mental health, I would have laughed. I was the SWAT team leader. I was a drug education officer on patrol and a street-level narcotics interdiction officer for a larger (by Iowa standards) sheriff’s office. I would do the occasional court-ordered, emergency mental health committal and the random transport from one health care facility to another mental health facility on a judge’s order from time to time.

The United States incarcerates more of its residents than any other nation. Though home to five percent of the global population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners - a total of over two million people. This number continues to steadily rise. Over the past 40 years, the number of people behind bars in the United States has increased by 500 percent.

Confessions of a Public Defender describes the experiences of a criminal lawyer. The events and the descriptions in this book are derived from real courtroom experiences. The cases and outcomes are part of David Carson Futch's life experience that he wished had been available to him before law school. The only book he read concerning the actual law school experience was called One L, referring to a first-year law student.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Case brief: The opening of the Kalamazoo City Dome - the world's largest indoor/outdoor amusement complex - has everyone in the city buzzing, especially because it's going to be the shooting site for Chase Mercy's new blockbuster film. But that's when things start to go haywire, and Mayor Saunders suspects foul play. Who would want to sabotage the Dome, and why?

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.