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In this article, I examine 1,155 former capital jurors' punitive & cynical beliefs toward the criminal justice system & punishment for murder. I find that black capital jurors are significantly more cynical of the legal process than are whites. At the same time, however, I find that blacks are no less punitive than whites. The willingness to impose the state's harshest sentence despite a fundamental distrust of the judicial system reveals what I term, "contradictory legal consciousness." Through the analysis of qualitative interview data, I find that when black respondents' evaluate the defendant's criminal responsibility, it leads them to question the legitimacy of the legal process itself, including the felony murder rule. On the other hand, I find that personal experiences with the crime problem & spiritual transformation play an important role for those black respondents found to articulate a narrative of moral redemption. Building on Ewick & Silbey's (1998) seminal study of legal consciousness among ordinary citizens, this contradictory consciousness aids our understanding of legal consciousness more generally & sheds light on its hegemonic character in jurors' life or death decisions. 5 Tables, 1 Figure, 20 References. Adapted from the source document.

In order to investigate the damaging effects of the criminal justice system in America on racially & ethnically aggrieved groups, it is important to focus on white privilege. Throughout the late 1980s, white Americans supported tougher penalties for illegal drug use. A majority of US senators supported stiffer penalties for crack. Since a great deal of the drug dealing took place in marginalized inner cities among disadvantaged races, the author sees America's contemporary war on drugs as part of a broader commitment to white privilege & innocence from blame. It is a war against the marginalized. He also argues that the identity politics of the war constitutes white supremacy. He offers thoughts on drug war discourse & the ideological impediments to real civil rights reform. Research on the war on drugs shows how criminal justice policies are influenced by prevailing contemporary inequalities. Power is at its peak when it is least noticeable, & that was the situation in America in the 1980s. 122 References. E. Larsen

"Understanding and Reducing Prison Violence considers both the individual and prison characteristics associated with violence perpetration and violent victimization among both prison inmates and staff. Prison violence is not a random process; rates of violence vary across prisons and the odds of perpetrating violence or experiencing violent victimization vary across inmates and staff. A comprehensive understanding of the causes of prison violence therefore requires consideration of both individual and prison characteristics. Building on large dataset comprising 5,500 inmates and 1,800 officers across 45 prisons located across two of the United States (Ohio and Kentucky), this book showcases one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of prisons carried out to date. It considers both the implications of the study for theories of prison violence; and the implications of the study for preventing violence in prisons. It will be of interest to academics, practitioners and policy makers alike"--

B. Steiner beschäftigt sich mit einem allgemeinen Problem der Geschichtstheorie: Wie ist histor. Wandel zu erklären? Wann sind theoretische, nicht zeitgebundene Bedingungen erfüllt, um in der Geschichte von einem Bruch, einer Transformation oder einer Revolution zu sprechen? Er erläutert an ausgewählten Beispielen, wie Zeitgenossen/Historiker histor. Wandel mittels der bewussten Reflexion über nicht-intendierte Nebenfolgen zu fassen versuchen.

AbstractPrison officers are directly responsible for transmitting penal culture and prison policy to the confined, yet few studies of officers' impact on inmate behavior have been conducted. We examined the effect of inmates' perceptions of officer legitimacy on rule breaking within prisons, as well as the effects of officers' reliance on different power bases on rates of rule breaking across prisons. The findings from bi‐level analyses of data from inmates and officers from 33 prisons revealed that inmates who held stronger views regarding officer legitimacy committed fewer nonviolent infractions but that perceived legitimacy did not affect the number of violent offenses inmates committed. We also examined a subsample of inmates encountered by officers for a rule violation and found no relationship between perceived legitimacy and subsequent rule breaking, although stronger perceptions of procedural justice related to the incident did directly and indirectly (through perceived legitimacy) coincide with lower odds of nonviolent misconduct. At the prison level, we found that prisons in which officers exercised their authority more lawfully and fairly (positional power) or by relying more on their skills and expertise (expert power) had lower rates of violent or nonviolent rule violations. Prisons in which officers relied more on coercion had higher levels of nonviolent infractions.

This article examines more closely the empirical relationships between correctional officers' job attitudes and officer demographics and perceptions of safety. Bi-level analyses from 1,740 officers in 45 prisons revealed that officers' sex and race mattered for shaping an officer's pride with co-workers, consideration of transferring to another facility, and perceptions of co-workers' job satisfaction, but only as they were linked to perceptions of sexism and racism. Perceptions of safety also mattered. Yet, levels of inmate crime and victimization were irrelevant for shaping attitudes. Positive attitudes were also more common in facilities housing higher risk populations, and in facilities for men.

A macro-level perspective for understanding differences in levels of inmate assaults and nonviolent offenses across US prisons is presented which emphasizes the greater relevance of population composition as opposed to environmental and managerial controls over inmates. We argue that population effects are more relevant due to a heavy reliance on custodial risk assessments which place high concentrations of the most dangerous offenders within particular facilities or units within facilities, rendering these environments less effective for controlling inmate misconduct regardless of tighter security and greater use of administrative controls relative to lower security environments. A partial test of our model was conducted with a national US sample of 247 state prisons for men and women. Results indicate that while both facility and population factors are relevant predictors of offense levels, population effects are stronger and more prevalent. The implications of specific findings are discussed.

The importance of order maintenance in prisons has generated numerous studies of the correlates to inmate misconduct. Very few of these studies, however, have focused specifically on the correlations between inmates' race/ethnicity and prison rule breaking. Race and ethnicity could be relevant to an understanding of prison rule breaking if inmates bring their ecologically structured beliefs regarding legal authority, crime and deviance into the institutional environment. Using data from two nationally representative samples of males incarcerated in state facilities, we examined the individual-level effects of an inmate's race and ethnicity on his likelihood of engaging in various forms of misconduct during incarceration, as well as the contextual effects of the racial/ethnic composition of inmate and correctional staff populations on levels of rule breaking. Findings reveal that the effects of an inmate's race and ethnicity differ by offense type, and the racial/ethnic composition of inmates and correctional staff have both main and conditioning effects on levels of misconduct. Implications of these results are discussed within a social control framework.

Studies of prison crowding effects on inmate misconduct have produced anomalous findings, perhaps because of the cross-study differences in research methods. Different methods are important for several goals of scientific inquiry, but there are advantages to adopting similar approaches when studying a policy-relevant question. A cross-section of studies is reviewed toward the end of providing a strategy for more uniform research on the topic. Of primary interest are (a) operationalization of concepts; (b) underlying explanations for possible effects of crowding on misconduct; (c) the direct, indirect, and conditioning effects of crowding on misconduct; and (d) the bi-level nature of the crowding—misconduct relationship.

"Dying Inside brings the reader face-to-face with the nightmarish conditions inside Limestone Prison's Dorm 16 -- the segregated HIV ward. Here, patients chained to beds share their space with insects and vermin in the filthy, drafty rooms, and contagious diseases spread like wildfire through a population with untreated -- or poorly managed at best -- HIV. While Dorm 16 is a particularly horrific human rights tragedy, it is also a symptom of a disease afflicting the entire U.S. prison system. In recent decades, prison populations have exploded as Americans made mass incarceration the solution to crime, drugs, and other social problems even as privatization of prison services, especially health care, resulted in an overcrowded, underfunded system in which the most marginalized members of our society slowly wither from what the author calls "lethal abandonment." This eye-opening account of one prison's failed health-care standards is a wake-up call, asking us to examine how we treat our forgotten citizens and compelling us to rethink the American prison system in this increasingly punitive age."--Jacket

The waiver of juveniles to adult criminal court, an increasing phenomenon in recent years, transfers young offenders out of the juvenile system and into the adult criminal justice system, where the range of sanctions is presumably greater. Boot camps, one such sanction, are an intermediate response that are typically designed for youthful, first-time offenders, making waived youth likely candidates for placement there. The authors examine the effectiveness of a boot camp program in terms of recidivism for juveniles waived to criminal court in a northwestern state. They compare juveniles in the boot camp program to juveniles waived to criminal court and sentenced to probation using a 2-year follow-up period.

The focus of this article is to investigate how Latino Americans have been historically racialized in popular culture, key state legislative iniatives, and jurors' death sentencing decisions. While the bulk of the literature on the death penalty and criminal punishment more broadly focuses on racial disparities in sentencing outcomes, far less is know about how the sentencing process is itself racialized. Drawing on the stories of former jurors who served in death penalty cases involving Latino American defendants, we argue that such agents of the state are racially disciplined to punish in capital murder trials. Finally, we comment on directions for a more culturally-centered study of penal action.