In the mid-1990s, as public trust in big government was near an all-time low, 80% of Americans told Gallup that they supported the death penalty. Why did people who didn’t trust government to regulate the economy or provide daily services nonetheless believe that it should have the power to put its citizens to death? That question is at the heart of Executing Freedom, a powerful, wide-ranging examination of the place of the death penalty in American culture and how it has changed over the years. Drawing on an array of sources, including congressional hearings and campaign speeches, true crime classics like In Cold Blood, and films like Dead Man Walking, Daniel LaChance shows how attitudes toward the death penalty have reflected broader shifts in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state. Emerging from the height of 1970s disillusion, the simplicity and moral power of the death penalty became a potent symbol for many Americans of what government could do—and LaChance argues, fascinatingly, that it’s the very failure of capital punishment to live up to that mythology that could prove its eventual undoing in the United States.

Running for Freedom, Fourth Edition, updates historian Steven Lawson’s classic volume detailing the history of African-American civil rights and black politics from the beginning of World War II to the present day. Offers comprehensive coverage of the African-American struggle for civil rights in the U.S. from 1941 to 2014 Integrates events relating to America’s civil rights story at both the local and national levels Features new material on Obama’s first term in office and the first year of his second term Includes addition of such timely issues as the Trayvon Martin case, the March on Washington 5oth anniversary, state voter suppression efforts, and Supreme Court ruling on Voting Rights Act

Mumia Abu-Jamal's defense attorney provides an account of his client's struggle for justice as he describes the 1982 conviction of the award-winning journalist for the killing of a police officer.

Executing Race examines the multiple ways in which race, class, and the law impacted women's lives in the 18th century and, equally important, the ways in which women sought to change legal and cultural attitudes in this volatile period. Through an examination of infanticide cases, Harris reveals how conceptualizations of women, especially their bodies and their legal rights, evolved over the course of the 18th century. Early in the century, infanticide cases incorporated the rhetoric of the witch trials. However, at mid-century, a few women, especially African American women, began to challenge definitions of "bastardy" (a legal requirement for infanticide), and by the end of the century, women were rarely executed for this crime as the new nation reconsidered illegitimacy in relation to its own struggle to establish political legitimacy. Against this background of legal domination of women's lives, Harris exposes the ways in which women writers and activists negotiated legal territory to invoke their voices into the radically changing legal discourse.

The Handbook of Social Control offers a comprehensive review of the concepts of social control in today's environment and focuses on the most relevant theories associated with social control. With contributions from noted experts in the field across 32 chapters, the depth and scope of the Handbook reflects the theoretical and methodological diversity that exists within the study of social control. Chapters explore various topics including: theoretical perspectives; institutions and organizations; law enforcement; criminal justice agencies; punishment and incarceration; surveillance; and global developments. This Handbook explores a variety of issues and themes on social control as being a central theme of criminological reflection. The text clearly demonstrates the rich heritage of the major relevant perspectives of social control and provides an overview of the most important theories and dimensions of social control today. Written for academics, undergraduate, and graduate students in the fields of criminology, criminal justice, and sociology, The Handbook of Social Control is an indispensable resource that explores a contemporary view of the concept of social control.

The specter of procedural injustice motivates many popular and scholarly objections to capital punishment. So-called proceduralist arguments against the death penalty are attractive to death penalty abolitionists because they sidestep the controversies that bedevil moral critiques of execution. Proceduralists do not shoulder the burden of demonstrating that heinous murderers deserve a punishment less than death. However, proceduralist arguments often pay insufficient attention to the importance of punishment; many imply the highly contentious claim that no type of criminal sanction is legitimate. In Against Capital Punishment, Benjamin S. Yost revitalizes the core of proceduralism both by examining the connection between procedural injustice and the impermissibility of capital punishment and by offering a comprehensive argument of his own which confronts proceduralism's most significant shortcomings. Yost is the first author to develop and defend the irrevocability argument against capital punishment, demonstrating that the irremediability of execution renders capital punishment impermissible. His contention is not that the act of execution is immoral, but rather that the possibility of irrevocable mistakes precludes the just administration of the death penalty. Shoring up proceduralist arguments for the abolition of the death penalty, Against Capital Punishment carries with it implications not only for the continued use of the death penalty in the criminal justice system, but also for the structure and integrity of the system as a whole.