Third Digest of Member's Recent Work!

As compiled by Miltonette Craig:

ARTICLES

Burkhardt, Brett C., and Connor, Brian. (2015). Durkheim, Punishment, and Prison Privatization. Social Currents. DOI: 10.1177/2329496515604641

Kleinstuber, Ross. (2015). Attorneys’ Use of Hegemonic Tales and Subversive Stories in the Presentation of Capital Mitigation. Criminal Justice Review. DOI: 10.1177/0734016815611726

Rubin, Ashley T. (2015). The Consequences of Prisoners’ Micro-Resistance. Law & Social Inquiry. DOI: 10.1111/lsi.12158

Verma, Anjuli. (2015). The Law-Before: Legacies and Gaps in Penal Reform. Law & Society Review, 49(4), 847-882. 

Zaykowski, Heather, Kleinstuber, Ross, and McDonough, Caitlin. (2014). Judicial Narratives of Ideal and Deviant Victims in Judges’ Capital Sentencing Decisions. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 39(4), 716-731.

BOOKS/BOOK CHAPTERS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Bowers, William J., Kelly, Christopher E., Kleinstuber, Ross, Vartkessian, Elizabeth, and Sandys, Marla. (2014). “The Life or Death Sentencing Decision: It’s at Odds with Constitutional Standards; Is It beyond Human Ability?” In James R. Acker, Robert M. Bohm, and Charles S. Lanier (Eds.), America’s Experiment with Capital Punishment, 3^rd ed.. Durham: Carolina Academic Press.

De Giorgi, Alessandro (special issue editor). (2015). Beyond Mass Incarceration: Crisis and Critique in North American Penal Systems. Social Justice, 42(2).

Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin and Kleinstuber, Ross. (2015). “The Death Penalty.” In James D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2^nd ed., Vol. 5. Oxford: Elsevier.

Kleinstuber, Ross. (2016). “McCleskey and the Lingering Problem of ‘Race.’” In David Keys & R. J. Maratea (Eds.), Race and the Death Penalty: The Legacy of McCleskey v. Kemp. Boulder: Lynne Reinner.

Kleinstuber, Ross. (2015). “Genocide: Social and Economic Aspects.” In James D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2^nd ed., Vol. 10. Oxford: Elsevier.

If you would like your recently published book or article to be included in the next digest,

please send your citation information to Miltonette Craig (mocraig@fsu.edu) by January 31.

New Special Issues of Especial Interest!

A new and very exciting special issue of Social Justice is forthcoming in just a few weeks entitled Beyond Mass Incarceration: Crisis & Critique in North American Penal Systems and features an all-star lineup of authors and subjects (more information here), including a book review symposium of Jonathan Simon's Mass Incarceration on Trial. A brief description of the issue (cribbed from the website) follows:

After decades of vertical increases in imprisonment rates, the US carceral system is in a state of structural crisis. A growing public awareness of the spiraling social and economic costs of this hypertrophic carceral machine seems to provide a window of opportunity to challenge the American penal state. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of mass incarceration, or are the recent reform initiatives subtle ways to tinker with the system? What radical agendas for penal reform could emerge in the present conjuncture? Using an interdisciplinary lens, the essays featured in this special issue of Social Justice analyze the carceral field in the United States and Canada in an attempt to decode current trends and anticipate future developments.

Copied from the site:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor’s Introduction [free download available soon]

Five Theses on Mass Incarceration
Alessandro De Giorgi

Razing the Carceral State
Marie Gottschalk 

Injury and Accumulation: Making Sense of the Punishing State
Noah De Lissovoy 

Assessing the Boundaries of ‘Public Criminology’: On the Pitfalls of Reformist, Elite-Oriented Engagement and Discipline JustificationJustin Piché 

Advocacy and Academia: Considering Strategies of Cooperative EngagementAbby Deshman & Kelly Hannah-Moffat

Policing Carceral Boundaries: Access to Information and Research with PrisonersDawn Moore, Lisa Wright & Vincent Kazmierski 

Complicity and Redemption: The Boundaries of Scholarly GazingShoshana Pollack & Tiina Eldridge 

“Ripping Off Some Room for People to Breathe”: “Peer to Peer” Education in PrisonSimone Weil Davis & Bruce Michaels 

Book Review Symposium: Jonathan Simon, Mass Incarceration on Trial
Contributors: Leonidas Cheliotis, Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Mona Lynch, Rebecca McLennan, Tony Platt & Jonathan Simon

Book Review: Hadar Aviram, Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment
Reviewed by Alessandro De Giorgi

Book Roundup: Oxford U. Press Edition

The first several books to highlight are part of the Clarendon Studies in Criminology, a series I particularly like. These include:

Harry Annison's Dangerous Politics: Risk, Political Vulnerability, and Penal Policy, which centers around the rise and fall of "Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence," a form of indeterminate sentencing in the UK. From the description:

This book argues that the IPP story demonstrates the need to be cautious of equating substance with process - while on one view the IPP sentence constitutes a penal manifestation of the risk society, its development refutes the 'evolutionary growth' of such policies as implied by the 'new penology' thesis.

Emma Kaufman's Punish and Expel: Border Control, Nationalism, and the New Purpose of the Prison, examines immigration detention in the UK:

Today, prison officers refer anyone suspected of being foreign to immigration authorities and prisoners facing deportation are detained in special prisons devoted to confining non-citizens. Those who cannot be deported linger, sometimes for years, indefinitely detained behind prison walls. The British approach to foreign nationals reflects a broader trend in punishment. Over the past decade, penal institutions across England, the United States, and Western Europe have become key sites for border control. ... Punish and Expel links prisons to the history of British colonialism and the contemporary politics of race, whilst challenging the reader to rethink their approach to prisons, and to the people held inside them.

Ian O'Donnell's Prisoners, Solitude, and Time, examines solitary confinement and especially "the roles of silence and separation in penal policy"; specifically, it "assesses both the degree to which prisoners can withstand the rigours of solitude and how they experience the passing of time." From the description: 

Through a re-examination of the roles of silence and separation in penal policy, and by contrasting the prisoner experience with that of individuals who have sought out institutional solitariness (for example as members of certain religious orders), and others who have found themselves held in solitary confinement although they committed no crime (such as hostages and some political prisoners), Prisoners, Solitude, and Time seeks to assess the impact of long-term isolation and the rationality of such treatment.

In addition to Clarendon series books, we have several additional wonderful contributions to several literatures, including:

Mary D. Looman and John D. Carl's A Country Called Prison: Mass Incarceration and the Making of a New Nation, which uses a fascinating framework in which they consider "how prison became a country." For example, " If those currently incarcerated in the US prison system were a country, it would be the 102nd most populated nation in the world." From the description, 

Looman and Carl form a foundation of understanding to demonstrate that prison is more than an institution built of fences and policies - it is a culture. Prison continues well after incarceration, as ex-felons leave correctional facilities (and often return to impoverished neighborhoods) without money or legal identification of American citizenship.

Jack Glaser's Suspect Race: Causes and Consequences of Racial Profiling, examines the causes of racial profiling. From the description:

In Suspect Race, social psychologist and public policy expert Jack Glaser leverages a century's worth of social psychological research to provide a clear understanding of how stereotypes, even those operating outside of conscious awareness or control, can cause police to make discriminatory judgments and decisions about who to suspect, stop, question, search, use force on, and arrest.

Andrew Dilts's Punishment and Inclusion: Race, Membership, and the Limits of American Liberalism, examines the historical background to felon disenfranchisement and its relationship to mass incarceration. From the description:

It demonstrates that the history of felon disenfranchisement, rooted in postslavery restrictions on suffrage and the contemporaneous emergence of the modern "American" penal system, reveals the deep connections between two political institutions often thought to be separate, showing the work of membership done by the criminal punishment system and the work of punishment done by the electoral franchise.

Martin Innes's Signal Crimes: Reactions to Crime and Social Control, "presents the results from a series of inter-linked empirical studies that have resulted in the concept of a 'signal crime': an incident that changes how people think, feel and behave about their safety due to their actions operating as signals to the presence of wider risks and threats." From the description:

Signal Crimes explores how the fear of crime 'travels' in the aftermath of criminal homicide incidents, and why some homicides impact more significantly upon local communities than others.

David Skarbek's The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System, "[o]ffers the controversial theory that gangs form to promote order among inmates. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, they are not formed primarily to enhance their ability to engage in violence or to promote racist beliefs. Gangs are quasi-governments that make inmates better off." From the description:

He uses economics to explore the secret world of the convict culture, inmate hierarchy, and prison gang politics, and to explain why prison gangs form, how formal institutions affect them, and why they have a powerful influence over crime even beyond prison walls

Finally, we have two edited volumes.

Popular Punishment: On the Normative Significance of Public Opinion, edited by Jesper Ryberg and Julian V. Roberts, examines "what role public opinion should play in the way criminal offenders are punished." From the description:

The chapters address the myriad complexities surrounding this issue by first weighing the justifications for incorporating public views into punishment practices and then considering the various ways this might be achieved through juries, prosecutors, restorative justice programs, and other means.

Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration, edited by Justice Tankebe and Alison Liebling, examines "the meaning of legitimacy and advance its theoretical understanding within the context of criminal justice." From the description:

This resulting volume aims to: advance conceptual understanding of legitimacy in the contexts of policing and criminal justice; to develop a better understanding of the implications of analyses of legitimacy for the practical contexts of policing, prisons and criminal justice; and to recognise the growing number of contexts in which criminal justice personnel encounter ethnically and religiously diverse communities, such as the acute dilemmas for legitimate authority posed by perceived terrorist threats. Attention is also devoted to the growing importance of international organisations in relation to legitimacy, both in its international and domestic manifestations.

Second Digest of Recently Published Work by P&S Members

As compiled by Miltonette Craig:

ARTICLES

Bachman, Ronet, Kerrison, Erin, O’Connell, Dan, Paternoster, Raymond, and Smith, Lionel. (2015). Desistance for a Long-Term Drug-Involved Sample of Adult Offenders: The Importance of Identity Transformation. Criminal Justice and Behavior. DOI: 10.1177/0093854815604012

Burkhardt, Brett C., and Jones, Alisha. (2015). Judicial Intervention into Prisons: Comparing Private and Public Prisons from 1990 to 2005. Justice System Journal. DOI: 10.1080/0098261X.2015.1062738

Campbell, Michael, Vogel, Matt, and Williams, Joshua. (2015). Historical Contingencies and the Evolving Importance of Race, Violent Crime and Region in Explaining Mass Incarceration in the United States. Criminology, 53(2), 180-203.

Hannah-Moffat, Kelly. (2015). Needle in a Haystack: Logical Parameters of Treatment Based on Actuarial Risk-Needs Assessments. Criminology and Public Policy, 14(1), 113-120.

Hannah-Moffat, Kelly. (2015). The Uncertainties of Risk Assessment: Partiality, Transparency, and Just Decisions. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 27(4), 244-247.

Quirouette, Marianne, Hannah-Moffat, Kelly, and Maurutto, Paula. (2015). ‘A Precarious Place:’ Housing and Clients of Specialized Courts. British Journal of Criminology. DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azv050

Ricardelli, Rosemary, Mair, Katharina, and Hannah-Moffat, Kelly. (2015). Strategic Masculinities: Vulnerabilities, Risk and the Production of Prison Masculinities. Theoretical Criminology. DOI: 10.1177/1362480614565849

Savelsberg, Joachim J., and Nyseth Brehm, Hollie. (2015). Global Justice, National Distinctions:

Criminalizing Human Rights Violations in Darfur. American Journal of Sociology, 121(2).

Welsh, Megan. (2015). Categories of Exclusion: The Transformation of Formerly-Incarcerated Women into “Able-Bodied Adults without Dependents” in Welfare Processing. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 42(2), 55-77.

BOOKS/EDITED COLLECTIONS

Aviram, Hadar. (2015). Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment. Oakland: University of California Press.

Reiter, Keramet, and Koenig, Alexa. (2015). Extreme Punishment: Comparative Studies in Detention, Incarceration and Solitary Confinement. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Savelsberg, Joachim J. (2015). Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur. Oakland: University of California Press (open access version downloadable at no cost: http://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/detail/3/representing-mass-violence/)

New Position of Interest: U.C. Irvine!

In addition to the position advertised here, UC Irvine is advertising for a second position! They are looking for:

 an advanced Assistant or an early Associate Professor, who would contribute to our strength in the interdisciplinary field of criminology, in particular a scholar specializing in public policy. The ideal candidate will be a scholar whose work focuses on translational research—our ability to transform research findings into policies and to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of these policies. Successful candidates for this position will have an outstanding record of research, evidence of the ability to attract extramural funding, and evidence of excellent teaching and mentoring.  

To ensure your application is given full consideration, files should be completed by November 15, 2015. The position will begin July 1, 2016 (teaching duties to begin Fall 2016). Candidates must have a doctoral degree in a related field. Applications must be uploaded electronically. Applications will be accepted through the on-line Recruit system: https://recruit.ap.uci.edu/apply/JPF03106.  

Candidates should submit a letter of interest, a curriculum vitae, statement of research and teaching interests, representative publications, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation uploaded electronically. Complete your application by also submitting a statement on previous and/or past contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion (e.g. mentoring activities, committee service, research and/or teaching activities). Please direct questions about this position to Professor George Tita at: gtita@uci.edu. 

The full ad: 

New article of interest!

I won't usually call out a single article, but punishment and society/law and society articles do not typically appear in the leading American criminology journal, so it's kind of a coup for our field. Johann Koehler's article, "Development and Fracture of a Discipline: Legacies of the School of Criminology at Berkeley," is now available on EarlyView at Criminology. Here is the abstract:

In the early twentieth century, the University of California—Berkeley opened its doors to police professionals for instruction in “police science.” This program ultimately developed into the full-fledged School of Criminology, whose graduates helped shape American criminology and criminal justice until well into the 1970s. Scholarship at the School of Criminology eventually fractured into three distinct traditions: “Administrative criminology” applied scientific methods in pursuit of refining law enforcement practices, “law and society” coupled legal scholarship with social scientific methods, and “radical criminology” combined Marxist critiques of the state with community activism. Those scientific traditions relied on competing epistemic premises and normative aspirations, and they drew legitimacy from different sources. Drawing on oral histories and archival data permits a neo-institutional analysis of how each of these criminological traditions emerged, acquired stability, and subsided. The Berkeley School of Criminology provides fertile ground to examine trends in the development of criminal justice as a profession, criminology as a discipline and its place in elite universities, the uncoupling of criminology from law and society scholarship, and criminal justice policy's disenchantment with the academy. These legacies highlight how the development of modern criminology and the professionalization of American law enforcement find precedent in events that originate at Berkeley.

This article gives a nice historical explanation for the divergence of critical criminology, punishment and society, and law and society (and what we might also call European criminology) from "traditional" or more technocratic criminology. It helps to explain what we might call the geo-politics of criminology departments' placement across American universities. It's also a sort of pre-history to UC Berkeley's Jurisprudence and Social Policy doctoral program and the Center for the Study of Law and Society. Finally, the article is qualitative, theoretical, and historical, and those are three things that are not often represented in criminology journals (though they are occasionally), which makes its appearance extra exciting.

Blog Series of Interest

Alessandro De Giorgi has been contributed a fantastic series entitled, "Reentry To Nothing" to the Social Justice Blog. Here is a brief overview of the project: 

The materials presented in this blog series draw from an ethnographic study on prisoner reentry I have been conducting between March 2011 and March 2014 in a neighborhood of West Oakland, California, which is plagued by chronically high levels of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, drug addiction, and street crime. Since 2011, with the agreement of a local community health clinic that provides free basic health care and other basic services to marginalized populations in the area, I have been conducting participant observation among several returning prisoners, mostly African American and Latino men between the ages of 25 and 50. In this series of blog entries, I will be presenting ethnographic snapshots of some of these men (and often their partners) as they struggle for survival after prison in a postindustrial ghetto. For more detailed information on this project, please read here. To read the previous entries, please follow these links: Get a Job, Any Job (#1), The Working Poor (#2), Home, Sweet Home (#3).

The latest entry, "In the Shadow of the Jailhouse," De Giorgi examines the relationship between the urban impoverished and local jails. This piece triggered thoughts about "sociological ambivalence"---the complicated relationship incarcerated people (and their families and neighbors) have with carceral institutions and policies of the kind discussed by Megan Comfort, Todd Clear, and others when discussing prisons. Prison, for these groups, has both positive and negative effects---mostly negative, but (surprisingly) some positive. However, De Giorgi is examining the role of local jails, which are increasingly taking a larger role in California's penal landscape following Realignment (2011). He's also focusing particularly on the way in which, in our post-welfare society, one of the largest providers of services to the poor are jails. 

In the following notes I document how, despite the abysmal levels of neglect and abuse characterizing these institutions—particularly in terms of the physical and mental health of their guests—jails have come to represent one of the few residual forms of “public relief” from the sheer destitution the poor experience in the postindustrial ghetto, often representing their only chance to gain access to food, shelter, and sporadic healthcare. Of course, this is not to suggest that prisons should continue to offer their “services” to the urban poor; however, we should wonder whether the hands-off approach currently advocated by reformers and presidential candidates across the political spectrum represents nothing more than the latest chapter in a long history of public retrenchment from the ghetto and malign neglect toward racialized urban poverty.

His post offers one of the more jarring accounts of sociological ambivalence. The post discusses a morning when Alessandro is driving Rico to Marin County to pick up his girlfriend, Naira, from the Marin County Jail. On the way over, Rico tells Alessandro that he expects Naira to look better than she had, to be healthier after her stint in jail because she'll have been fed, have had time to sober up, sleep, and get her head right. On the way back to the East Bay, Naira tells Rico and Alessandro of her time in the jail, especially of the long delay before the people are giving their medications and the many people with serious mental illnesses and the various forms of decompensation they experience. With a healthy dose of irony, the post closes with the group running into a friend of Rico and Naira's; the friend "tells Rico that Naira looks much healthier after her period in jail. As she lights his cigarette, he comments, 'You look good, Naira! You really needed it, uh?'" Despite the terrible the jail conditions, they are still better than some of the conditions Naira faced on the outside. 

The other posts are also worth checking out: 

1) The Project: Reentry to Nothing—Urban Survival After Mass Incarceration

2) Reentry to Nothing #1 —Get a Job, Any Job
3) Reentry to Nothing #2 —The Working Poor
4) Reentry to Nothing #3 — Home, Sweet Home

5) Reentry to Nothing #4 — In the Shadow of the Jailhouse   

Keep them coming, Alessandro, and keep up the great work!

I think the tide is really turning...

I don't plan to post in response to a lot of news stories---see our Facebook group for a really active stream of articles interesting to P&S folks---but this one really struck me. Yesterday, The New York Times published an article titled, "Joe Biden’s Role in ’90s Crime Law Could Haunt Any Presidential Bid."

The article was actually less powerful than the title implies, but reading those titular words caused an avalanche of images and stories to fall through my mind, including, of course, the arguments in Simon (2007) and Beckett (1997) about how important tough on crime is---now was---to politicians. Just think about some of the salient illustrations of "governing through crime" and "making crime pay":

• the Bush v. Dukakis debate and the TV ads of Willy Horton
• an image of President Bush Sr. talking about the drugs his personnel bought across from the White House
• President Clinton flying down to Arkansas to preside over the execution of mentally retarded death row inmate Ricky Ray Rector
• a flood of name-sake laws
• (my own personal favorite) claims that Gov. Schwarzenegger (in the 2000s) had abandoned crime victims by endorsing rehabilitative policies for California's prisons

Then I was reminded of the various pieces of evidence we have seen over the last 5-10 years that suggest this thing that we have been studying really is coming to an end.

To provide some context, the 1994 federal Violent Crime Bill was a big step in the "war on crime" (for more, see Simon 2007, Governing Through Crime; Parenti 1999, Lockdown America; among others). The bill was a big package of goodies for the tough-on-crime politicians who supported it (almost everyone). One of the reasons I (and others) find this crime bill so significant is that it tied federal funding to state's adoption of mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Together, this helped massively increase the incarceration rate, and fund prisons in which to put our newly sentenced convicts. (I also think of this as a nice example of coercive isomorphism---here's money to do what we want you to do.) It also created a federal three strikes law that some other states copied. Others will remember the federal 1994 Crime Bill because it removed Pell Grants---ways that prisoners were able to fund their education behind bars. It also criminalized gang activity and it introduced the "drug free zones" that Simon (2007) writes about as part of the "official graffiti" populating cities in the 1990s. It also directed millions of dollars to policing (especially to hire more officers). In many ways, this bill has helped further increase---and maintain---our really high incarceration rate.

The 1994 Crime Bill was considered a major victory for Bill Clinton, but it's also one that---apparently (as I didn't know this)---Biden has taken major credit, recently calling it the "1994 Biden Crime Bill"---as he was a major force behind it.

Now, a little more than 20 years after this law's passage, this law is apparently so unpopular that it might actually hurt Biden should he decide to run for president. (Apparently, he says mixed things about the bill, touting some of its positive effects but also wishing they had pushed back on some other features.) According to the New York Times article, Biden "will need to show his views have evolved." Specifically, Jeremy Haile, a main source in the article and a lawyer with the Sentencing Project, said,

“Any Democrat that is interested in gaining support among the current electorate, particularly the progressive civil rights communities, is going to have to say that previous tough-on-crime policies were a mistake.” 

Now, this is still pretty limited evidence for my question about "is the tide turning"---Haile and the article are mainly talking about Biden's ability to "win support from the young voters who were critical to President Obama’s election victories." Nevertheless, I do think it is a pretty interesting development.

It seems that a week doesn't go by without a major criminal justice issue isn't discussed in a major news outlet---or fake news outlet (e.g., Last Week Tonight with John Oliver). Things that we (scholars) figured out years or even decades ago are finally getting airtime on something other than NPR. This is also a time that we (again, scholars) might actually be able to make a bigger impact as people are finally ready to listen to what we have to say.

We are still a bit more than a year away from the 2016 election, but I imagine we'll see a lot more about criminal justice issues and the new politics of crime. Both personally (i.e., politically) and professionally (i.e., as a punishment geek), this is a very exciting time.

Postscript: 1994 

It seems like there are certain years that stand out in penal history. I tend to think of 1976/1977 as a major one for the beginning of the "severity revolution," the path towards mass incarceration, tough on crime mania, or whatever we want to call it. This is when California---the bellwether for penal rehabilitation and correctionalism---abandoned its indeterminate sentencing scheme (with bipartisan support) and declared that the purpose of prison was punishment. Now, some people are talking about 2008 as one of the turning points (Aviram 2015). As always, we recognize that that signs of change predate a watershed moment, but there are some years that just seem to stand out.

I think that 1994 was kind of a watershed year in many ways (I'm probably not the first to say this, so apologies to whoever did). This was the year that California's passed its (on steroids) version of the Three Strikes law passed (after having been rejected the previous year as a laughably bad idea), inspired by Polly Klaas's tragic kidnap-murder the year before. (The 1994 Violent Crime Bill also authored its federal version of the Three Strikes law.) This is the time when we see very clearly that governing through crime was a bipartisan effort, and no longer the sole domain of Dixiecrats or Republicans. 1996 is another major year, with the passage of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Prison Litigation Reform Act, but by then, a lot has happened.

1994 is around the time when we see most clearly a disconnect between rhetoric and reason. 1994 was the second year of declining crime rates and part way into the period of America's steepest increase in its incarceration rate (see Zimring 2001, "Imprisonment Rates and the New Politics of Criminal Punishment"). The crime rate had peaked in 1992, the same year as the LA riots/rebellion/protests following the Rodney King beating.

Book Roundup: UC Press Edition

In addition to two great books from Calavita and Jenness (2014) and Aviram (2015) discussed in a previous post, UC Press has several new offerings in 2015 that should be of interest to the P&S crowd. I highlight three below:

Joachim J. Savelsberg's Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur examines how the framing or representation of episodes of mass violence, focusing on the Darfur genocide, varies across countries and groups, and shapes responses to this violence. From the blurb:

How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields. Representing Mass Violence contributes to our understanding of how the world acknowledges and responds to violence in the Global South.

Note that this book is Open Access and available online for free!

Michael Welch gives us Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment, which explores the growing industry of prisons as tourist attractions worldwide. From the blurb:

The resurrection of former prisons as museums has caught the attention of tourists along with scholars interested in studying what is known as dark tourism. Unsurprisingly, due to their grim subject matter, prison museums tend to invert the “Disneyland” experience, becoming the antithesis of “the happiest place on earth.” In Escape to Prison, the culmination of years of international research, noted criminologist Michael Welch explores ten prison museums on six continents, examining the complex interplay between culture and punishment. From Alcatraz to the Argentine Penitentiary, museums constructed on the former locations of surveillance, torture, colonial control, and even rehabilitation tell unique tales about the economic, political, religious, and scientific roots of each site’s historical relationship to punishment.

Finally, Marjorie S. Zatz and Nancy Rodriguez have written Dreams and Nightmares: Immigration Policy, Youth, and Families. This book examines immigration policy with particular emphasis on its effects on children. From the blurb:

Dreams and Nightmares takes a critical look at the challenges and dilemmas of immigration policy and practice in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform. The experiences of children and youth provide a prism through which the interwoven dynamics and consequences of immigration policy become apparent. Using a unique sociolegal perspective, authors Zatz and Rodriguez examine the mechanisms by which immigration policies and practices mitigate or exacerbate harm to vulnerable youth. They pay particular attention to prosecutorial discretion, assessing its potential and limitations for resolving issues involving parental detention and deportation, unaccompanied minors, and Dreamers who came to the United States as young children. The book demonstrates how these policies and practices offer a means of prioritizing immigration enforcement in ways that alleviate harm to children, and why they remain controversial and vulnerable to political challenges.