New Positions of Interest! U. of Toronto Mississauga

Those on the job market will be happy to read: 

The Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga is advertising for 3 positions, 2 in the area of criminology and 1 in the area of law and society.  

For those unfamiliar with the program, the Department of Sociology at Mississauga has both a Sociology as well as a Criminology and Socio-legal Studies program. Our faculty typically teach undergraduate courses at the Mississauga campus, and graduate courses on the St. George campus in the Department of Sociology.  Many of our faculty are cross-appointed to the Centre of Criminology and Socio-legal Studies on the St. George campus.  Those hired will be joining a vibrant community at Mississauga.  Our current faculty in the area at Mississauga include, David Brownfield, Jennifer Carlson, Randol Contreras, Philip Goodman, Kelly Hannah-Moffat (currently Vice Dean Undergraduate, Mississauga), Nathan Innocente and Paula Maurutto.

Keep reading for more information.

(Short) Book Roundup: New Crime/Punishment Legal Histories

This book round up highlights two recently published works that overlap between legal history and punishment and society, as well as between race and crime and punishment. 

Ely Aaronson's From Slave Abuse to Hate Crime: The Criminalization of Racial Violence in American History (Cambridge University Press) was released in 2014. This should be of particular interest given the events of the last few years and their resonance with centuries of practice. Amazon's blurb explains, 

Spanning previous campaigns for criminalizing slave abuse, lynching, and Klan violence and contemporary debates about the legal response to hate crimes, this book reveals both continuity and change in terms of the political forces underpinning the enactment of new laws regarding racial violence in different periods and of the social and institutional problems that hinder the effective enforcement of these laws.

This book is part of the excellent Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society, which includes Wilf's Law's Imagined Republic, McLennan's The Crisis of Imprisonment, as well as other great historical law and society works. 

The Legal History blog has also recently highlighted a work that may be of interest to folks: Thomas Aiello's Jim Crow's Last Stand: Nonunanimous Criminal Jury Verdicts in Louisiana (LSU Press) published this year. According to Amazon's blurb,

The nonunanimous jury-verdict law originally allowed a guilty verdict with only nine juror votes, funneling many of those convicted into the state's burgeoning convict lease system. Yet the law remained on the books well after convict leasing ended.... Jim Crow's Last Stand investigates the ways in which legal policies and patterns of incarceration contribute to a new form of racial inequality.

 

Common Ground? Law and Society, Punishment and Society, and Social Theory

I have been thinking through framing an article I'm writing about a particular period of penal transition. Ironically, while I think of Punishment and Society as a subfield of Law and Society---or sometimes as bridge between L&S and Criminology---I do think that there are some projects that are more specifically P&S and less L&S. Barring an epiphany, my current project falls in this category. How is it that a project within a subfield doesn't fit easily within the larger field?

Scholarship at Court

Yesterday (June 18), the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in a case about possibly racially based peremptory challenges, Davis v. Ayala (576 U.S. ___). But as The Atlantic reports, Justice Anthony Kennedy focused on a different aspect of the case in his concurrence: Ayala's time in solitary confinement. While also citing John Howard's The State of Prisons in England and Wales (1777) and Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Justice Kennedy noted,

The past centuries’ experience and consideration of this issue is discussed at length in texts such as The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (1995), a joint disciplinary work edited by law professor Norval Morris and professor of medicine and psychiatry David Rothman that discusses the deprivations attendant to solitary confinement. Id., at 184. (p. 2, Justice Kennedy, concurring)

A little further on, he referred to work even closer to this group:

And penalogical and psychology experts, including scholars in the legal academy, continue to offer essential information and analysis. See, e.g., Simon & Sparks, Punishment and Society: The Emergence of an Academic Field, in The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society (2013)... (p. 4) 

Kennedy closed with what should perhaps be the slogan of punishment and society (except for the fact that it only focuses on prisons and what we do is so much more than prisons or even traditionally recognized punishment---e.g., immigrant detention and quasi-civil-criminal penalties...)

Over 150 years ago, Dostoyevsky wrote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." The Yale Book of Quotations 210 (F. Shapiro ed. 2006). There is truth to this in our own time. (p. 4-5) 

 It is a great feeling to see P&S work cited in a USSC opinion!

Book Roundup: Oxford U Press Edition

This week's book roundup comes from trolling the pages of Oxford University Press, and thus the collection is a bit more eclectic, but with a heavy mix of history and legal scholarship.

First, we have two historical works on race and criminal justice.

Pippa Holloway's Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship (2013)

Living in Infamy examines the history of disfranchisement for criminal conviction in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the post-war South, white southern Democrats expanded the usage of laws disfranchising for crimes of infamy in order to deny African Americans the suffrage rights due them as citizens, employing historical similarities between the legal statuses of slaves and convicts as justification. At the same time, our nation's criminal code changed. The inhumane treatment of prisoners, the expansion of the prison system, the public nature of punishment by forced labor, and the abandonment of the idea of reform and rehabilitation of prisoners all contributed to a national consensus that certain categories of criminals should be permanently disfranchised. 

As racial barriers to suffrage were challenged and fell, rights remained restricted for persons targeted by such infamy laws; criminal convictions--in place of race--continued the disparity in legal status between whites and African Americans. Decades later, after race-based disfranchisement has officially ended, legislation steeped in a legacy of racial discrimination continues to perpetuate a dichotomy of suffrage and citizenship that still affects our election outcomes today.

Jeffrey L. Kirchmeiern's Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey and the American Death Penalty (2015)

Imprisoned by the Past ties together three unique American stories in U.S history. First, the book considers the changing American death penalty across centuries where drastic changes have occurred in the last fifty years. Second, the book discusses the role that race played in that history. And third, the book tells the story of Warren McCleskey and how his life and legal case brought together the other two narratives.

Next is a qualitative study of hate crime and restorative justice: Mark Austin Walters' Hate Crime and Restorative Justice: Exploring Causes, Repairing Harms (2014)

The study's findings provide original data on the contextual variables that are intrinsic to both the cause and effect of hate-motivated offences, revealing complex socio-cultural and socio-economic factors that are fundamental, both to our understanding of hate crime and to how such incidents can be best resolved.

We also have two studies on international war crimes, one an edited volume on an important case and one examining the ICC and war crimes tribunals more generally.  

The Milosevic Trial: An Autopsy, Edited by Timothy William Waters

The international trial of Slobodan Milošević, who presided over the violent collapse of Yugoslavia - was already among the longest war crimes trials when Milošević died in 2006. Yet precisely because it ended without judgment, its significance and legacy are specially contested. The contributors to this volume, including trial participants, area specialists, and international law scholars bring a variety of perspectives as they examine the meaning of the trial's termination and its implications for post-conflict justice. The book's approach is intensively cross-disciplinary, weighing the implications for law, politics, and society that modern war crimes trials create.

William Schabas' Unimaginable Atrocities: Justice, Politics, and Rights at the War Crimes Tribunals (2014)

International criminal tribunals have often been stigmatized as an exercise in victors' justice. This book traces how this critique developed and the difficulty it poses to the identification of situations for prosecution by the International Criminal Court. The claim that amnesty for international crimes is prohibited by international law is challenged, with a more nuanced approach to the relationship between justice and peace being proposed.

Finally, we have two books exploring gender and crime, one an anthology on the subject, the other exploring the role of medical diagnosis in Shaken Baby Syndrome deaths/murders. 

The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime, Edited by Rosemary Gartner and Bill McCarthy (2014)

The editors, Rosemary Gartner and Bill McCarthy, have assembled a diverse cast of criminologists, historians, legal scholars, psychologists, and sociologists from a number of countries to discuss key concepts and debates central to the field. The Handbook includes examinations of the historical and contemporary patterns of women's and men's involvement in crime; as well as biological, psychological, and social science perspectives on gender, sex, and criminal activity. Several essays discuss the ways in which sex and gender influence legal and popular reactions to crime. An important theme throughout The Handbook is the intersection of sex and gender with ethnicity, class, age, peer groups, and community as influences on crime and justice. Individual chapters investigate both conventional topics - such as domestic abuse and sexual violence - and topics that have only recently drawn the attention of scholars - such as human trafficking, honor killing, gender violence during war, state rape, and genocide.

Deborah Tuerkheimer's Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice (2014)

Flawed Convictions: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the Inertia of Injustice is the first book to survey the scientific, cultural, and legal history of Shaken Baby Syndrome from inception to formal dissolution. It exposes extraordinary failings in the criminal justice system's treatment of what is, in essence, a medical diagnosis of murder.

The 12 Big Ideas in Punishment and Society - Teaser

From time to time, I've thought about teaching a special topics class, probably at the graduate level, on what I see as the Ten Big Ideas in Punishment and Society. As I define them, the Big Ideas are those that either generated much followup work by other scholars and/or enjoyed a very strong reception from folks. They are not always uncontroversial---I include the Prison Industrial Complex on the list despite major reservations about this phrase and how it has been used (for a great take down, see Wacquant's article on the subject)---but they are tremendously thought provoking and productive of further research (even if that research counters some of the claims in the original). While there are some biases in the list (see below), I have tried to shape the list according to what I think others also think are Big Ideas---there are some concepts I do not use in my own work, but I recognize that they are very influential for others in our field.

The Big Ideas on my list are skewed in two ways, and skirt what we might consider to be the boundaries of the Punishment and Society field.

First, the ideas are skewed towards studies of prison, because that is where my interests lay most strongly and the works with which I am most familiar. These Big Ideas, though, are not only drawn from micro-studies of the prison, but also macro-studies of society and the changes in the use of the prison---the kind of studies we perhaps most associate with Punishment and Society.

Second, the ideas are skewed towards those that I learned about early on. This is a subjective list: while I am trying to identify the most influential ideas, there is a lot of my own preferences and biases, implicit or explicit. For example, my former advisors appear on the list several times--I don't think it is a coincidence, but I do think of these as major works. They are kind of like movies from the 1990s---I enjoy thrillers from the 90s (and early 2000s). I watched these as a child/teenager, so they have a certain nostalgic appeal, in addition to the fact that I think they are great movies. However, someone who did not watch them growing up might not like them as much. I think there is a similar nostalgia at play for works I learned in undergrad and early grad school, which may have a greater appeal than they would otherwise. This is not to say these Big Ideas aren't good and it is only my bias at work. It is to say that it is a possible (likely) bias in the list; overall, I think it is a good list; but others will very likely have their own list that might differ in various ways.

Third, some of the ideas exist at the boundaries of punishment and society, and may or may not fit within the boundaries others draw. For example, the first item on the list--key concepts from prison sociology (inmate culture, prisonization, pains of imprisonment, secondary adjustments) might be considered by some as more properly designated criminology. Given the flurry of activity with these concepts lately in Punishment and Society, I would disagree, but again, these are subjective assessments on my part.

There are plenty of Big Ideas that do not make my list. For example, in this first post, I do not begin with Durkheim's collection of Big Ideas---the Collective Conscience, Social Solidarity, or the Two Laws of Penal Evolution. This is not because I do not like Durkheim's theory--it is actually my favorite by far of the classic social theories. In fact, I tried to resuscitate it in my first year of grad school (see here). His absence from the list does not mean Durkheim's theories are not Big Ideas or really important ideas; nor is it to say that they were not influential. I think many, if not most, punishment courses begin with a discussion of Durkheim. But it is not clear to me that scholars use Durkheim in the same way as they do others ideas on this list. I think his work has been integrated elsewhere--Kennedy's article on punishing the "monstrous," Erikson's Wayward Puritans, and Garland combines insights from Durkheim and others (especially Foucault) in Peculiar Institution. But Durkheim's theory does not strike me as the same kind of cottage industry that other items on the list do.

A few logistical notes about the list. First, some of the Big Ideas are really groups of big ideas along the same lines or that must be discussed together. If I was more disciplined, I could probably limit them to one, but I would rather discuss them together. Second, after careful consideration, I've decided to make the list 12 Big Ideas instead of Ten. At the end, I might also add a bonus prediction for what will be the 13th Big Idea if we jumped ahead five years.

Over the next few weeks, I will do a post on each Big Idea in which I describe the basic premise(s) and defend my choice of the Idea as a Big Idea. My next post will start with Key Concepts in Prison Sociology: Inmate Culture, Prisonization, Pains of Imprisonment, and Secondary Adjustments (Clemmer, Sykes, Goffman).

Update: I forgot to mention that I'll be really interested to see what people think of the list---what they think I left off or what they think doesn't belong.

Aquarius, Packer, and the Warren Court Revolution

NBC's new series Aquarius is a police procedural set in 1968 Los Angeles. The hero, Sam Hodiak, and his sidekick, undercover cop Brian Shafe, tackle a smorgasbord of Sixties' issues, chief among which is the disappearance of a teenage girl into Charlie Manson's nascent "family".

Given my interest in the Manson "family"--I'm working on a book about parole hearings, using their hearing transcripts as my source materials--I was very eager to watch the show, and have put up reviews of all the episodes on California Correctional Crisis (check the sidebar there for links). The bottom line is that I'm far less impressed with the fictionalization of the Manson story than I am with the policing side of the show. The latter, I think, could be a useful teaching tool for those of us teaching the Warren Court revolution.

Aquarius uses a fairly tired trope--the buddy-cop show--which is, of course, hardly a novelty. What's useful about it in this case, though, is that the show is set shortly after the advent of Miranda, leading to interesting interrogation scenes. In the scene that follows, Hodiak and Shafe embody, respectively, Packer's crime control and due process models, and could be used as illustrations of the models in class.



Hodiak and Shafe's fictional successor--Dirty Harry, policing San Francisco--is the embodiment of the post-Warren-court resentment about the advent of due process. This is his conversation with the District Attorney,  making full use of the "out on a technicality" trope: