The Death of Punishment

The Death of Punishment
Author: Robert Blecker
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137381337

For twelve years Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor, wandered freely inside Lorton Central Prison, armed only with cigarettes and a tape recorder. The Death of Punishment tests legal philosophy against the reality and wisdom of street criminals and their guards. Some killers' poignant circumstances should lead us to mercy; others show clearly why they should die. After thousands of hours over twenty-five years inside maximum security prisons and on death rows in seven states, the history and philosophy professor exposes the perversity of justice: Inside prison, ironically, it's nobody's job to punish. Thus the worst criminals often live the best lives. The Death of Punishment challenges the reader to refine deeply held beliefs on life and death as punishment that flare up with every news story of a heinous crime. It argues that society must redesign life and death in prison to make the punishment more nearly fit the crime. It closes with the final irony: If we make prison the punishment it should be, we may well abolish the very death penalty justice now requires.

Seeking Spatial Justice

Seeking Spatial Justice
Author: Edward W. Soja
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2013-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452915288

In 1996, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, a grassroots advocacy organization, won a historic legal victory against the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. The resulting consent decree forced the MTA for a period of ten years to essentially reorient the mass transit system to better serve the city’s poorest residents. A stunning reversal of conventional governance and planning in urban America, which almost always favors wealthier residents, this decision is also, for renowned urban theorist Edward W. Soja, a concrete example of spatial justice in action. In Seeking Spatial Justice, Soja argues that justice has a geography and that the equitable distribution of resources, services, and access is a basic human right. Building on current concerns in critical geography and the new spatial consciousness, Soja interweaves theory and practice, offering new ways of understanding and changing the unjust geographies in which we live. After tracing the evolution of spatial justice and the closely related notion of the right to the city in the influential work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and others, he demonstrates how these ideas are now being applied through a series of case studies in Los Angeles, the city at the forefront of this movement. Soja focuses on such innovative labor–community coalitions as Justice for Janitors, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and the Right to the City Alliance; on struggles for rent control and environmental justice; and on the role that faculty and students in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning have played in both developing the theory of spatial justice and putting it into practice. Effectively locating spatial justice as a theoretical concept, a mode of empirical analysis, and a strategy for social and political action, this book makes a significant contribution to the contemporary debates about justice, space, and the city.

The Bail Book

The Bail Book
Author: Shima Baradaran Baughman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2018
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107131367

Examines the causes for mass incarceration of Americans and calls for the reform of the bail system. Traces the history of bail, how it has come to be an oppressive tool of the courts, and makes recommendations for reforming the bail system and alleviating the mass incarceration problem.

The Search for Justice

The Search for Justice
Author: Kumari Jayawardena
Publisher: Zubaan
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2016-11-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9385932144

The Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia research project (coordinated by Zubaan and supported by the International Development Research Centre) brings together, for the first time in the region, a vast body of knowledge on this important - yet silenced - subject. Six country volumes (one each on Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and two on India, as well as two standalone volumes) comprising over fifty research papers and two book-length studies, detail the histories of sexual violence and look at the systemic, institutional, societal, individual and community structures that work together to perpetuate impunity for perpetrators. The essays in this volume examine history and contemporary politics to understand the root causes of sexual violence in Sri Lanka. They look at the polarization created around ethnic and linguistic identities during the three-decades of ethnic conflict, but also scrutinize the routine violence of communities towards their own women in daily life. The authors argue that in this transitional post-war phase, Sri Lankan women must not only be treated as victims, but as agents of change. The writers highlight a hitherto unaddressed aspect of sexual violence: that of the structures that enable impunity on the part of perpetrators, be they security personnel and paramilitary forces, members of armed rebel groups, gangs, local politicians and police or ordinary citizens including close family members. They demonstrate how impunity for perpetrators is both a failure of the formal justice process and a product of individual, community and social conditions and indeed the choices that victims and families make that promote silence over truth. At the end of more than a quarter century of conflict that has left some 100,000 dead, 50,000 women-headed households struggling to survive, as well as countless victims and survivors of sexual violence, the calls for justice can no longer be ignored.

Searching for Justice

Searching for Justice
Author: Fred Kaufman
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0802090516

The Honourable Fred Kaufman has been a distinguished figure in Canadian law for a half century. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in mid-1920s Vienna, Kaufman escaped to England on the eve of the Second World War. In 1940, he was interned as an 'enemy alien' and sent to Canada. Released in 1942, Kaufman stayed in Canada where he went on to university and law school in Montreal. Kaufman was called to the Bar of Quebec in 1955 and practiced criminal law for eighteen years, taking part in many of the famous cases of that period. In 1960, he secured the release of a young Pierre Elliott Trudeau from prison, and in 1973, Trudeau returned the favour by personally informing Kaufman of his appointment to the Quebec Court of Appeal, where he served for eighteen years, including one as Acting Chief Justice of Quebec. Since his retirement in 1991, Kaufman has led numerous commissions and inquiries, most notably the investigation into the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin and the two-year reassessment of the Steven Truscott case. Searching for Justice is Kaufman's remarkable story in his own words. It is the tale of adversity overcome in a crucial period of Canadian legal history.

Seeking Justice

Seeking Justice
Author: Keith Hebden
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2013-01-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1780994877

“Cause us trouble Keith, but not too much trouble,” these were final words of advice from a bishop to a new curate the day before his ordination. This book is the result of much reflection on that advice. Keith Hebden, parish priest and spiritual activist brings action and theory together with ideas that are as practical, accessible and exciting as the activism they underwrite. Beginning with the conviction that Jesus was an activist who was deeply committed to community, this book seeks to explore ways in which each of us can challenge the unjust structures that keep us from realising our full and common humanity. Seeking Justice is a timely reminder of our need to face up to our personal ability to change the world we live in and the urgency of the task ahead. ,

Seeking Justice

Seeking Justice
Author: Chris Hinch
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2014-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1625166354

A burnt-out drug addict running for his life in Vancouver, British Columbia, is shot and left bleeding to death. Hospitalized with time on his hands to think, he finds unexpected strength and resolve to finish one thing: Seeking Justice. This recovering drug addict, whose strength and willpower surprises even himself, is determined to find and punish the one responsible for the murder of his wife. Released from hospital, he sets out on his quest. Along the way he stumbles across things that horrify him, but he remains determined to right wrongs and mete out his own form of justice. His vigilantism is sidetracked by a new woman, but she turns out to be just a distraction. The time has come to rely on the quickness of his mind and the strength of his healing body. Born in Halifax, Chris Hinch is the manager of a furniture refinishing shop in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. He started writing poetry in 1986, and began writing a journal while in a recovery house in 1993 that became the basis of this novel. He is writing the sequel. Publisher's website: http: //sbpra.com/ChrisHinch

Seeking Justice

Seeking Justice
Author: Tricia D. Olsen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2023-06-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1009293265

Seeking Justice: Access to Remedy for Corporate Human Rights Abuse explores victims' varying experiences in seeking remedy mechanisms for corporate human rights abuse. It puts forward a novel theory about the possibility of productive contestation and explores governance outcomes for victims of corporate human rights abuse across Latin America. This foundation informs three pathways that victims can use to press for their rights: working within the institutional environment, capitalizing on corporate characteristics, and elevating voices. Seeking Justice challenges the common assumptions in the governance gap literature and argues, instead, that greater democratic practices can emerge from productive contestation. This book brings to bear tough questions about the trade-offs associated with economic growth and conflicting values around human dignity-questions that are very salient today, as citizens around the globe contemplate the type of democratic and economic systems that might better prepare us for tomorrow.

Viral Justice

Viral Justice
Author: Ruha Benjamin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2022-10-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691222886

An inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world—one small change at a time “A book as urgent as the moment that produced it.”—Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism School Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day. Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father’s premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother’s experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well. Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.