The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America / Edition 2

by Katherine A. Beckett, Theodore Sasson

Overview

The U.S. crime rate has dropped steadily for more than a decade, yet the rate of incarceration continues to skyrocket. Today, more than 2 million Americans are locked in prisons and jails with devastating consequences for poor families and communities, overcrowded institutions and overburdened taxpayers. How did the U.S. become the world's leader in incarceration? Why have the numbers of women, juveniles, and people of color increased especially rapidly among the imprisoned?

The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America, Second Edition is the first book to make widely accessible the new research on crime as a political and cultural issue. Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson provide readers with a robust analysis of the roles of crime, politics, media imagery and citizen activism in the making of criminal justice policy in the age of mass incarceration.

is the first book to make widely accessible the new research on crime as a political and cultural issue. Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson provide readers with a robust analysis of the roles of crime, politics, media imagery and citizen activism in the making of criminal justice policy in the age of mass incarceration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761929949
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	10/16/2003
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Katherine Beckett, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Law, Societies and Justice Program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She teaches courses on law, culture, drugs, social control, and terrorism. She is the author of Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics (1997), as well as numerous articles and chapters, including "How Unregulated Is the U.S. Labor Market? The Dynamics of Jobs and Jails, 1980-1995," with Bruce Western (American Journal of Sociology, 1999).

Theodore Sasson, Ph.D., is Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology, Middlebury College, where he teaches courses in criminology, political sociology, social theory, and media studies. He has also taught sociology and criminology at Northeastern University, Boston College, and the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of Crime Talk: How Citizens Construct a Social Problem (1995), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Criminal Justice Expansion
Explaining the Expansion of the Penal System
Outline of the Book
Chapter 2. Crime in the United States
Crime in Historical Perspective
Crime in Comparative Perspective
Conclusion
Chapter 3. Murder, American Style
Popular Explanations of Violence
Guns
Inequality and Homicide
Conclusion
Chapter 4. The Politics of Crime
The Origins of the Discourse of Law and Order
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime
From the War on Crime to the War on Drugs
Conclusion
Chapter 5. Crime in the Media
Crime in the News
Crime as Entertainment
The Police Drama
The Crime Film
The "Reality-Based" Cop Show
Media Imagery and Public Opinion
Conclusion
Chapter 6. Crime and Public Opinion
Fear of Crime
Crime as a Social Problem
Popular Punitiveness
Understanding Popular Punitiveness
Alternatives to Punitiveness
Minority Dissent
Conclusion
Chapter 7. Activism and the Politics of Crime
Community-Based Crime Prevention Efforts
The Victim Rights Movement
Adverasarial Activism: Human Rights Campaigns Against Police Brutality, Capital Punishment, and the War on Drugs
Conclusion
Chapter 8. Crime and Public Policy
Drug Policing
Punitive Sentencing
Return of Capital Punishment
Retreat From Juvenile Justice
Prisoner Warehousing
The Surveillance Society
Criminal Justice and Democracy
Conclusion
Chapter 9. Alternatives
Social Investment
Harm Reduction
Alternative Sentencing
Rehabilitating Reintegration
Toward Disarmament
Community Policing
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

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