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Book Corner

Drugs and Justice

Seeking a Consistent, Coherent, Comprehensive View

By Margaret P. Battin, Erik Luna Arthur G. Lipman Paul M. Gahlinger Douglas E. Rollins, Jeanette C. Roberts, and Troy L. Booher

This compact and innovative book tackles one of the central issues in drug policy: the lack of a coherent conceptual structure for thinking about drugs.

Drugs generally fall into one of seven categories: prescription, over the counter, alternative medicine, common-use drugs like alcohol, tobacco and caffeine; religious-use, sports enhancement; and of course illegal street drugs like cocaine and marijuana.

Our thinking and policies varies wildly from one to the other, with inconsistencies that derive more from cultural and social values than from medical or scientific facts.

Battin and her contributors lay a foundation for a wiser drug policy by promoting consistency and coherency in the discussion of drug issues and by encouraging a unique dialogue across disciplines.

They consider questions like the historical development of current policy and the rationales for it; scientific views on how drugs actually cause harm; how to define the key notions of harm and addiction; and ways in which drug policy can be made more consistent. They conclude with an examination of the implications of a consistent policy for various disciplines and society generally.

Drugs and Justice is available from Oxford University Press at www.oup.com, or wherever books are sold.

Women Behind Bars

The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System

by Silja J. A. Talvi

More and more women -- mothers, grandmothers, wives, daughters, and sisters -- are doing hard prison time all across the United States. Many of them are facing the prospect of years, decades, even lifetimes behind bars.

Oddly, there's been little public discussion about the dramatic increase of women in the prison system. What exactly is happening here, and why?

In Women Behind Bars, Journalist Silja J. A. Talvi travels across the country to weave together interviews with inmates, correctional officers, and administrators, providing readers with a glance at the impact incarceration has on our society.

With a combination of compassion and critical analysis, Talvi delivers a timely, in-depth analysis of a growing and extremely complicated issue.

Women Behind Bars is available from Seal Press at www.sealpress.com, or wherever books are sold.

Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice

By Ethan Brown

By the author of the hip hop cult classic Queens Reigns Supreme: A chilling investigative look behind the scenes at a criminal justice system corrupted by its use of cooperators, and into the complex meaning of the "Stop Snitching" movement.

Our criminal justice system favors defendants who know how to play the "5K game": criminals who are so savvy about the cooperation process that they repeatedly commit serious crimes knowing they can be sent back to the streets if they simply cooperate with prosecutors.

In Snitch, investigative reporter Ethan Brown shows through a compelling series of case profiles how the sentencing guidelines for drug-related offenses, along with the 5K1.1 section, have unintentionally created a "cottage industry of cooperators," and led to fabricated evidence.

The result is wrongful convictions and appallingly gruesome crimes, including the grisly murder of the Harvey family in Richmond, Virginia and the well-publicized murder of Imette St. Guillen in New York City.

This cooperator-coddling criminal justice system has ignited the infamous "Stop Snitching" movement in urban neighborhoods, deplored by everyone from the NAACP to the mayor of Boston for encouraging witness intimidation.

But as Snitch shows, the movement is actually a cry against the harsh sentencing guidelines for drug-related crimes, and a call for hustlers to return to "old school" street values, like: do the crime, do the time.

Combining deep knowledge of the criminal justice system with frontline true crime reporting, Snitch is a shocking and brutally troubling report about the state of American justice when it's no longer clear who are the good guys and who are the bad.

Snitch is available from Public Affairs Books at www.publicaffairsbooks.com, or wherever books are sold.

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