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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