When Mothers Kill: Interviews from Prison

By Michelle Oberman and Cheryl L. Meyer

Call Number: HV9471 .O34 2008

Michelle Oberman and Cheryl L. Meyer don’t write for news magazines or prime-time investigative television shows, but the stories they tell hold the same fascination. When Mothers Kill is compelling. In a clear, direct fashion the authors recount what they have learned from interviewing women imprisoned for killing their children. Readers will be shocked and outraged—as much by the violence the women have endured in their own lives as by the violence they engaged in—but they will also be informed and even enlightened.

Oberman and Meyer are leading authorities on their subject. Their 2001 book, Mothers Who Kill Their Children, drew from hundreds of newspaper articles as well as from medical and social science journals to propose a comprehensive typology of “maternal filicide.” In that same year, driven by a desire to test their typology—and to better understand child-killing women not just as types but as individuals—Oberman and Meyer began interviewing women who had been incarcerated for the crime. After conducting lengthy, face-to-face interviews with forty prison inmates, they returned and selected eight women to speak with at even greater length. This new book begins with these stories, recounted in the matter-of-fact words of the inmates themselves.

There are collective themes that emerge from these individual accounts, including histories of relentless interpersonal violence, troubled relationships with parents (particularly with mothers), twisted notions of romantic love, and deep conflicts about motherhood. These themes structure the book’s overall narrative, which also includes an insightful examination of the social and institutional systems that have failed these women. Neither the mothers nor the authors offer these stories as excuses for these crimes.

barnesandnoble.com

Standard Operating Procedure

By Phillip Gourevitch and Errol Morris

Call Number: DS79.76 .G68 2008

Standard Operating Procedure is a war story that takes its place among the classics. It is the story of American soldiers who were sent to Iraq as liberators only to find themselves working as jailers in Saddam Hussein’s old dungeons, responsible for implementing the sort of policy they were supposed to be fighting against. It is the story of a defining moment in the war, and a defining moment in our understanding of ourselves-the story of the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs of prisoner abuse, as seen through the eyes, and told through the voices, of the soldiers who took them and appeared in them. It is the story of how those soldiers were at once the instruments of a great injustice and the victims of a great injustice.

In a tradition of moral and political reckoning, and all-powerful story-telling, that runs from Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor to Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, Philip Gourevitch has written a relentlessly surprising and perceptive account of the front lines of the war on terror. Drawing on more than two hundred hours of Errol Morris’s startlingly frank and intimate interviews with the soldier-photographers who gave us what have become the iconic images of the Iraq war, Standard Operating Procedure is a book that makes you see, and makes you feel, and above all makes you think about what it means to be human. It is an utterly original book that stands to endure as essential reading long after the current war in Iraq passes from the headlines-a work of searing power from two of our finest masters of nonfiction, working at the peak of their powers.

barnesandnoble.com

Magna Carta Manifesto, The: Liberties and Commons for All

by Peter Linebaugh

Call Number: JN147 .L56 2008

This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny–and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture–are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.

barnesandnoble.com

The Bitter Fruit of American Justice: International and Domestic Resistance to the Death Penalty

By Alan W. Clark and Laurelyn Whitt

Call Number: KF9227 .C2 C55 2007

The Bitter Fruit of American Justice examines two increasingly important factors in the debate over state execution, the conjunction of which may well signal an end to the death penalty in the United States. The first is external to the country. Mounting international resistance to state execution is raising the political stakes for the United States. Much of the democratic world has abolished state execution, regarding it as a grave human rights violation. Drawing on new understandings of state sovereignty, these nations are using extradition policy and existing treaty obligations to pressure the United States to end capital punishment. The second is internal to the country: the discovery of large numbers of innocent people on America’s death rows has shaken public opinion and political resolve on this issue. The moral potency and rhetorical effectiveness of the innocence argument is radically altering the terms of the debate, undermining traditional justifications for capital punishment and weakening the attitudes of even the most adamant retentionists.

The authors contend that while there have long been compelling reasons to oppose the death penalty (the persistence of race, class and ethnic bias, its profound arbitrariness, its failure to deter more effectively than its alternatives, its exceptional costs), the power of such critiques is itself significantly enhanced by the convergence of international pressure and the innocence argument. The fact that a significant number of those whose lives the state ends are not only selected on arbitrary and discriminatory grounds, but are also innocent of the crime for which they are being punished, only intensifies the gravity of the abuse of state power that the American death penalty represents. The authors argue that domestic disquiet over a system that gets it wrong all too frequently is combining with the international critique of the death penalty as a human rights violation to bring an end to America’s death penalty.

amazon.com

Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America’s Prisons

by Alan Elsner

Call Number: HV9471 .E37 2006

In this new edition, updated after the Abu Ghraib scandal, Elsner uses a conversational tone in recounting the aspects of day-to-day life for American inmates: drug and alcohol abuse, rampant disease, rape, murder and racism. Prisons, Elsner writes, are fertile ground where the worst aspects of society take root and blossom, and the majority of his book, drawing on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, court cases and interviews with current and former inmates, paints a stark picture of a seedy world where guards rape inmates without fear of recourse and inmates can be left in lockdown for weeks as a budget cutting initiative. Instances of the sadistic creativity exhibited by inmates (generally with the aim of violating prison regulations) and guards (to punish inmates who have creatively violated prison regulations) pepper Elsner’s sobering reportage, much of which concerns itself with figures and statistics so staggering that Elsner, clearly an advocate of prison reform, hesitates to even hint at solutions until the final chapter, when he outlines three elements of prison reform: reducing the number of new inmates, lowering recidivism rates and eradicating the “worst abuses within the system.” An unflinching account of an uncomfortable subject, the book provides a window into an overlooked-and growing-segment of society and will appeal to readers interested in issues of justice and human rights. (Description by Publishers Weekly)

101 Law Forms for Personal Use

by Ralph Warner & Robin Leonard

Call Number: KF170 .L46 2007

In this plain-language guide for general readers, Warner, a pioneer of the self-help law movement, takes readers step by step through the creation of everyday legal forms for situations such as estate planning, buying and selling property, handling personal finances, and living together. All of the forms are included in a section of tear- out sheets, and the forms are also provided on an accompanying CD-ROM. (Description by BarnesandNobles.com)

Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities: Reentry, Race, and Politics

By Anthony C. Thompson

Call Number: HV9275 .T56 2008

In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, African Americans made up approximately twelve percent of the U.S. population but close to forty percent of the U.S. prison population. This shocking disparity is due, in part, to the introduction of tough sentencing laws passed in the 1990s, some in response to the widespread use of crack cocaine, which was sold and used by far more black than white Americans. Now, in the latter half of the decade, the nation is in the midst of the largest multi-year discharge of prisoners in its history. What is likely to happen to these ex-offenders? In Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities, Anthony C. Thompson looks for the answer.

Not surprisingly, most African Americans released from prison return to their home communities. However, as Thompson reports, many of these communities are struggling—many are in dire need of health care, adequate and affordable housing, drug treatment programs, social services, and jobs. And ex-offenders have even greater needs than other residents of these strained communities. Most of those who were drug addicts have not received treatment. Nor, for the most part, have they received any useful vocational training. When viewed in its totality, Thompson writes, this is a recipe for disaster. At this time, nearly half of all ex-offenders return to prison within three years and that percentage could easily increase in the years ahead.

For Thompson, any discussion of ex-offender reentry is, de facto, a question of race. After laying out the troubling statistics, he identifies the equally troubling ways in which media and politics have contributed to the problem, especially through stereotyping and racial bias. He reports on the growing number of black women being sent to prison and looks at governmental responses to reentry, including the shifting roles of parole officers and the use of courts in reintegrating ex-inmates into communities. Well aware of the potential consequences if this country fails to act, Thompson concludes with concrete, realizable ideas of how our policies could, and should, change.

barnesandnoble.com

Making Sense of Criminal Justice: Policies and Practices

By G. Larry Mays and Rick Ruddell

Call Number: HV9950 .M323 2008

As they learn about the criminal justice system, students often hear that “nothing works.” Enter Making Sense of Criminal Justice–an innovative and insightful textbook that meets the needs of both criminal justice policy courses and undergraduate capstone courses (sometimes called “senior
seminars”). Beginning with an outline of the crime control and due process models, G. Larry Mays and Rick Ruddell have organized the book around the three major components of the criminal justice system (police, courts, and corrections). This topical, issues-oriented approach encourages students to
think critically about major dilemmas faced by participants in the system, from issues of race and gender to the use of the death penalty.

Working from a balanced viewpoint, the authors argue that criminal justice is inherently a political process; they examine strategies that work, those that do not work, and those that represent a gray area between the two extremes. Rather than providing students with “the answers,” Mays and Ruddell
challenge them to think critically about how we deal with situations–such as the use of force by the police–and offer a framework for lively classroom discussions and debates.

End-of-chapter key terms, critical-thinking review questions, and recommended readings enhance students’ understanding of the material and aid in test preparation.

barnesandnoble.com

The Everything Guide to Being a Paralegal: Winning Secrets to a Successful Career!

By Steven W. Schneider

Call Number: KF320 .L4 S365 2006

The Everything Guide to Being a Paralegal is the ideal handbook for new paralegals, professionals looking to further or reevaluate their careers, or those considering the profession.Tackling the concerns of real law professionals, chapters include:

Paralegal Career Options

Paralegal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Pre-Trial Preparation

Individual chapter attention to the top types of law practiceMore and more people are opting for a career as a paralegal-and this book is their pathway to success in this growing field!

barnesandnoble.com

The The Race Card: How Bluffing about Bias Makes Race Relations Worse

By Richard Thompson Ford

Call Number: E185.86 .F65 2008

What do Katrina victims waiting for federal disaster relief, millionaire rappers buying vintage champagne, Ivy League professors waiting for taxis, and ghetto hustlers trying to find steady work have in common? All have claimed to be victims of racism. These days almost no one openly expresses racist beliefs or defends bigoted motives. So lots of people are victims of bigotry, but no one’s a bigot? What gives? Either a lot of people are lying about their true beliefs and motivations, or a lot of people are jumping to unwarranted conclusions—or just playing the race card.

As the label of “prejudice” is applied to more and more situations, it loses a clear and agreed-upon meaning. This makes it easy for self-serving individuals and political hacks to use accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other types of “bias” to advance their own ends. Richard Thompson Ford, a Stanford Law School professor, brings sophisticated legal analysis, lively and eye-popping anecdotes, and plain old common sense to this heated topic. He offers ways to separate valid claims from bellyaching. Daring, entertaining, and incisive, The Race Card is a call for us to treat racism as a social problem that must be objectively understood and honestly evaluated.

barnesandnoble.com