[PDF] Too Cruel Not Unusual Enough eBook

Author : Kenneth E. Hartman
Publisher :
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 35,36 MB
Release : 2013-03-14
Category : Capital punishment
ISBN : 9780615685274

GET BOOK

Across the United States, locked tight behind high walls of deadly electrified fences, are more than 41,000 men and women sentenced to die. These are their stories of brutality and beauty, of violence and virtue, of the neverending quest of all human beings to make sense of the lives they are leading. Life without the possibility of parole, the other death penalty, is a sentence condemned by virtually all other countries embraced here in the land of the free. If you're interested in the truth about crime and punishment in America this anthology of writings from behind the walls is a must for you. If you care about the Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, this collection should be for you. If you value writing straight from the heart, stories that hit hard, literature that leaves you breathless and thinking, this book was written for you.

Author : Kenneth E. Hartman
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 39,27 MB
Release : 2013-09-11
Category : Capital punishment
ISBN : 9781490445632

GET BOOK

A collection of essays about serving life without parole by prisoners (and some others), and about how life without parole really is the death penalty.

Author : Robert A Ferguson
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 27,7 MB
Release : 2018-04-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0300235291

GET BOOK

In the past few years, the need for prison reform in America has reached the level of a consensus. We agree that many prison terms are too long, especially for nonviolent drug offenders; that long-term isolation is a bad idea; and that basic psychiatric and medical care in prisons is woefully inadequate. Some people believe that contracting out prison services to for-profit companies is a recipe for mistreatment. Robert Ferguson argues that these reforms barely scratch the surface of what is wrong with American prisons: an atmosphere of malice and humiliation that subjects prisoners and guards alike to constant degradation. Bolstered by insights from hundreds of letters written by prisoners, Ferguson makes the case for an entirely new concept of prisons and their purpose: an “inner architectonics of reform” that will provide better education for all involved in prisons, more imaginative and careful use of technology, more sophisticated surveillance systems, and better accountability.

Author : Dirk van Zyl Smit
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 49,69 MB
Release : 2019-01-14
Category : Law
ISBN : 0674989112

GET BOOK

Life imprisonment has replaced the death penalty as the most common sentence imposed for heinous crimes worldwide. Consequently, it has become the leading issue of international criminal justice reform. In the first survey of its kind, Dirk van Zyl Smit and Catherine Appleton argue for a human rights–based reappraisal of this harsh punishment.

Author : Jean Casella
Publisher : New Press, The
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 12,26 MB
Release : 2014-11-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1620971380

GET BOOK

“An unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement” from the prisoners who have survived it (New York Review of Books). On any given day, the United States holds more than eighty-thousand people in solitary confinement, a punishment that—beyond fifteen days—has been denounced as a form of cruel and degrading treatment by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Now, in a book that will add a startling new dimension to the debates around human rights and prison reform, former and current prisoners describe the devastating effects of isolation on their minds and bodies, the solidarity expressed between individuals who live side by side for years without ever meeting one another face to face, the ever-present specters of madness and suicide, and the struggle to maintain hope and humanity. As Chelsea Manning wrote from her own solitary confinement cell, “The personal accounts by prisoners are some of the most disturbing that I have ever read.” These firsthand accounts are supplemented by the writing of noted experts, exploring the psychological, legal, ethical, and political dimensions of solitary confinement. “Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for twenty-three hours a day, for months, sometimes for years at a time? That is not going to make us safer. That’s not going to make us stronger.” —President Barack Obama “Elegant but harrowing.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A potent cry of anguish from men and women buried way down in the hole.” —Kirkus Reviews

Author : Nolan Bennett
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 13,48 MB
Release : 2019-08-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0190060700

GET BOOK

Why have so many figures throughout American history proclaimed their life stories when confronted by great political problems? The Claims of Experience provides a new theory for what makes autobiography political throughout the history of the United States and today. Across five chapters, Nolan Bennett examines the democratic challenges that encouraged a diverse cast of figures to bear their stories: Benjamin Franklin amid the revolutionary era, Frederick Douglass in the antebellum and abolitionist movements, Henry Adams in the Gilded Age and its anxieties of industrial change, Emma Goldman among the first Red Scare and state opposition to radical speech, and Whittaker Chambers amid the second Red Scare that initiated the anticommunist turn of modern conservatism. These historical figures made what Bennett calls a "claim of experience." By proclaiming their life stories, these authors took back authority over their experiences from prevailing political powers, and called to new community among their audiences. Their claims sought to restore to readers the power to remake and make meaning of their own lives. Whereas political theorists and activists have often seen autobiography to be too individualist or a mere documentary source of evidence, this theory reveals the democratic power that life narratives have offered those on the margins and in the mainstream. If they are successful, claims of experience summon new popular authority to surpass what their authors see as the injustices of prevailing American institutions and identity. Bennett shows through historical study and theorization how this renewed appreciation for the politics of life writing elevates these authors' distinct democratic visions while drawing common themes across them. This book offers both a method for understanding the politics of life narrative and a call to anticipate claims of experience as they appear today.

Author : Mark Crispin Miller
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 26,69 MB
Release : 2004
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780393059175

GET BOOK

In "Cruel and Unusual," Mark Crispin Miller exposes what he calls the Bush Republicans' contempt for democratic practice, their bullying religiosity, their reckless militarism, and their apocalyptic views of the economy and the planet.

Author : Marion Vannier
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 40,9 MB
Release : 2021
Category : Law
ISBN : 0198827822

GET BOOK

A critical, theoretical, and empirical examination of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP) is long overdue. This book presents a unique case study of the 'normalization' of LWOP. More specifically, it explores the ties between LWOP's normalization and death penalty abolitionism, using California as a case study. Drawing on rich empirical research, it brings together relevant literature in criminology, the sociology of punishment, social policy, and sentencing to provide insights into the nature of American penal politics, the role of progressive pressure groups, and the relationship between life imprisonment and capital punishment. This study investigates the extent to which members of civil society who challenge capital punishment (lawyers, non-profit organizations, and lobbyists) have helped normalize LWOP by fostering the belief that it is humane and merciful. The monograph focuses on three domains where anti-death penalty activists have lobbied, campaigned, pled for, and agreed to LWOP; Congress, the political sphere, and courtrooms. For each domain, the book teases out the motivations of the main actors and agencies involved. It analyses the constraints under which they considered themselves to be operating, and the relationship between these motivations and the broad social, legal, and political environment in which they unfolded. Particular attention is paid to actors' understandings of the concepts of 'life' and 'death' in punishment.

Author : John D. Bessler
Publisher : UPNE
Page : 474 pages
File Size : 48,69 MB
Release : 2012
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1555537170

GET BOOK

This indispensable history of the Eighth Amendment and the founders' views of capital punishment is also a passionate call for the abolition of the death penalty based on the notion of cruel and unusual punishment

Author : Abraham P. DeLeon
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 36,53 MB
Release : 2019-03-21
Category : Education
ISBN : 1351583891

GET BOOK

In this book, DeLeon presents a critique of neoliberalism and present times through a metaphor of social collapse and considers what remains once the dust has settled for a different kind of person to emerge. Engaging a variety of social, political and educational theories, along with pop culture and literature, DeLeon positions humanity at the edges of collapse and what will emerge after the fall. Engaging academic and fictional alternatives, he imagines future possibilities through a new kind of person that rises from the rubble. Questioning the foundations of empiricism, standardization and "reproducible" results that reject new forms of social and political projects from materializing, DeLeon discusses the potentials of the imagination and the ways in which it can produce alternative possibilities for our collective future when unleashed and combined with fictional narratives. Moving across multiple intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and historical traditions, he constructs a radical, interdisciplinary vision that challenges us to think about transforming our collective future(s), one in which we construct a new kind of person ready to tackle the challenges of a potentially liberatory future and what this might entail.