By Patrice James, James Kilgore, Gabriela Kirk, Grace Mueller, Emmett Sanders, Sarah Staudt, & LaTanya Jackson Wilson

Across the United States each year, hundreds of thousands of people accused but not yet convicted of crimes are required by the courts to participate in electronic monitoring programs. These people are fitted with a locked, tightened ankle shackle, which often tracks every move they make. 3 Pretrial electronic monitoring programs represent a fast-growing type of incarceration that imposes significant harm and burdens on people who are subject to it. We interviewed people subject to monitoring, program administrators, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys across select jurisdictions to better understand how pretrial electronic monitoring is used. Pretrial electronic monitoring programs lack transparency and accountability, are punitive in nature, and are unsupported by any research establishing a pattern of successful outcomes.

Chicago: Shriver Center on Poverty Law, 2022. 49p.

By Nichola Cadet  

There is a limited evidence base on the needs and experiences of older people who are on probation. Despite increased recognition of the impact of age on the prison population, this has not yet translated into probation policy and practice. Research is also complicated by a lack of agreement regarding what is meant by ‘older’ in the criminal justice context, with the majority of research conflating ‘offender’ and ‘prisoner’. A systematic review (Merkt et al., 2020) identified that ages 45-65 have been used in research studies for ‘older offenders’, but advocated age 50 as an appropriate age cut off. This is because of ‘accelerated ageing’ experienced by virtue of the prison environment and the lived experiences of many people prior to coming into custody. Cumulative disadvantage across the life course means that, for people in prison, their age can be viewed as ten years older than their chronological age. HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) and HM Inspectorate of Prisons now cite 50 as the age at which people should be defined as older. Despite policy think tanks, campaigning organisations, researchers and the Justice Committee repeatedly calling for a strategy for older offenders, this was only accepted by HM Government in 2020. While the strategy has been prepared by the Ministry of Justice, the emphasis remains on those in custody rather than people across prison and probation, and has yet to be published. This is a missed opportunity. Of course, older people in prison, if released, will be subject to licence supervision, so there are some direct parallels between the prison experiences of older people and those on probation. Age is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, however the issue has faced less attention than other diversity characteristics, such as gender, race and ethnicity, and the intersections across diverse populations. Probation services do have a long history of considering the needs of younger people in the probation system, particularly in terms of their transition from youth to adult services. Therefore, the service is well placed to ensure that measures can be put in place to meet the needs of older people on probation too, and the transitions they may face as they age. We are living in an ageing society, which means that probation services increasingly need to not only consider the needs of people on probation, but the needs of the professional workforce. This paper provides an overview of what the research literature tells us about the needs and experiences of older people in the criminal justice system. Statistics around age/ageing and the numbers of older people on probation are considered, highlighting links with reducing reoffending pathways and how they may be experienced differently by older people. Practical suggestions are made to support practitioners, policymakers and commissioners to develop services to ensure that they are age-inclusive against a backdrop of an ageing workforce and an ageist society.  

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022. 17p. 

By Gabriela Kirk, et al.

Although state statutes often dictate the amount of fines and fees imposed, local courts have significant discretion in how they carry out the laws and there is variation between courts based on localized cultures and interpersonal dynamics in the courts. This article explores how monetary sanctions are imposed and their relationship with the courts’ acquaintance density– familiarity between court actors and residents– across urban, suburban, and rural communities. Using data from ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews from courtrooms across four states, the authors concluded that rural areas have greater acquaintance density, which promotes greater flexibility and individualization for defendants, while workgroups in urban courts lead to routinization when assessing monetary sanctions. Courtroom actors’ familiarity with defendants did not lead to less monetary sanctions imposed, but court actors’ familiarity with each other did allow for better client outcomes.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Vol. 8, Issue 8 1 Dec 2022

By Ray Khalfani

Key Takeaways: • Georgia’s poor governance of fines and fees revenue practices has allowed many economically underperforming localities to over-rely on fines and fees revenue, significantly contributing to Georgia having the highest probation rate in the country. Of the more than 430,000 Georgians who were on probation in 2018, nearly 40 2 percent of them were on probation for misdemeanors or traffic fines. • While the national average among localities’ fines and fees revenue as a share of general revenue was 2 percent, Georgia consistently ranked second-worst among states with localities with fines and fees shares above 10 percent, and second-worst among per capita amounts of fines paid among adult residents in 2018. • Abusive fines and fees practices and lack of protections for Georgians in deep poverty, have disproportionately harmed Black and Hispanic Georgians long before the pandemic and worsened in many localities during a pandemic that has been most unforgiving to low-income communities. Among the 27 Georgia counties that increased their fines and fees share of general revenue from 2019 to 2020, 12 of them had population shares that were higher than 36 percent Black, significantly higher than the overall state, where 33 percent of Georgians are Black.

Atlanta: Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, 2021. 16p.

Edited by James T. Spartz with additional support from Judith Siers-Poisson

Monetary sanctions, also known as legal financial obligations, are state-imposed fines and fees associated with court involvement. These are the financial aspects of the criminal justice system serving variously as punishment for defendants and revenue generation for court jurisdictions. In terms of both frequency and breadth, the rise of courtbased fines and fees is largely invisible to most people but has far-reaching—and long-lasting—effects for court-involved individuals and their kin. The authors contributing to this issue of Focus on Poverty draw on a growing body of scholarship to explore and explain some of the many nuances of monetary sanctions and their effects. We start with Joshua Page and Joe Soss presenting their view on criminal legal systems as mechanisms for racialized resource extraction. Standard practices in court systems throughout the United States act to routinely extract resources from lowincome and communities of color in order to generate revenue for local governments and affiliated private interests. The next two articles both draw from a comprehensive examination of monetary sanctions featured in an edition of The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, published in January 2022. The research of Alexes Harris—e.g., A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor (Russell Sage Foundation, 2016)—has been a catalyst for much of this work. Both Kirk et al. and Boches et al. draw on data procured through the Harris-led Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions project (see www.monetarysanctions.org). Gabriela Kirk, Kristina Thompson, Beth Huebner, Christopher Uggen, and Sarah Shannon explore the construct of acquaintanceship density in rural court systems. They use ethnographic data drawn from interviews of court personnel and courtroom observations in Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri. Similarly, Daniel Boches and co-authors Brittany Martin, Andrea Giuffre, Amairini Sanches, Aubrianne Sutherland, and Sarah Shannon examine the extensive impacts—called symbiotic harms—of legal fines and fees on friends and family of system-involved individuals. Rebecca Goldstein, Helen Ho, and Bruce Western continue the collaborative work started with their late colleague Devah Pager by looking at how court fees criminalize low-income defendants when they are unable to pay. The study profiled here is particularly strong in its assertions about causal relationship.

Focus on Poverty, v, 38, no. 2, 2022. 26p.

By Giza Lopes

From the series foreword by Graeme R. Newman: “ Lopes convincingly argues that not only have the clergy as the shepherds of Death been replaced by modern medicine’s doctors and technologies, but that the rule of law has intervened to codify the ways and rights of helping people to die. She catalogues, with fascinating case studies and detailed historical observation, the quite different ways that the United States and European countries have tackled this problem of all problems. This is an erudite book that leaves no detail untouched; relentlessly unravels the moral, judicial, and political events that arguably precede—seen and unseen—not only every assisted death but arguably every single death on earth; and shows how these events have relentlessly set the stage for the coming movement to quicken the time it takes to die.”

Santa Barbara. Praeger. 2015. 256p.

By Alexis A. Aronowitz

From the cover: Virtually every country' in the world is affected by the scourge of human trafficking, either as a source, transit, or destination country, or a combination thereof. While countries have long focused on international trafficking, internal movement and exploitation within countries may be even more prevalent than trans- border trafficking. Patterns of trafficking vary across countries and regions and are in a constant state of flux. Countries have long focused on trafficking solely for the purpose of sexual exploitation, yet exploitation in agriculture, construction, fishing, manufacturing, and the domestic and food service industries is prevalent in many countries. Here, Aronowitz takes a global perspective in examining the nefarious underworld of human trafficking, revealing the nature and extent of the harm caused by this hideous criminal practice. Taking a victims-oriented approach, this book focuses on the different groups of victims, as well as the various forms of and markets for trafficking, many of which have been overlooked due to an emphasis on sex trafficking. The author also examines the criminals and criminal organizations that traffic and exploit their victims and explores less-ffequendy-discussed forms of trafficking— in organs, child soldiers, mail-order brides, and adoption, as well as the use of the Internet in trafficking. Drawing on her own field and research experiences in various parts of the world, the author offers real-life context throughout the book through descriptions of a number of cases with which she was involved or learned about in her travels.

Santa Barbara. PRAEGER. An Imprint of ABC-CLIO. 2009. 290p.

Forward by Condoleezza Rice

The Department of State is required by law to submit a Report each year to the U.S. Congress on foreign governments’ efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons. This Report is the eighth annual TIP Report. It is intended to raise global awareness, to highlight efforts of the international community, and to encourage foreign governments to take effective actions to counter all forms of trafficking in persons. The U.S. law that guides anti-human trafficking efforts, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as amended (TVPA), states that the purpose of combating human trafficking is to punish traffickers, to protect victims, and to prevent trafficking from occurring. Freeing those trapped in slave-like conditions is the ultimate goal of this Report—and of the U.S. government’s anti- human trafficking policy. Human trafficking is a multi-dimensional threat. It deprives people of their human rights and freedoms, it increases global health risks, and it fuels the growth of organized crime.

U.S. Department Of State Publication 11407 Office Of The Under Secretary For Democracy And Global Affairs And Bureau Of Public Affairs. Revised June 2008. 295p.

By Erik H. Erikson

From the cover: Many of the methods of civil disobedience so widely and so sporadically used today have their origin in Mahatma Gandhi’s militant nonviolence. In order to eluci­date the nature of what Gandhi called his Truth in Action, Erikson sets out to retell in great detail a relatively little-known event in Gandhi’s middle years, namely, his assumption of leadership in a strike of textile workers in the city of Ahmedabad in 1918. Erikson explains Gandhi’s method of concentrating on local grievances of high symbolic value as a way of mobi­lizing the Indian masses both spiritually and politically — a method that distin­guished Gandhi from the charismatic fig­ures (Lenin, Wilson) of the post-World War I period…..Erikson counterpoints Freud’s insights into the nature of sexuality (and Gandhi’s disavowal of it) and Gandhi’s insights into the nature of armed violence (and Freud’s fatalism regarding it) and con­cludes that only a combination of these insights might give man some measure of mastery over his fatal alternation of re­pression and excess.

NY. W. W. Norton. 1969. 465p.

By R. M. Hare

From the cover: 'What I think about morals is up to me.' 'You can't think just what you like about moral questions.' Mr. Hare's aim is to resolve this antinomy by showing how, when thinking morally, a man can be both free and rational. Out of his earlier suggestions, in The Language of Morals, about the logical character and function of moral judgements, he de­velops an account of the main features of moral reasoning.. Topics touched upon include: 'ought' and 'can' and the problem of moral weakness; the place of imagination in moral thinking; ideals, moral and aesthetic; and the rational basis of toleration. The book ends with a more detailed practical illustration of moral reasoning, drawn from argu­ments about our attitudes toward racial conflicts.”

New York. Oxford University Pres. 1965. 230p.

By William Frankena

FROM THE PREFACE: This book is intended to introduce students and the general reader to the branch of philosophy called “ethics.” I shall try, among other things, to present some of the standard material of ethics that beginners and others should know. Idris will not, however, be a summary of what moral philosophers are agreed upon, as introductions to other subjects may be summaries of what the experts in those fields agree upon. Such a substantial body of agreement does not exist in philosophy. Nor will this be simply an introductory review of the various differing positions moral philosophers have taken, although many of these positions will be presented and discussed. My aim in this book is not just to introduce the problems and positions of moral philosophers, but also to do moral philosophy.

New Jersey. Prentice Hall. 1963. 113p.

By Ernest Becker

From the Preface: “The prospect of death. Dr, Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that: the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity de­signed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man. The noted anthro­pologist A. M. Hocart once argued that primitives were not bothered by the fear of death; that a sagacious sampling of anthropological evidence would show that death was, more often than not, ac­companied by rejoicing and festivities; that death seemed to be an occasion for celebration rather than fear—much like the traditional Irish wake. Hocart wanted to dispel the notion that (compared to modem man) primitives were childish and frightened by reality; anthropologists have now largely accomplished this rehabilitation of the primitive. But this argument leaves untouched the fact that the fear of death is indeed a universal in the human condition. To be sure, primitives often celebrate death—as Hocart and others have shown—because they believe that death is the ultimate promotion, the final ritual elevation to a Higher form of life, to the enjoyment of eternity in some form. Most modem Westerners have trouble believing this any more, which is what makes the fear of death so prominent a part of our psychological make-up.

In these pages I try to show that the fear of death is a universal that unites data from several disciplines of the human sciences, and makes wonderfully clear and intelligible human actions that we have buried under mountains of fact, and obscured with endless with endless back and forth arguments about “true” human motives.”

NY. The Free Press. 1973. 326p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By   Charles Darwin

Edited By Charles W Eliot. From the Preface: “The Voyage of the *Beagle’ has been by far the most im­portant event in my life, and has determined my whole career. ... I have always felt that I owe to the voyage the first real training or education of my mind; I was led to attend closely to several branches of natural history, and thus my powers of observation were improved, though they were always fairly developed. . . .”

“The above various special studies were, however, of no im­portance compared with the habit of energetic industry and of concentrated attention to whatever I was engaged in, which I then acquired. Everything about which I thought or read was made to bear directly on what I had seen or was likely to see; and this habit of mind was continued during the five years of the voyage. I feel sure that it was this training which has en­abled me to do whatever I have done in science.”

NY. P F Collier & Son. 1843. 517p. .

By Charles Darwin. Edited By Francis Darwin.

From the editor: In preparing this volume, which is practically an abbre­viation of the Life and Letters (1887), my aim has been to retain as far as possible the personal parts of those volumes. To render this feasible, large numbers of the more purely scientific letters are omitted, or represented by the citation of a few sentences. In certain periods of my father’s life the scientific and the personal elements run a parallel course, rising and falling together in their degree of inter­est. Thus the writing of the Origin of Species, and its publication, appeal equally to the reader who follows my father’s career from interest in the man, and to the natural­ist who desires to know something of this turning point in the history of Biology. This part of the story has there­fore been told with nearly the full amount of available detail.

NY. Dover Publications. 1892. 408p.

By Daniel C. Dennett

From the preface: Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has always fascinated me, but over the years I have found a surprising variety of thinkers who cannot conceal their discomfort with his great idea, ranging from nagging skepti­cism to outright hostility. I have found not just lay people and religious thinkers, but secular philosophers, psychologists, physicists, and even biol­ogists who w'ould prefer, it seems, that Darwin were wrong. This book is about why Darwin’s idea is so powerful, and why it promises—not threat­ens—to put our most cherished visions of life on a new foundation.

NY. Touchstone.1995. 568p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By G. J. Warnock

From the introduction: “The aim of this essay is to provide a compendious survey of moral philosophy in English since about the beginning of the present century. Fortunately, the tale that thus falls to be told is not in outline excessively complex, and can be seen as a quite intelligible sequence of distinguishable episodes……It will be found that my critical discussions of the major doc­trines to be surveyed are (I fear) somewhat uniformly hostile; and I have brought in, in the later pages of my essay, perhaps more controversial matter than would ordinarily be looked for in a mainly expository review. But I would defend this, if I had to, as lying in the nature of the case. For the case is, I believe, that the successive orthodoxies of moral philosophy in English in the present century have been, notwithstanding the often admirable acumen of their authors, remarkably barren. Certain questions about the nature and the basis of moral judgment which have been regarded, at least in the past, as centrally important have not only not been examined in recent theories; those theories have seemed deliberately to hold that, on those questions, there is nothing whatever that can usefully be said….”

Macmillan St. Martin’s Press. 1867. 88p.

By Thomas Bullfinch.

From thePublishers’ Preface: No new edition of Bulfinch’s classic work can be con­sidered complete without some notice of the American scholar to whose wide erudition and painstaking care it stands as a perpetual monument. “The Age of Fable” has come to be ranked with older books like “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Arabian Nights,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and five or six other productions of world-wide renown as a work with which every one must claim some acquaintance before his education can be called really complete. Many readers of the present edition will probably recall coming in contact with the work as children, and, it may be added, will no doubt discover from a fresh perusal the source of numerous bits of knowledge that have remained stored in their minds since those early years. Yet to the majority of this great circle of readers and students the name Bulfinch in itself has no significance.

NY. Crown Publishers Avenel Books. 1978 1021p..

Translated by Joseph Smith Jr.

An account written by the Hand of Mormon, upon Plates taken from the Plates of Nephi. Wherefore It Is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanltes; written to the Lamanites who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile: written by way of commandment, and also by the Spirit of prophecy and of revelation. Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of God unto the inter­pretation thereof: sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of Gentile; the interpretation thereof by the gift of God.

An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also; which Is a record of the people of Jared; who were scattered at the time the Lord con­founded the language of the people when they were building a tower to get to heaven; which is to shew unto the remnant of the House of Israel whut great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever; and also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations. And now if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men; wherefore condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the Judgment-seat of Christ.

Chicago. Press of Henry C. Often & Co.1905. 637p.

By Dennis Barone

In Beyond Memory, Dennis Barone uncovers the richness and diversity of the Italian Protestant experience and places it in the context of migration and political and social life in both Italy and the United States. Italian Protestants have received scant attention in the fields of Italian American studies, religious studies, and immigration studies, and through literary sources, church records, manuscript sources, and secondary sources in various fields, Barone introduces such forgotten voices as the Baptist Antonio Mangano, the Methodist Antonio Arrighi, and his great-grandfather Alfredo Barone, a Baptist minister to congregations in Italy and Massachusetts. Examining the complex histories of these and other Italian Protestants, Barone argues that Protestantism ultimately served as a means to negotiate between Old World and New World ways, even as it resulted in the double alienation of rejection by Roman Catholic immigrants and condescension by Anglo-Protestants. Though the book focuses on the years of high immigration (1890-1920), it also looks at precursors to post-reunification Protestants as well as Protestants in Italy today, now that the nation has become a country of in-migration.

NY. SUNY Press. 2016. 182p.

Speaking of the years since 1945, the writers of this Report on Torture remark: “Never has there been a stronger or more universal consensus on the total inadmissibility of the practice of torture; at the same time the practice of torture has reached epidemic proportions.” On Human Rights Day, 1972, Amnesty International launched a worldwide campaign against the systematic use of torture by governments.

Report on Torture contains authoritative discus­sions of the history of torture, problems of legal definition, the medical and psychological aspects of torture, legal remedies, and a country-by country inventory of the use of torture by many governments as a means of extracting information and exercising political and social control over their citizens. There is information here on sixty- two countries, including the United States, but Report on Torture stresses that "to criticize one government is not to praise another about which Amnesty has no information.”

NY. Farrar, Straus and Giraux.. 1975. 283p.