By Jodi Lane

This review focuses on the life and career of Joan Petersilia, one of the most important corrections scholars of the past fifty years. The article discusses her formative years, her career spanning from college through her final appointment at Stanford Law School, her major research projects, and her impact on policy, practice, and the academic field of criminology. For more than forty years, Joan chose to do research that affected the real world, treating policymakers and practitioners as equal partners in efforts to improve the implementation of justice, especially that occurring postconviction. Her unique style allowed her to easily communicate the ideas and research from academe to a wide range of audiences, including the general public, policymakers, and practitioners. By doing so, Joan made a significant impact on the criminal justice system and was recognized for her body of work by receiving the 2014 Stockholm Prize, arguably the most prestigious recognition in criminology.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 1 - 17

Edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Refuge in a Moving World draws together more than thirty contributions from multiple disciplines and fields of research and practice to discuss different ways of engaging with, and responding to, migration and displacement.

The volume combines critical reflections on the complexities of conceptualizing processes and experiences of (forced) migration, with detailed analyses of these experiences in contemporary and historical settings from around the world. Through interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies – including participatory research, poetic and spatial interventions, ethnography, theatre, discourse analysis and visual methods – the volume documents the complexities of refugees’ and migrants’ journeys. This includes a particular focus on how people inhabit and negotiate everyday life in cities, towns, camps and informal settlements across the Middle East and North Africa, Southern and Eastern Africa, and Europe.

A key dynamic documented throughout the book is the multiple ways that responses to displacement are enacted by people with personal or family experiences of (forced) migration. These people appear in many roles: researchers, writers and artists, teachers, solidarians, first responders, NGO practitioners, neighbours and/or friends. Through the application of historically and spatially sensitive, intersectional and interdisciplinary lenses, the contributors explore the ways that different people – across axes of religion, sexuality, gender, and age – experience and respond to their own situations and to those of other people, in the context of diverse power structures and structural inequalities on the local, national and international level.

Ultimately, Refuge in a Moving World argues that working collaboratively through interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies has the potential to develop nuanced understandings of processes of migration and displacement, and, in turn, to encourage more sustainable modes of responding to our moving world.

London: UCL Press, 2020.

By Kevin Fredy Hinterberger

Combatting’ irregular migration is one of the key challenges to migration management at EU level. The present book addresses one of the most pressing structural problems regarding the EU’s return policy: the low return rate of irregularly staying migrants. In this regard the EU Return Directive obliges Member States to issue a return decision, yet only 40% of such decisions are enforced annually. Moreover, despite the political and legal efforts, the EU is not making any significant progress in enforcing the rules it has laid down in the Return Directive. The legislation of EU Member States may, however, serve as a source for possible solutions to ‘combat’ the problem of irregularly staying migrants. This is why the book compares the system of regularisations in Austria, Germany and Spain. Regularisations constitute an effective alternative to returns because they terminate the irregular residence of migrants, not through deportation, but rather by granting a right of residence. Regularisation is therefore understood as each legal decision that awards legal residency to irregularly staying migrants. As is shown by the examination and comparison of regularisations in Austria, Germany and Spain, differentiated systems of regularisation exist at national level. However, EU regularisations supplementing the present return policy would be more effective at ‘combatting’ irregular migration at EU level.

London: New York: Nomos/Hart, 398p

By Holger Weiss

This volume investigates the ambition of the Red International of Labour Unions to radicalize the global waterfront during the interwar period. The main vehicle was the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers, replaced in 1930 by the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers as well as their agitation and propaganda centres, the International Harbour Bureaus and the International Seamen’s Clubs. The book scrutinizes their solidarity campaigns in support of local and national strikes as well as on their agitation against discrimination, segregation and racism within the unions, their demands to organize non-white maritime transport workers, and their calls for engagement in anti-fascist, anti-war and anti-imperialist actions. Readership: All interested in global labour history and labour radicalism and militancy, the history of the Comintern/Red International of Labour Unions/Profintern, global history of the interwar period, history of antifascism, anti-imperialism, and anti-colonialism, as well as global maritime history.

Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2021. 524p.

By: Reinhard Schweitzer

This open access book provides an analysis of the functioning, consequences and inherent limitations of internalised immigration control. By adopting the perspective of irregular residents as well as local service providers, the book sheds new light on the intricate mechanisms that either help or hinder the diffusion of immigration control into concrete institutional settings, like schools or hospitals. A simple and innovative analytical framework enables the systematic comparison of three different spheres of service provision across two distinct local as well as also national contexts. This is necessary to understand the complex interplay between formal law and policy, the intrinsic rules and logics operating within institutions, and the ethical or practical obligations and constraints attached to particular roles and professions. Based on empirical findings and rigorous analysis, the book argues that internalised control is part of the problem that irregular migration poses for society, rather than constituting a potential solution to it.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2023. 154p.

By Maurizio Ambrosini • Minke H. J. Hajer

International migration is a critical issue in contemporary societies. A well-known textbook calls it “a major theme for public debate” (De Haas et al., 2020: xii). Migration is at the centre of the ‘transnationalized social question’ located at the interstices between the Global South and the Global North, where people seek a better life or fee unsustainable living conditions by migrating abroad (Faist, 2019). International population mobility has moved to the top of political agendas, becoming a ‘hot topic’ for governments and political parties (Spencer & Triandafyllidou, 2020). It has become a matter of controversy in mass media, and in ordinary people’s conversations as well. In most cases, it is depicted as a threat to the social stability of receiving societies. As Anderson effcaciously puts it, “‘Migration’ signifes problematic mobility” (Anderson, 2017: 1532). This perceived threat of migrants provokes increased efforts to halt, restrict, and prevent migration, often by limiting legal migration channels and increasing border controls. The, perhaps unintended, consequence of this is not that migration stops, but instead that a part of migration becomes irregular. Whilst irregular migration is problematised and criminalised especially in the Global North, in sending societies, on the contrary, venturing abroad is often viewed as a dream or a hope, regardless of the legal framework in which this mobility and subsequent settlement occur (Alpes, 2013). It gives the impression that migrants take the time spent in an irregular condition while waiting for a residence permit for granted. Migration, especially unwanted international migration, is a vital concern for contemporary societies worldwide, be they sending, receiving or transit countries. This form of migration will be the main focus of this Reader. Throughout it, we hope to provide ample insight into the contentious theme of irregular migration by elaborating on its origins, the policies devised to deal with it, possible responses to it, the actors involved, and the agency of irregular migrants themselves. This introduction highlights the issue of irregular migration, discusses terminology, provides some estimates of the population involved, and presents the book’s structure.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2023. 154p.

By Runnymede Trust and Greenpeace

Black people, Indigenous Peoples and people of colour across the globe bear the brunt of an environmental emergency that, for the most part, they did not create. Yet their struggles have repeatedly been ignored by those in positions of power. Global governance systems, including international climate negotiations, have for decades failed to act to protect Black and Brown lives. Systemic racism operates worldwide to produce inequalities in housing, healthcare, education, the criminal justice system and in the outcomes of the environmental emergency.

London, Runnymede. 2023. 78pg

By The Writers’ Workshop

From the introduction: The Writing Workshop at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility has been hard at work since 1989. This is our second book; the first, More In Than Out, was published in 1992 and well received. I think this one is even better. We meet every Wednesday evening, and, as members are fond of saying, for three hours we're no longer at Bedford but at a place of unlimited freedom. It isn't always easy to get there but we always give it a try. Some of the women in this anthology are regulars, others show up once in a while, still others have come and gone, leaving us a few inspired mementos. The Workshop is an outlet for feelings, of course, but it doesn't stop there.

By : Joshua Kleinfeld and Joshua Hoyt

For many criminal justice reformers, the Holy Grail of change would be a criminal system that ends the war on drugs; punishes minor property and public order offenses without incarceration (or does not handle them criminally at all); and reserves prison mainly for violent offenders. What few appreciate is that California over the last nine years has done exactly that, and the results are breathtaking in their magnitude and suddenness: from 2011 to 2019, California released 55,000 people convicted mostly of nonviolent offenses (a quarter to a third of all California prisoners) and has been declining imprisonment—which often means declining arrest and prosecution altogether—for tens of thousands more who likely would have been imprisoned a decade ago. The changes happened piecemeal; this Article is the first to put the whole picture together. But we are now in a position to describe and evaluate the whole.

We come to three conclusions. First, California criminal justice reform reduced incarceration without increasing violence, but in so doing increased property crime, public drug use, street-level disorder, and likely homelessness to such an extent as to change the texture of everyday life in some California cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. Second, these changes alter the relationship between individual and state substantially enough to constitute a new social contract: California has gone farther than any other American state toward a society based on John Stuart Mill’s harm principle.

Third, this array of costs and benefits is complex and nuanced enough that it is not irrational or otherwise normatively illegitimate for someone to think them either justice-enhancing or -diminishing, good for human welfare or bad for it. But what unequivocally redeems California’s new policies for California are their democratic credentials: they were accomplished through a series of elections over multiple years at multiple levels of government with a high degree of public deliberation. Criminal justice democratizers and strong proponents of federalism should endorse what California has done as a matter of political self-determination. But they might rationally not want the same thing for their own states.

Southern California Law Review, Vol. 94, No. 1, 2020

George Mason Legal Studies Research Paper No. LS 23-19

By Jessica Saunders and, Greg Midgette

Objective: Our goal was to develop a framework to test for implicit racial bias in discretionary decisions made by community supervision agents in conditions with increasing information ambiguity. Hypotheses: We reasoned that as in-person contact decreases, community supervision officers’ specific knowledge of clients would be replaced by heuristics that lead to racially disproportionate outcomes in higher discretion events. Officers’ implicit biases would lead to disproportionately higher technical violation rates among Black community corrections’ clients when they have less personal contact, but we expected no analogous increase in nondiscretionary decisions. Method: Using data from Black and White clients entering probation and postrelease supervision in North Carolina from 2012 through 2016, we estimated the difference in racial disparities in discretionary versus nondiscretionary decisions across five levels of supervision. We evaluated the robustness of our main fixed-effects model using an alternative regression discontinuity design. Results: Racial disparities in discretionary decisions grew as supervision intensity decreased, and the bias was larger for women than men. There was no similar pattern of increased disparity for nondiscretionary decisions. Conclusions: Criminal justice system actors have a great deal of discretion, particularly in how they deal with less serious criminal behavior. Although decentralized decisions are foundational to the function of the criminal justice system, they provide an opportunity for implicit bias to seep in. Shortcuts and mental heuristics are more influential when the decision-maker’s mental resources are already strained—for instance, if someone is tired, distracted, or overworked. Therefore, limiting discretion and increasing oversight and accountability may reduce the impact of implicit bias on criminal justice system outcomes.

Law and Human Behavior 2023 Volume 47, Issue 1 (Feb)

By Malcolm X with the assistance of Alex Haley

“This is the absorbing personal story. of the man who rose from hoodlum, thief, dope peddler, and pimp to become the most dynamic leader of the Black Revolution. It is, too, a testament of great emotional power from which every American can learn much: But, above all, this book shows the Malcolm X that very few people knew, the man behind the stereotyped image of the hate-preacher-a sensitive, proud, highly intelligent man whose plan to move into the mainstream of the Negro Revoltition was cut short by a hail of assassins' bullets, a man who felt certain he would not live long enough to see this book…”

NY. Grobe Press. 1964. 482p.

By Maggie Brady

In Teaching ‘Proper’ Drinking?, the author brings together three fields of scholarship: socio-historical studies of alcohol, Australian Indigenous policy history and social enterprise studies. The case studies in the book offer the first detailed surveys of efforts to teach responsible drinking practices to Aboriginal people by installing canteens in remote communities, and of the purchase of public hotels by Indigenous groups in attempts both to control sales of alcohol and to create social enterprises by redistributing profits for the community good. Ethnographies of the hotels are examined through the analytical lens of the Swedish ‘Gothenburg’ system of municipal hotel ownership.

The research reveals that the community governance of such social enterprises is not purely a matter of good administration or compliance with the relevant liquor legislation. Their administration is imbued with the additional challenges posed by political contestation, both within and beyond the communities concerned.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2017. 344p.

Edited by Patricia G. Steinhoff

"Going to Court to Change Japan takes us inside movements dealing with causes as disparate as death by overwork, the rights of the deaf, access to prisoners on death row, consumer product safety, workers whose companies go bankrupt, and persons convicted of crimes they did not commit. Each of the six fascinating case studies stands on its own as a detailed account of how a social movement has persisted against heavy odds to pursue a cause through the use of the courts. The studies pay particular attention to the relationship between the social movement and the lawyers who handle their cases, usually pro bono or for minimal fees. Through these case studies we learn much about how the law operates in Japan as well as how social movements mobilize and innovate to pursue their goals using legal channels. The book also provides a general introduction to the Japanese legal system and a look at how recent legal reforms are working.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. 196p.

Edited by Douglas Edlin

Are judges supposed to be objective? Citizens, scholars, and legal professionals commonly assume that subjectivity and objectivity are opposites, with the corollary that subjectivity is a vice and objectivity is a virtue. These assumptions underlie passionate debates over adherence to original intent and judicial activism.

In Common Law Judging, Douglas Edlin challenges these widely held assumptions by reorienting the entire discussion. Rather than analyze judging in terms of objectivity and truth, he argues that we should instead approach the role of a judge's individual perspective in terms of intersubjectivity and validity. Drawing upon Kantian aesthetic theory as well as case law, legal theory, and constitutional theory, Edlin develops a new conceptual framework for the respective roles of the individual judge and of the judiciary as an institution, as well as the relationship between them, as integral parts of the broader legal and political community. Specifically, Edlin situates a judge's subjective responses within a form of legal reasoning and reflective judgment that must be communicated to different audiences.

Edlin concludes that the individual values and perspectives of judges are indispensable both to their judgments in specific cases and to the independence of the courts. According to the common law tradition, judicial subjectivity is a virtue, not a vice.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 281p.

 Edited by Francesca Galli, Anne Weyembergh

  Criminal law has undergone tremendous changes in the past decades. A number of new trends have been challenging the traditional features of “modern criminal law” as founded by Cesare Beccaria in the 18th century and developed thereafter. Some authors describe a process of “disengagement” from the fundamental principles upon which “modern criminal law” is based. They point to its corollary, the rise of the ideology of pragmatism, which, in the name of efficiency, is gradually transforming the whole philosophy underpinning the criminal justice system. Some of them thus refer to the “post-modernisation” of criminal law  . Among the new trends affecting criminal justice systems, one of them has attracted considerable academic attention in the last few years. This is the so-called “Europeanisation process”, which is the result of the growing intervention of the EU in the area of criminal law. Criminal law and criminal procedure are deeply rooted in national sovereignty  and had therefore been developed at national level only. However, since the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty, the EU has taken a lead in the approximation of criminal legislation  and has developed new and closer cooperation mechanisms based on principles such as the mutual recognition of decisions in criminal matters  . With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU’s scope for intervention in this field has been considerably broadened and its  supranational nature strengthened, thereby challenging the narrow and profound link between criminal law and the nation state even more. Another new trend which criminal law and other legal disciplines are facing is the increasingly blurred dividing lines between legal categories. Several authors have highlighted the existence of a general blur  . Various dimensions of this blur have been identified in legal literature  . As will be highlighted by other authors in this book  , the verb and the noun “blur” have rather negative connotations. As a verb, it is defined as the action of making or becoming vague or less distinct, of making less clear, of smearing or smudging. As a noun, “blur” means vague, hazy or indistinct  . Law and lawyers are not at ease when faced with vagueness and lack of clarity. This is especially true for criminal law and criminal lawyers, as is demonstrated by the well-known principle of legality in its substantive dimension. As will be underlined by some authors in the following contributions, these blurred dividing lines can, however, also have a positive impact or at least give rise to a multitude of consequences that cannot all be categorised as negative. This is clear, for instance, when one thinks of the application of criminal procedural guarantees by administrative law or of the so-called Engel line of case law of the European Court of Human Rights  (ECtHR). A growing blur can be observed between criminal and administrative law. Both fields of law have received numerous different definitions . The dividing line between them has never been clear . Their respective scope and/or the criteria dividing their respective jurisdiction can vary depending on the country concerned  and on the “approach” followed. The criminal nature of proceedings and of penalties can indeed be considered in a formal or substantial manner. As it is well known in its above-mentioned Engel ruling, the ECtHR follows the second approach when considering whether national proceedings constitute a criminal charge in the sense of Article 6 ECHR . The blur between criminal and administrative law has different manifestations and has a wide variety of origins. The scope of both administrative and criminal law tends to expand. Criminal law is being introduced in fields in which the legislator traditionally adopted administrative measures and vice versa. Fields such as terrorism or trafficking in human beings, which have traditionally been governed by criminal law, are increasingly sprinkled with administrative measures or are becoming fields where administrative actors are increasingly involved. In some domains, a double enforcement/sanctioning system (administrative/criminal) has developed. However, by themselves, these trends do not necessarily result in a blur. A blur occurs when the scope of intervention and the division of functions between both kinds of measures, systems, actors or frameworks are not clear enough; when the two sets of applicable rules become indistinct and/or when there is cross-contamination whereby the interactions between both types of measures, actors or frameworks is not organised and overlaps are neither avoided nor regulated. So, in order to identify a blur, the following questions are of key importance: Are there clear criteria setting out when one or the other actor/framework, or both, should be involved? Are the rules applicable to one or the other framework/actor clearly defined and is there some kind of approximation between them? Is a system of double administrative and penal repression foreseen? Reflecting on the reasons for the growing blur between administrative and criminal law is quite interesting. As will be highlighted in the different contributions to this book, various factors arise, including the advantages of each of the different regimes , the need to find an effective way of dealing with certain kinds of crime that are becoming ever more complex, the need to develop a multidisciplinary/holistic approach towards some crimes, particularly trafficking in human beings, and the will and/or need to prevent crime, especially terrorism, etc. The purpose of this book is to study the combination of both of the abovementioned trends affecting criminal justice systems. The blur between administrative and criminal law has, of course, been around for a while and exists independently of the European Union. It is, for instance, embodied in the blurred line between measures belonging to punitive administrative law and criminal law measures . Up until now, this trend has mainly been analysed at the national level. However, it is interesting to reflect on the interaction between the Europeanisation of criminal law on the one hand and the increasingly blurred line between administrative and criminal law on the other hand. In this regard, the main question that arises is whether and to what extent the EU contributes to the blurred line; if it tries to limit it, control it and/or organise it.  

Bruxelles, Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2014. 259p.

By Sirje Laurel Weldon

A must-read for scholars across a broad sweep of disciplines. Laurel Weldon weaves together skillfully the theoretical strands of gender equality policy, intersectionality, social movements, and representation in a multimethod/level comparative study that unequivocally places women's movements at the center of our understanding of democracy and social change."" ---Amy G. Mazur, Washington State University "Laurel Weldon's When Protest Makes Policy expands and enriches our understanding of representation by stressing social movements as a primary avenue for the representation of marginalized groups. With powerful theory backed by persuasive analysis, it is a must-read for anyone interested in democracy and the representation of marginalized groups." ---Pamela Paxton, University of Texas at Austin ""This is a bold and exciting book. There are many fine scholars who look at women's movements, political theorists who make claims about democracy, and policy analysts who do longitudinal treatments or cross-sectional evaluations of various policies. I know of no one, aside from Weldon, who is comfortable with all three of these roles."" ---David Meyer, University of California, Irvine What role do social movements play in a democracy? Political theorist S. Laurel Weldon demonstrates that social movements provide a hitherto unrecognized form of democratic representation, and thus offer a significant potential for deepening democracy and overcoming social conflict. Through a series of case studies of movements conducted by women, women of color, and workers in the United States and other member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Weldon examines processes of representation at the local, state, and national levels. She concludes that, for systematically disadvantaged groups, social movements can be as important---sometimes more important---for the effective articulation of a group perspective as political parties, interest groups, or the physical presence of group members in legislatures. When Protest Makes Policy contributes to the emerging scholarship on civil society as well as the traditional scholarship on representation. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with advancing social cohesion and deepening democracy and inclusion as well as those concerned with advancing equality for women, ethnic and racial minorities, the working class, and poor people.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. 244p.

Edited by  Dêlidji Eric Degila  and  Valeria Marina Valle

The 14th thematic volume of International Development Policy provides perspectives through case studies from the global Souths focusing on the challenges and opportunities of governing migration on the subnational, national, regional and international levels. Bringing together some thirty authors from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the book explores existing and new policies and frameworks in terms of their successes and best practices, and looks at them through the lens of additional challenges, such as those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of nationalisms and an increase in xenophobia. The chapters also take the ‘5 Ps’ approach to sustainable development (people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships) and assess how migration policies serve sustainable development in a rapidly evolving context.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2022. 399p.

Edited by Chris Cunneen, Antje Deckert, Amanda Porter, Juan Tauri and Robert Webb

The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice focuses on the growing worldwide movement aimed at decolonizing state policies and practices, and various disciplinary knowledges including criminology, social work and law. The collection of original chapters brings together cutting-edge, politically engaged work from a diverse group of writers who take as a starting point an analysis founded in a decolonizing, decolonial and/or Indigenous standpoint. Centering the perspectives of Black, First Nations and other racialized and minoritized peoples, the book makes an internationally significant contribution to the literature.

The chapters include analyses of specific decolonization policies and interventions instigated by communities to enhance jurisdictional self-determination; theoretical approaches to decolonization; the importance of research and research ethics as a key foundation of the decolonization process; crucial contemporary issues including deaths in custody, state crime, reparations, and transitional justice; and critical analysis of key institutions of control, including police, courts, corrections, child protection systems and other forms of carcerality.

The handbook is divided into five sections which reflect the breadth of the decolonizing literature:

• • Why decolonization? From the personal to the global

• • State terror and violence

• • Abolishing the carceral

• • Transforming and decolonizing justice

• • Disrupting epistemic violence

This book offers a comprehensive and timely resource for activists, students, academics, and those with an interest in Indigenous studies, decolonial and post-colonial studies, criminal legal institutions and criminology. It provides critical commentary and analyses of the major issues for enhancing social justice internationally.

London; New York: Routledge, 571p.

By Gilberto Rosas &Virginia Raymond

The Covid-19 emergency only deepens the crisis of inhumanity in the U.S. carceral immigration system. The only way to truly protect migrant lives is to abolish detention.

North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) — Fall 2020 . 289-295, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2020.1809086

By Richard H. Donohue, John S. Hollywood, Samuel Peterson, Bob Harrison, Daniel Tapia, Sunny D. Bhatt, Candace Strickland

Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) researchers conducted an independent assessment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE's) pilot body-worn camera (BWC) program for personnel assigned to Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations.

This report summarizes the findings from a mixed-methods analysis, in which researchers collected and analyzed data from BWCs and observed BWCs in training and operational environments with pilot participants. The analysis was supplemented by data and observations collected by ICE and analyzed by the authors. Researchers studied the BWC pilot program to better understand issues related to (1) trust and transparency, (2) user adoption and effectiveness, (3) implementation of BWCs, and (4) efficacy of the technology.

The resulting findings and recommendations cover a comprehensive variety of topics, including benefits and risks, human factors, policy and training considerations, and considerations for future ICE BWC procurement.

This research was sponsored by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of Regulatory Affairs and Policy and conducted in the Management, Technology, and Capabilities Program of the RAND Homeland Security Research Division (HSRD). 2023. 18p.