Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide Between America and Europe By James Q. Whitman, Oxford University Press, 311 pages, $35.00 This past March, a sharply divided Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of California’s “three strikes” law requiring long prison terms for third felonies. In the specific appeals before it, the Court let stay […]
Jerome Skolnick
Jerome H. Skolnick, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, is co-director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University's School of Law.
Posted inBooks
State of the Debate: The Color of the Law
Race and crime commingle dangerously in the American psyche. Now that crime rates are declining, might color-blind justice finally be achievable?
Posted inFeatures
Code Blue
Police work in an unpredictable, sometimes violent, sometimes deadly environment. The potential danger of their workplace and their authority to use force to overcome resistance make it unsurprising that police actions can have brutal, even fatal, consequences–sometimes for innocent people, as Amadou Diallo’s family knows all too well. It’s also not surprising that, to cope […]
Posted inLaw and Justice
Passions of Crime
Getting tough on crime has always been popular. Now there’s also big money in it. Crime policy today is a study in irrational passions and rational interests.
Posted inLaw and Justice
Wild Pitch: ‘Three Strikes, You’re Out’ and Other Bad Calls on Crime
Gut-level intuition is driving the country toward depserate and ineffective measures.
Posted inEconomic Policy
State of the Debate: Tough Guys
William Bennett, John DiIulio, and John Walters say it’s time liberals faced the hard facts about crime. Maybe they should heed their own advice.
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Gangs in the Post-Industrial Ghetto
Though hardly a new phenomenon, gangs of poor youth are once again in the news and movies. There is one new factor: the vanishing prospect of industrial jobs that lead out of poverty.