Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Press
Date Published: 2009-05-12
ISBN-13:9781595583291ISBN:1595583297
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Pr
Date Published: 2009-05-05
ISBN-13:9781595583291ISBN:1595583297
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781595583291. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Press
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781595583291ISBN:1595583297
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
"This was a good book and Butler had some really good ideas for improving America's criminal justice system.
However, his theories were clearly incomplete. For instance, the jury nullification that he so worships is also responsible for a terrible murderer--O.J. Simpson--going free. But apparently, it's only bad when innocent African Americans are charged with a crime, not when terrible (African American) murderers go free. This is the sense I got from Butler's analysis of jury nullification.
Also, right as Butler rants against racial profiling of black people by white people, he himself admits to racially profile white people! When he heard of the sniper in Washington DC a few years back, he writes, he told a friend that a "crazy white boy" must've done it because there's just no way a black man could do such a thing.
The fact that it DID turn out to be a black man makes Butler look even worse, but that's irrelevant. Why is it ok to discriminate against white people but not black people? If Butler calls racial profiling "racism" (which, arguably, it isn't, because those aren't quite the same things), then he himself is a racist.
Thankfully, near the end of the book, Butler does admit that the hip hop music he glorifies does have some serious problems (gee, maybe objectifying women as sex objects and bragging about one's prodigious amount of money aren't such great things to do). But he never really mentions the drawbacks of the part of hip hop music that he DOES like--that is, the part that glorifies criminals. To Butler, this is just an understandable rebellion against America's criminal justice system, not a tacit acknowledgement that selling drugs and killing people are acceptable ways of life.
"As a former student of Professor Paul Butler, I was not surprised to find his book refreshing in its candor, raw in its emotion, and revolutionary in its outlook. At bottom, Professor Butler's analysis is grounded in the radical notion that the government should respect people's right to be secure in their persons and property, a right formerly enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Even more fundamentally, he argues that we should re-embrace freedom in this country in ways that range from not incarcerating nonviolent offenders to decriminalizing drugs. Our prisons, he points out, have made our lives more dangerous by serving to indoctrinate nonviolent offenders in the ways of violent crime. Not only are we squandering lives that might otherwise be productive, but we are also creating a contempt for law not seen since Prohibition and extending police power in a manner not consistent with a free society.
Ironically, Butler points out that prosecutorial bullying coupled with the indiscriminate use of paid informants ("snitches") has radically undermined the rule of law. Indiscriminate prosecution leads to a fatalistic attitude in some communities that come to regard prosecution more as an inevitable misfortune than an avoidable sanction. Paid informants not only undermine community trust and generate false information, but they also allow some of the worst offenders to carry on a life of crime in the knowledge that the police will protect and excuse their paid informers.
As the book's title suggests, Butler derives a series of principles for approaching the problems of criminal justice that are derived from hip hop culture. No disrespect, but I am about as familiar with hip hop as I am with Russian folk dancing, which is to say, not very. Yet given the immediacy of a genre like hip hop on today's streets and among today's youth, it is all the more necessary to read books like Butler's that serve as a bridge to new ideas. Butler's ideas about selective noncooperation with the police may raise an eyebrow in some, but mostly they constitute standard advice for anyone on the wrong end of an inquiry by law enforcement: do not consent to a search, ask for a lawyer, say nothing more until you have one. Even Butler's signature advocacy of jury nullification in cases of non-violent drug offenses is hardly a notion that would shock James Madison.
Later in the book, Butler raises questions about the possible uses of technology in providing alternatives to mass incarceration. However, he does not attempt to answer them, much less address the broad implications of placing intrusive monitoring devices in the hands of the bullying police and prosecutors he so eloquently decries elsewhere. Such a discussion deserves at least a book of its own, preferably one that examines the commoditization of information technology as a counterweight to Big Brother.
Butler concludes the book with a series of suggestions for citizen action with which anyone who believes we can shape our culture by improving our environment should find themselves in immediate sympathy. While in some ways a pastiche of personal memoir, social analysis, legal primer, and citizen handbook, this book is a compelling read and a call to action for anyone who has ever had a moment's concern about crime or racial justice in America."
"I would strongly recommend this book as an introduction to criminal justice issues. The book is thoughtful and is an effective indictment of the current system. It explains why being "tough on crime" has not worked and proposes ways the average citizen can push for justice.
But a "hip-hop theory of justice"? Not so much.
The book didn't say anything groundbreaking about how hip-hop culture relates to/reflects our current system. There was maybe one chapter dissecting hip-hop lyrics and a few pages on the Stop Snitching movement. Those sections were admittedly insightful, but they were such a small portion of the book and did not go far enough.
I suppose I was just hoping for a deeper exploration of the relationship between the hip-hop community and crime. This book was more of a broad overview of criminal justice theory."
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