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New Books in Policing, Incarceration, and Reform

By: New Books Network
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  • Summary

  • Interviews with scholars of policing, incarceration and reform about their new books
    New Books Network
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Episodes
  • Alessandra Montalbano, "Ransom Kidnapping in Italy: Crime, Memory, and Violence" (U Toronto Press, 2023)

    Alessandra Montalbano, "Ransom Kidnapping in Italy: Crime, Memory, and Violence" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
    Jul 19 2024
    For over thirty years, modern Italy was plagued by ransom kidnappings perpetrated by bandits and organised crime syndicates. Nearly 700 men, women, and children were abducted from across the country between the late 1960s and the late 1990s, held hostage by members of the Sardinian banditry, Cosa Nostra, and the ’Ndrangheta. Subjected to harsh captivities and psychological abuse, the victims spent months and even years in isolation while law enforcement and the state struggled to find them. Ransom Kidnapping in Italy: Crime, Memory, and Violence (University of Toronto Press, 2024) by Dr. Alessandra Montalbano examines this Italian criminal phenomenon. Alessandra Montalbano argues that abduction is a key vantage point from which to understand modern Italy: it troubled the law, terrified society, ignited juridical and parliamentary debates, and mobilised citizens. Bringing together archival and media materials with the victims’ accounts and diverse forms of cultural response, the book examines ransom kidnapping through the lenses of historiography, law, literary criticism, trauma studies, phenomenology, and political philosophy. Ransom Kidnapping in Italy traces how and at what price Italians became aware of living in a country that was being blackmailed by criminal organisations that arguably jeopardised the nation even more than terrorism. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit

    Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit
    Jul 18 2024
    Today’s book is: Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit (U Chicago Press, 2024), by Dr. Robin Bernstein, which tells the story of a teenager named William Freeman. Convicted of a horse theft he insisted he did not commit, he was sentenced to five years of hard labor in Auburn’s new prison. Uniting incarceration and capitalism, the facility included industrial factories where prisoners worked as “slaves of the state.” They earned no wages, yet they manufactured furniture, animal harnesses, carpets, and combs, which consumers bought throughout the North. Then one young man challenged the system. Incensed at being forced to work without pay, William Freeman demanded wages. His challenge triggered violence: first against him, then by him. Freeman committed a murder that terrified and bewildered white America. And white America struck back—with aftereffects that reverberate into our lives today in the persistent myth of inherent Black criminality. William Freeman’s story reveals how the North invented prison for profit half a century before the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery “except as a punishment for crime”—and how Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and other African Americans invented strategies of resilience and resistance in a city dominated by a citadel of unfreedom. Through one Black man, his family, and his city, Dr. Bernstein tells an explosive, moving story about the entangled origins of prison for profit and anti-Black racism. Our guest is: Dr. Robin Bernstein, who is an award-winning cultural historian specializing in race and racism from the nineteenth century to the present. She teaches at Harvard University, where she is the Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell (and why) and what happens to those we never tell. Playlist for listeners who wish to learn more: Stitching Freedom: Embroidery and Incarceration Education Behind the Wall Hands Up, Don't Shoot: Researching Racial Injustice The Journal of Higher Education in Prison Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    59 mins
  • Kevin Leo Nadal, "Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System" (Lexington Book, 2020)

    Kevin Leo Nadal, "Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System" (Lexington Book, 2020)
    Jul 14 2024
    Throughout US history, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have been pathologized, victimized, and criminalized. Reports of lynching, burning, or murdering of LGBTQ people have been documented for centuries. Prior to the 1970s, LGBTQ people were deemed as having psychological disorders and subsequently subject to electroshock therapy and other ineffective and cruel treatments. LGBTQ people have historically been arrested or imprisoned for crimes like sodomy, cross-dressing, and gathering in public spaces. And while there have been many strides to advocate for LGBTQ rights in contemporary times, there are still many ways that the criminal justice system works against LGBTQ and their lives, liberties, and freedoms. Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System (Lexington Books, 2020) examines the state of LGBTQ people within the criminal justice system. Intertwining legal cases, academic research, and popular media, Nadal reviews a wide range of issues—ranging from historical heterosexist and transphobic legislation to police brutality to the prison industrial complex to family law. Grounded in Queer Theory and intersectional lenses, each chapter provides recommendations for queering and disrupting the justice system. This book serves as both an academic resource and a call to action for readers who are interested in advocating for LGBTQ rights. Nick Pozek is the Assistant Director of the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law at Columbia University in the City of New York and a host of New Books in Law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    39 mins
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