Glenn Greenwald (2011) With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 304 pp. (h/b).
The U.S. is in the midst of one of the most significant crime waves in history, one in which serious and repeat offenders run afoul of the law with little fear of being caught or punished. While police have failed to investigate these crimes, politicians, particularly those with an affinity for law-and-order policies, have turned a blind eye, preferring to enact laws that prevent offenders from being held to account. What is more, the majority of American citizens appear unconcerned about the situation, mostly unaware of their own victimization. All of this begs the question: has the U.S. become a “lawless” society?
This latest book by U.S. political commentator and former federal litigator, Glenn Greenwald, provides much needed insight into America’s crime problem. However, this is not a book about street thugs, gun crimes, violent dogs or the use of CCTV in the ‘war’ on crime – issues that dominate media headlines, political agendas and criminological research – but about the culture of immunity enjoyed by America’s political and economic elite.
Criminal justice reform in recent years has been intense but disappointing. The proposals for a ‘rehabilitation revolution’ in England and Wales that were made by the coalition government when it came into power in 2010, momentarily, gave a glimmer of hope for cross-party agreement, but the deep divisions about appropriate responses to crime have continued in politics and in public opinion.
This edited collection by Steve Hall [Teesside U.] and Simon Winlow [York U., England] brings together established global scholars and new thinkers to outline fresh concepts and theoretical perspectives for criminological research and analysis in the 21stcentury. Criminologists from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia evaluate the current condition of criminological theory and present students and researchers with new and revised ideas from the realms of politics, culture and subjectivity to unpack crime and violence in the precarious age of global neoliberalism.
Registration no.328239 