The Color Line of Punishment

If the color line, (in W.E.B. Du Bois\u27s 1903 phrase and prophecy) was to be the twentieth century\u27s greatest challenge for the domestic life and public policy of the United States, the law has had much to do with drawing its shape. No surprise, this. By now, legal theorists accept that law does not advance in preordained fashion, immune from the sway of political interest, belief systems and social structure. Still, it is hard to exaggerate how powerfully the law has shaped the life chances of Americans of African heritage, for good or ill, and in ways that we scarcely think of today. The act of interracial marrying, for example, does not today evoke visions of criminality, although it once did. Thirty-nine states - including states in the North and West - had at one time passed laws forbidding intermarriage between persons of different race. Many of these laws were still in effect following World War II. If a black man had married a white woman in Virginia in 1966 the marriage would have been void ab initio, and they would each have been guilty of a felony. Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that freed interracial couples to marry, is only a footnote in Randall Kennedy\u27s Race, Crime and the Law, but that is understandable. The anti-miscegenation laws arose out of racial theories asserting that the children of mixed marriages would be defective. In one respect, these laws were often breached in practice. Black women were taken or raped regularly by white men who were rarely, if ever, punished (p. 35). Such children were sired in uncounted numbers, and then denoted as Negro. The laws criminalizing intermarriage thus delegitimatized the offspring of relations between white men and black women so that they could not inherit their father\u27s property. In another respect, the laws were rigorously enforced to prevent black men from having consensual sex with white women under any circumstances, including marriage. These laws implied that no rational, adult, white woman would agree to have sex with a black man. Any breaking of the sex-color line taboo between a black man and a white woman could be - and in the peculiar logic of the deep South should be - considered the moral equivalent of rape, even if blessed by the sacrament of marriage

Gang Organization and Migration / Drugs, Gangs, and Law Enforcement

This publication consists of two papers: the first Gang Organization and Migration is a descriptive work based on interviews with California inmates during the Spring and Summer of 1988 and 1989. The second, Drugs, Gangs, and Law Enforcement is more reflective in tone and describes interviews with and observations of law enforcement responses to gang migration

Democratic Policing Confronts Terror An Protest

The idea of legal evolution to a rule of law necessarily implies restraints upon the coercive power of the state. Whatever we might mean by coercive state power, surely the institution of the police embodies the essence of such power. Democratic policing has long been a guiding concern in studies of American policing; and it is a major goal of nations in transition to democracy, especially those in Eastern Europe.2 By those seeking change, democratic policing must be concerned with the rule of law as well as with crime and public order and terrorism. In this article, I intend to illustrate, using the New York City Police Department as an example, how a democratic police department has responded to terrorist threats following two major attacks to New York City\u27s World Trade Center; and the stance it has taken to policing anti-war protest since the United States invasion of Iraq. Following the dreadful terrorist attack on New York City\u27s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001,5 the New York City Police Department (NYPD) was required to address three issues beyond its ordinary anti-crime and law enforcement duties. The first was to prevent future terrorist attacks; the second was to be capable of instituting appropriate public health and safety measures in the event of a terrorist attack; the third was addressing anti-war protest, especially when the President and his Republican party, were scheduled to hold their Presidential election convention in New York City in 2004. These responsibilities: anti-terror prevention; maximizing public health and safety following an attack; and policing anti-war protest, were essentially add-ons to the day-to-day and more familiar police public safety responsibilities of the NYPD

The Local Role in Homeland Security

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73848/1/j.1540-5893.2005.00236.x.pd

House of cards : the legalization and control of casino gambling

The first chapter of this work begins with a discussion of whether gambling is play or pathology and considers alternative legal models for the social control of vice. The gambling casino is introduced from the player's point of view — as a house of stimulation, action, excitement. It is also considered from the manager's point of view — as a house of profit. After considering the casino as a social organization, the book offers three chapters on the history of this pariah industry, its search for revenue and respectability, and the growth of its legal controls. The remainder of the book considers control from the perspective of the agency carrying out its regulatory mandate. In conclusion, the book returns to a discussion of models in detail and compares England's control system with Nevada's