Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-193) and index.
Contents:
Introduction : a system out of whack -- The First Drug War : laying the groundwork -- The Great War : creating an infrastructure of legal power -- Paternalism and power : the deployment of drug law in the liberal northeast -- Hammers and nails in Southeast District -- Drugs, mules, and the looming border -- Inducing the plea : strategic uses of legal power -- Taming the power to punish? -- Epilogue : some hope and more despair.
Summary:
"The convergence of tough-on-crime politics, stiffer sentencing laws, and jurisdictional expansion in the 1970s and 1980s increased the powers of federal prosecutors in unprecedented ways. In Hard bragains, social psychologist Mona Lynch investigates the increased power of these prosecutors in our age of mass incarceration. Lynch documents how prosecutors use punitive federal drug laws to coerce guilty pleas and obtain long prison sentences for defendants, particularly those who are African American, and exposes deep injustices in the federal courts. Hard bargains proposes a broad overhaul of the federal criminal justice system to restore the balance of power and retreat from the punitive indulgences of the war on drugs"-- Back cover.
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