Search

Across America today gated communities sprawl out from urban centers, employers enforce mandatory drug testing, and schools screen students with metal detectors. Social problems ranging from welfare dependency to educational inequality have been reconceptualized as crimes, with an attendant focus on assigning fault and imposing consequences. Even before the recent terrorist attacks, non-citizen residents had become subject to an increasingly harsh regime of detention and deportation, and prospective employees subjected to background checks. How and when did our everyday world become dominated by fear, every citizen treated as a potential criminal?In this startlingly original work, Jonathan Simon traces this pattern back to the collapse of the New Deal approach to governing during the 1960s when declining confidence in expert-guided government policies sent political leaders searching for new models of governance. The War on Crime offered a ready solution to their problem: politicians set agendas by drawing analogies to crime and redefined the ideal citizen as a crime victim, one whose vulnerabilities opened the door to overweening government intervention. By the 1980s, this transformation of the core powers of government had spilled over into the institutions that govern daily life. Soon our schools, our families, our workplaces, and our residential communities were being governed through crime.This powerful work concludes with a call for passive citizens to become engaged partners in the management of risk and the treatment of social ills. Only by coming together to produce security, can we free ourselves from a logic of domination by others, and from the fear that currently rules our everyday life.

Mass Incarceration on Trial examines a series of landmark decisions about prison conditions-culminating in Brown v. Plata, decided in May 2011 by the U.S. Supreme Court-that has opened an unexpected escape route from this trap of "tough on crime" politics. This set of rulings points toward values that could restore legitimate order to American prisons and, ultimately, lead to the demise of mass incarceration. This book offers a provocative and brilliant reading to the end of mass incarceration.

CODE RED is about what has happened to American elections, American politics, and America since computers took over the vote counting at the turn of this century. Its new subtitle reflects the grave plight of the democracy we seem to take for granted, and this new Election 2018 Edition brings the story up to date, including how we got to the Age of Trump and what it means to be here. There are hundreds of published accounts devoted to explaining just how we got here: the Clinton campaign this, the economy that, the white suburban voters without college the other thing... As varied as they may be, what all these accounts have in common is the assumption that, one way or another, we voted our way here. That is to say, Americans collectively cast the billions of ballots that, over the past half-dozen or so elections, added up to where we are now. As if we all got behind the wheel of the national car and somehow steered it to this precarious destination. That is not the account offered by this book. CODE RED challenges the fundamental assumption that we voted our way over the cliff. It instead explores the possibility that, since the dawn of the computerized elections era--with votes counted in the partisan, proprietary, pitch-dark of cyberspace--the national car has behaved more like a self-driving car, programmer unknown. It examines those elections and the veer in American politics, culminating in the Age of Trump, that they have produced-reaching conclusions about who or what has been driving the car that are both more chilling (it''s not us) and more encouraging (it''s not us) than anything else you are likely to read. Most important, it''s a book to read if you''re asking how we can re-take the wheel. Because, while it may be of some comfort to realize that we did not vote our way to this scary place, the correlate is that there is serious and urgent work to be done if we are to be able to vote our way out of it. "CODE RED is unique, easy-to-understand, and vastly important." - Andrew Kreig, Justice Integrity Project "As a professional statistician, I found CODE RED''s data, analysis, and conclusions compelling." - Dr. Elizabeth Clarkson; Chief Statistician, National Inst. For Aviation Research "Simon''s research is thorough and his case is more than compelling ... He has provided an important public service." - John Zogby, founder of The Zogby Poll Several other democracies have now moved away from the computerized vote tabulation they initially embraced, having recognized the manifest security risks it entails. But America has continued to entrust its elections to privatized and concealed vote counting despite mounting and voluminous evidence that the vulnerabilities to manipulation are not merely hypothetical but are actually being exploited, with profound political consequences. CODE RED shows how America has come to adopt and embrace such a system and why we have been so collectively resistant to any serious reconsideration of its safety and appropriateness. We examine the role of election administrators, politicians, and the media in stifling investigation of the validity of suspect American elections and, more generally, of the safety and rationality of a system proven by experts to be easily corrupted. Like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, CODE RED sets a Doomsday Clock. The good news is that it''s not quite midnight. We can turn this country around, but only if we first restore public, observable vote counting to our elections. It is a simple thing, but until we do it we will continue putting everything we value at risk. CODE RED combines analysis and advocacy and concludes with a powerful call to action: "We need only to break a spell that has been cast on us--a spell of convenience, passivity, helplessness. We need only remember that democracy is not something that we watch, it is something that we do."

Reveals how modern strategies of punishment - and their failure - relate to political and economic transformations in society at large. The author uses the practice of parole in California as a window to the changing historical understanding of what a corrections system does and how it works.

Introduced in 1894 as a treatment for a deadly childhood disease, the diphtheria serum stands as a milestone in pharmaceutical history. Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object: A Philosophical Analysis of Serotherapy in France 1894-1900 considers the production and use of this serum in France, analyzing the drug in terms of a technological object. To do this, Jonathan Simon draws on the philosophy of technology, exploring the application of this approach to medical drugs and suggesting how such an analysis can in turn contribute to this domain of philosophy. Starting with the manufacture of the serum from horses’ blood, Simon then considers the processes involved in transforming the blood serum into a legal medical drug and establishing its efficacy as a treatment against diphtheria. The book looks at the place the drug assumed in French society at the time, as well as the legal and political implications of its manufacture and use. All these elements are deployed to characterize a specifically French serum, as the author argues that the constitution of the drug in its full sense is not only technical but also social, political, and legal. Considering the serum as technological object facilitates a philosophical reflection on the nature of medical drugs in general by means of a thorough analysis of this particular historical example. The insights offered in this book will be of interest to students and scholars working on the philosophy of technology, particularly the medical sciences, as well as to historians of medicine, particularly those interested in the history of pharmacy.

This book explores the history of pharmacy in France and its relationship to the discipline of chemistry as it emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It argues that an appreciation of the history of pharmacy is essential to a full understanding of the constitution of modern science, in particular the discipline of chemistry. As such, it provides a novel interpretation of the chemical revolution (c.1770-1789) that will, no doubt, generate much debate on the place of the chemical arts in this story, a question that has hitherto lacked sufficient scholarly reflection. Furthermore, the book situates this analysis within the broader context of the French Revolution, arguing that an intimate and direct link can be drawn between the political upheavals and our vision of the chemical revolution. The story of the chemical revolution has usually been told by focusing on the small group of French chemists who championed Lavoisier's oxygen theory, or else his opponents. Such a perspective emphasises competing theories and interpretations of critical experiments, but neglects the challenging issue of who could be understood as practising chemistry in the eighteenth century. In contrast, this study traces the tradition of pharmacy as a professional pursuit that relied on chemical techniques to prepare medicines, and shows how one of the central elements of the chemical revolution was the more or less conscious disassociation of the new chemistry from this ancient chemical art.

""Riley-Smith marshals his case lucidly.""--Times Literary Supplement ""Riley-Smith's analysis of the formation of Crusading ideology offers a provocative new interpretation. . . . [His] scholarship is impeccable, and he supports his contentions with

The baptism with the Spirit and fire has been a major area of study by theologians and has been pursued by the historical church seeking God’s holiness and power; yet its relationship to judgment has often been ignored. This book explores the Holy Spirit’s relationship with judgment in Luke-Acts through seven texts: Luke 3:16–17; 12:8–10; Acts 5:1–11; 7:51; 8:18–23; 13:9–11; 28:25–28. In these texts, the Holy Spirit is connected with fire, unforgiveness, deception, resistance, greed, blindness, or condemnation. In each instance, Luke’s presentation is examined to determine the Spirit’s role in the process of judgment. Through the Spirit, Jesus judges, cleanses, purges, and divides his people from the world. Luke portrays the Spirit as the executive power of Jesus’ reign as judge, exposing, opposing, and condemning those who reject the gospel.

Simon Jacks is an idealistic young attorney with a prestigious Chicago law firm, about to start the most important case of his career, defending the accused in a series of grisly sex slayings dubbed The Toolbox Murders. But in a moment of stress Simon throws a punch at another attorney and is ordered to take some time off. Retreating to a secluded island cabin in northern Michigan with his family and friends, Simon hopes for a relaxing vacation. Instead he encounters conflicting ideologies, jealousy, and betrayal. And more. Someone is stalking them. Soon, childish pranks turn deadly in an episode of terror. To survive, Simon may have to sacrifice his most precious conviction: that everyone deserves a fair trial.

A presentation of the history and philosophy of chemistry. It introduces the reader to various themes in the domain, and argues for a thesis: chemistry is not reducible to physics, but rather needs it own philosophy that reflects its practical engagement with the material world.