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Reviews
Reviews
Death in Custody is a radical shift in how to analyze violence, misconduct, and dysfunction in the criminal justice system in the modern era.Aronson and Mitchell offer recommendations for attempting to sort out this crisis, but this book would be important even if it didn't. Death in Custody makes the case that white supremacy, economic inequality, and exploitation are among the causes of this festering problem.
Death in Custody provides readers with the brutal history on which the U.S. criminal legal system was built.These unnecessary deaths will continue to occur until there is a uniform way of making our judicial system transparent and accountable.
In Death in Custody, Roger A. Mitchell Jr. and Jay D. Aronson argue that deaths in law enforcement custody amount to a public health emergency. Their work ties in high-profile examples and shows how journalists have long done the work of tracking in-custody deaths.Mitchell and Aronson argue that collecting accurate data is the first step toward addressing this crisis.
There's no real way to know how many people die in custody each year. In their book, Death in Custody, Roger and Jay chronicle the efforts of activists and journalists to uncover the true scope of this problem, to try to figure out how many people actually are dying in custody. And they argue for a straightforward solution. I learned a lot from this book. It blew my mind.
Dr. Mitchell and Professor Aronson's meticulous examination of our criminal legal system is a shocking exposure of just how little our society knows or cares to know about people dying in custody. In their careful accounting of various attempts to understand and prevent deaths in custody, one thing becomes clear: the reforms on the margins that federal, state, and local governments engage in are simply not enough to stop the human suffering that occurs every day in this country.
Deeply researched.
In a striking collaboration, Roger A. Mitchell (a pathologist) and Jay D. Aronson (a human rights expert) expose an underappreciated problem at the intersection of public health and criminal justice: People who die in police custody are often unaccounted for. By combining perspectives ranging from historical analysis to contemporary methods in public health and statistics, the authors highlight a gap that reveals major challenges in the criminal legal system and in our public health infrastructure.
In their courageous and often gripping book Death in Custody, Roger A. Mitchell (a pathologist) and Jay D. Aronson (a human rights expert) teach us that the process through which deaths are counted or characterized is a justice issue in and of itself.
No one really knows exactly how many people across the country die in jails and prisons each year. This intricate investigation by Aronson and Mitchell details how things came to be this way.
[Mitchell and Aronson] lay out the nation's systemic failure to track deaths caused by police and correctional officers. The book scrutinizes bias in death investigations, exploring how coroners and medical examiners have produced autopsies that minimized or erased the role of police, and in effect, blamed victims for their own deaths.
Dr. Roger Mitchell has an extensive history conducting in-custody death investigations. I cannot think of anyone more qualified, committed, or passionate in exposing these often-invisible deaths that leave so many grieving families with unanswered questions. Death in Custody by Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jay Aronson is an exhaustive and critical examination that is long overdue.
This timely, important, and well-researched book shines a much-needed light on the epidemic of preventable—and hidden—deaths in our nation's prisons and jails. It's impossible to read it without demanding that policy makers address the lack of data, the lack of oversight, and the lack of humanity in these dark places.
America's prisons have become death houses for so many people who have tragically lost their lives as a result of neglect, abuse, and mismanagement. This critically important work shines a powerful light on a public health emergency created by our nation's addiction to incarceration and extreme punishment. An urgent, compelling, and necessary call to action we should all embrace.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x 9
Pages
328
ISBN
9781421447087
Series
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Lynching
2. Early Advocacy Against Police Killings
3. The Death in Custody Reporting Act
4. Before Sandra Bland: Custodial Deaths in Texas
5. Mortality Behind Bars: Documenting Deaths in
Introduction
1. Lynching
2. Early Advocacy Against Police Killings
3. The Death in Custody Reporting Act
4. Before Sandra Bland: Custodial Deaths in Texas
5. Mortality Behind Bars: Documenting Deaths in Prisons, Jails, and Detention Centers
6. Homicide: Death at the Hands of Another
7. The Checkbox and Beyond
Index
Featured Contributor
Roger A. Mitchell Jr., MD
Roger A. Mitchell Jr., MD, (WASHINGTON, DC) is a professor and chair of pathology at the Howard University College of Medicine. He is a forensic pathologist who previously served as the Chief Medical Examiner and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice of Washington, DC. He is the author of The Price of Freedom: A Son’s Journey.
Featured Contributor
Jay D. Aronson, PhD
Jay D. Aronson (PITTSBURGH, PA) is the founder and director of the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is a professor of science, technology, and society in the Department of History. He is the author of Who Owns the Dead? The Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero and Genetic Witness: Science, Law, and Controversy in the Making of DNA Profiling.Resources
