Crime and Punishment around the World, Volume 2: The Americas

Crime and Punishment around the World, Volume 2: The Americas
By Graeme R. Newman
Number Of Pages: 445
Publication Date: 2010-10-19
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0313351376
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780313351372

It is a subject as old as civil society, yet one that still fuels debate. Now the many and varied aspects of that subject are brought together in the four-volume Crime and Punishment around the World. This unprecedented work provides descriptions of crimes—and the justice systems that define and punish them—in more than 200 nations, principalities, and dependencies.

Each chapter examines the historical, political, and cultural background, as well as the basic organization of the subject state's legal and criminal justice system. It also reports on the types and levels of crime, the processes leading to the finding of guilt, the rights of the accused, alternatives to going to trial, how suspects are prosecuted for their crimes, and the techniques and conditions of typical punishments employed. Comprising a study that is at once extraordinarily comprehensive and minutely detailed, the essays collected here showcase the variety and the universality of crime and punishment the world over.

The second volume of Crime and Punishment around the World encompasses North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean islands. The Navajo Nation of the United States is also included in this volume. With respect to crime and punishment, the Americas are often categorized as having both high violent crime rates and high imprisonment rates. Although the maps in this volume show that these assessments are somewhat accurate, the range of the physical sizes of these countries obscures some of the diversity in crime and punishment patterns.