Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

The executive director of a social advocacy group that has helped relieve condemned prisoners explains why justice and mercy must go hand-in-hand through the story of Walter McMillian, a man condemned to death row for a murder he didn't commit.

"Cole conclusively shows that, despite a veneer of neutrality, race- and class-based double standards operate in virtually every criminal justice setting, from police behavior, to jury selection, to sentencing"--Cover.

Of the many obstacles to racial justice in America, none has received more recent attention than the one that lurks in our subconscious. As social movements and policing scandals have shown how far from being "postracial" we are, the concept of implicit bias has taken center stage in national conversation about race. Millions of Americans have taken online tests purporting to show the deep, invisible roots of their prejudice. When a recent Oxford...

"Launching a propulsive middle grade nonfiction series, a young woman shares her harrowing experience of being wrongly accused of terrorism. Adama Bah grew up in East Harlem after immigrating from Conakry, Guinea, and was deeply connected to her community and the people who lived there. But as a thirteen-year-old after the events of September 11, 2001, she began experiencing discrimination and dehumanization as prejudice toward Muslim people grew....

"A ... true story and ... account of bias in the courtroom from CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates, recounting her time as a Black female prosecutor for the US Department of Justice"--

"The wrenching, and inspiring, story of a fourteen-year-old sentenced to life in prison, of the extraordinary relationship that developed between him and the woman he shot, and of his release after twenty-six years of imprisonment through the efforts of America's greatest contemporary legal activist, Bryan Stevenson. Here is the story of a poor black kid from the toughest neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, who at age eleven began "jacking" (stealing)...

A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow-era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy, from a renowned legal scholar. If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between...

"Drawing upon 25 years of experience representing black youth in Washington D.C.'s juvenile court, Kris Henning confronts America's irrational, manufactured fears of Black youth and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children. She explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police,...

"He was seventeen when an all-white jury sentenced him to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Now, in this unforgettable memoir, a pioneering lawyer recalls the journey that led to his exoneration-and inspired him to devote his life to fighting the manyinjustices in our legal system. Seventeen years old and facing nearly thirty years behind bars, Jarrett Adams sought to figure out the why behind his fate. Sustained by his mother and aunts who brought...

"The criminal justice system in the United States is highly complex, and includes both the activities of law enforcement officers as well as court proceedings. Often, social and economic factors come into play in the arrests, trials, and rehabilitation of Americans, and many people recognize that there are problems with the system. This book explores whether bias based on race, sexuality, gender, and/or socio-economic status exists in the courtroom...