Benjamin Fleury-Steiner

The Internet as a Tool for Black Feminist Activism: Lessons From an Online Antirape Protest

This article explores how the Internet is a tool for Black women to challenge violence against women of color. It highlights online protest in response to the actions of civil rights organizations’ narrow focus on the treatment of Black male offenders while overlooking the civil rights of Black female victims. Specifically, the article examines a protest focusing on the reactions of racial justice leaders to a brutal gang rape in a Palm Beach housing project known as Dunbar Village. Drawing from the literature on collective action frames, this article illustrates how the Dunbar Village protest evolved from an online dialogue to social protest.

Beware of Notarios: Neoliberal Governance of Immigrants as Crime Victims

Drawing on David Garland’s (1996, 2001) observations about the ‘limits of the sovereign state’, we seek in this article to develop a critical understanding of the recent response in the USA to ‘notario fraud’—an unlawful act committed when a non-lawyer poses as an immigration attorney. While efforts to protect immigrants from fraud on their surface represent a counter to recent anti-immigrant policies, our analysis of materials distributed by what we term an anti-notario fraud apparatus suggests that such activity amounts to neoliberal governance. Specifically, we study immigrant advocacy groups’ discourse around the issue and argue that anti-notario efforts are akin to responsibilization. We also study how law enforcement officials discuss the issue and theorize how a one-dimensional framing of notarios as villains supports the neoliberal regime by protecting the state’s sovereignty to manufacture what Nicholas De Genova (2002) has called ‘deportability’.

Racist Localisms and the Enduring Cultural Life of America’s Death Penalty: Lessons from Maricopa County, Arizona

Abstract There has been a tremendous decline in the use of the death penalty in the United States. Recent research using county-level data shows that a small minority of locales in the country account for death sentences and even fewer for executions. Drawing on theoretical work that seeks to account for why these locales continue to use capital punishment, we provide in this chapter a thick description of Maricopa County, Arizona, one of the most active death penalty locales in the contemporary United States. In doing so, we demonstrate how capital punishment operates in a field of violently defended racial boundaries. Our chapter shows the roles of various local actors across time in fortifying such racial boundaries through historical white terrorism and more recent reinforcement of zones of racial exclusion that are embodied especially in communicated fears of “illegal immigrant gangs.” We contend that the case of Maricopa County points to the importance of attending to racist localisms as a catalyst for the continued implementation of the death penalty in the United States.

The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice

The phrase ‘‘racial tracking’’ in the title of this book brought immediately to mind the long and sordid history of government surveillance programs targeted at racially aggrieved communities in the United States. From the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO program to more recent revelations of the sophisticated post-911 technological surveillance of racially marginalized neighborhoods, a book seeking to unearth the political roots of such tracking programs is long overdue. Given the current historical moment when law enforcement abuses of authority in poor communities of color are ever more in the public eye, such a tome could make an obviously timely contribution to debates on race and criminal justice. Yet, in The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice Nina M. Moore defines ‘‘racial tracking’’ as something more familiar to the literature— namely, racially biased criminal justice practices that more negatively impact blacks as compared to whites. This ambitious endeavor is presented in eight chapters. Chapter One uses numerous national criminal justice data sources to capture racial differences in policing practices, court processing, sentencing, and conditions of confinement for black and white prisoners. Chapter Two, ‘‘Policy Process Theory of Racial Tracking,’’ presents a theoretical discussion of public policy analyses grounded in classic political science debates. To summarize this chapter very briefly, Moore argues that the tyranny of the majority that characterizes American governance and its legitimizing institutions has long failed to challenge criminal justice policies that have had disproportionately negative consequences for blacks entangled in the criminal justice system. Chapter Three focuses on how the U.S. Supreme Court has a longstanding record of upholding the fiction of racial neutrality in the criminal justice system. Chapters Four and Five turn to detailed analyses of congressional hearings that have led to current criminal justice policies and attempts at racial justice reforms. Here, Moore places the blame squarely on the U.S. Congress and a compliant majority of the citizenry. In Chapter Six, the politics of law and order embraced by Congress is shown to have evolved from a more explicit reliance on black criminality to one that is racially coded. Chapter Seven takes a closer look at how racially coded or ‘‘color-blind’’ justifications for harsh criminal justice policies impact the views of the electorate. Drawing on studies of national public opinion data, Moore argues that the majority of Americans regardless of race have long supported draconian criminal justice policies because of deeply entrenched beliefs in individual responsibility. It is important to call attention to Moore’s opening presentation of extensive descriptive statistical data. This material highlights where racial bias in the criminal justice system is occurring (e.g., law enforcement, sentencing, and prison conditions) and not occurring (e.g., court processing). Moore provides excellent material for stimulating debate in both upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses. Of special interest is Moore’s attention to especially timely issues such as race and police use of deadly force. Given the ever-growing documentation of the horrific fatal shootings of unarmed black men by the police—a scandal that has given rise to the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the unprecedented involvement of the U.S. Department of Justice in monitoring state and local law enforcement departments—it is difficult to overstate the importance of this topic to sociologists interested in race relations and criminal justice policy. Moore’s analysis of the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities (SISFCF) is another especially noteworthy section of the chapter. Her analysis provides a devastating critique of rarely explored issues surrounding the treatment of black as compared to white prisoners. Specifically, Moore finds that white prisoners are far more likely to receive a General Education Diploma (GED) behind Reviews 487