Capital punishment––the ultimate penalty––is one of the most controversial aspects of America's criminal justice system. Its inclusion in the U.S. constitution sparks heated debate with opponents claiming that it is incompatible with the principles on which the world's greatest democracy stands. Although the death penalty has been around for thousands of years, modern America has changed it in fundamental ways. These days no criminal is put...

The U.S. prison system is the largest and most innovative in the world. It boasts some of the most technologically advanced prisons in existence, meeting the highest standards in security. Inside these vast, specialized structures, containing thousands of inmates, highly trained corrections officers use technology to anticipate outbreaks of violence and to prevent riots and escape attempts. The tightly regulated prison system relies on many professionals....

Criminal trials become famous for a variety of reasons. In the 1920s the Sacco and Vanzetti trial and execution prompted demonstrations and violent riots around the globe and divided opinion in the U.S. The kidnapping of the son of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s similarly caused outrage and horror and led to the passing of the Federal Kidnapping Act. As for the trials of Dr. Sam Sheppard in the 1950s, it was the weakness of his alibi...

The spread of terrorism is perhaps the greatest threat facing the world today. Attacks have occurred in growing numbers during the past fifty years. The destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, and the simultaneous attack on the Pentagon, on September 11, 2001, awakened the attention of the United States to the threat posed to civilian populations throughout the world. Terrorism first assumed an international dimension in 1964 with the establishment...

"Hate crime" is a modern name for a criminal act committed purely out of hostility towards certain people, groups, or organizations. Such crimes are motivated by racial, sexual, political, or other prejudice and typically involve violence. We tend to categorize crime as something for money or possessions, but hate crimes involve emotions. This makes the perpetrators especially dangerous, because any member of a targeted group can become a victim....

However repugnant, torture has been practiced, either publicly approved or clandestinely, for thousands of years. From the rack to electrodes, from witch- hunts to the Inquisition to a post-colonial world, torture is something we have always lived with. The History of Torture tells the complete story, from the ancient world to the present day, from physical cruelty to mental torment. The rack may be thought of as something medieval, but was first...

Organized crime is a global phenomenon. From Sicily came the Mafia; Japan spawned and then exported the Yakuza, as China did its Triads, and post-Soviet Russia saw the birth and rapid escalation of its very own Mafiya. These criminal fraternities differ from common criminal gangs in that they operate much like legitimate business corporations, highly efficient and massively profitable, with a definite hierarchical structure. There was a time when...

America has long prided itself as a country where people of different races and cultures came together to form a new nationality. "Races didn't bother the Americans," U.S. poet Archibald MacLeish wrote. "They were the first self-constituted, self-created people in the history of the world." Unfortunately, the idea of the harmonious "melting pot" has not always matched the reality in this country. Race crimes, like other forms of criminal behavior,...

The United States justice system was created when the Constitution was adopted in 1787. The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, which gave most of the power to individual states. The Constitution created a strong federal government to bring the states together to work for the good of the nation while balancing their rights to independence and autonomy. Our government's three branches-executive, legislative, and judicial-were designed...

No greater threat faces America today than that posed by illicit drugs––and this despite the well-publicized menace of international terrorism. Rather than destroy us from the outside, the war on drugs corrodes society from within. In many of our cities, drugs have transformed whole neighborhoods into lost places of criminality and despair. In order to assure a final victory, we must understand the complexity of the challenge. Each drug has a...