You are invited to a book talk of interest to the COR community…
Matthew Clair [1] (Stanford University)
Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court
Monday, April 4, 2022
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT
UCI Law | EDU 1111
This event will take place in person at UCI Law with a live stream available on Zoom for remote participation. Zoom details will be sent upon registration.
The number of Americans arrested, brought to court and incarcerated has skyrocketed in recent decades. Criminal defendants come from all races and economic walks of life, but they experience punishment in vastly different ways. Privilege and Punishment [3] [2] examines how racial and class inequalities are embedded in the attorney-client relationship, providing a devastating portrait of inequality and injustice within and beyond the criminal courts.
Matthew Clair conducted extensive fieldwork in the Boston court system, attending criminal hearings and interviewing defendants, lawyers, judges, police officers and probation officers. In this eye-opening book, he uncovers how privilege and inequality play out in criminal court interactions. When disadvantaged defendants try to learn their legal rights and advocate for themselves, lawyers and judges often silence, coerce and punish them. Privileged defendants, who are more likely to trust their defense attorneys, delegate authority to their lawyers, defer to judges, and are rewarded for their compliance. Clair shows how attempts to exercise legal rights often backfire on the poor and on working-class people of color, and how effective legal
representation alone is no guarantee of justice.
Privilege and Punishment draws needed attention to the injustices that are perpetuated by the attorney-client relationship in today’s criminal courts, and describes the reforms needed to correct them.
Dr. Matthew Clair is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and (by courtesy) the Law School at Stanford University. His scholarship broadly examines how cultural meanings and interactions reflect, reproduce and challenge various dimensions of social inequality, legal violence and injustice. His research has been published in Criminology, Law & Social Inquiry, Social Science & Medicine and Social Forces and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Criminology, the Center for American Political Studies, and the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management.
Monday, April 4, 2022
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT
UCI Law | EDU 1111
This event will take place in person at UCI Law with a live stream available on Zoom for remote participation. Zoom details will be sent upon RSVP [2].
For more event details or to request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu
Links:
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[1] https://urldefense.com/v3/__ht
[2]
https://urldefense.com/v3/__ht
[3]
https://urldefense.com/v3/__ht