Containing 40 visually coded maps of the fifty states, this book offers an unprecedented look at America's diverse legal landscape. This first-of-its-kind volume sketches the diversity implicit in United States criminal law doctrine through its examination of a range of criminal laws pertaining to murder, sexual assault, drug offenses, the insanity defense, and more and the way in which different states deal with those issues. In addition to providing insights into the most widely invoked standards in criminal law, it raises awareness of the enormous discrepancies among the criminal laws of states, documenting them using dozens of visually coded maps that showcase geographic, political, and socioeconomic differences to explain patterns of agreement and disagreement. Mapping American Criminal Law: Variations Across the 50 States is for political scientists, criminologists, sociologists, legal scholars, policy advisors, legislators, lawyers, judges, and scholars and students of these fields. In addition, each chapter is highly accessible to laypersons and includes an explanation of the subject matter as well as explanations of the various approaches to criminal law taken by states.

This coursebook offers an exciting new approach to teaching criminal law to graduate and undergraduate students, and indeed to the general public. Each well-organized and student-friendly chapter offers historical context, tells the story of a principal historic case, provides a modern case that contrasts with the historic, explains the legal issue at the heart of both cases, includes a unique mapping feature describing the range of positions on the issue among the states today, examines a key policy question on the topic, and provides an aftermath that reports the final chapter to the historic and modern case stories. By embedding sophisticated legal doctrine and analysis in real-world storytelling, the book provides a uniquely effective approach to teaching American criminal law in programs on criminal justice, political science, public policy, history, philosophy, and a range of other fields.

Distributive principles of criminal law -- Habitual offender statutes -- Death penalty -- Legality requirement -- Provocation/extreme emotional disturbance -- Felony murder -- Causation -- Transferred intent -- Consent to injury -- Mental illness negating an offense element (MINOE) -- Attempt -- Complicity -- Complicity liability of co-conspirators -- Lesser evils/necessity defense -- Self-defense -- Law enforcement authority -- Insanity defense -- Immaturity defense -- Statute of limitations -- Exclusionary rule -- Entrapment defense -- Criminalizing risk creation -- Statutory rape -- Domestic violence, spousal rape exemption -- Stalking and harassment -- Child neglect -- Deceptive business practices -- Extortion -- Adultery -- Criminal obscenity -- Child pornography -- Drug offenses -- Firearms possession offenses -- Antitrust predatory pricing -- Organized crime -- Fixing sporting events -- Extradition -- Jurisdiction

Contains maps and articles that provide information on the geographical history of crime, the influence space has on a criminal's motivations, and other geographical aspects of crime.

"Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America offers a geographic excavation of the prison as a set of social relations-including property, work, gender and race-enacted across various spatial forms and landscapes within American life"--