Discretionary justice : pardon and parole in New York from the Revolution to the Depression / Carolyn Strange.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Strange, Carolyn, 1959- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pardon--New York (State)--History.

Pardon.

Parole--New York (State)--History.

Parole.

Criminal justice, Administration of--New York (State)--Decision making--History.

Criminal justice, Administration of.

Criminal justice, Administration of--Decision making.

Decision making.

History.

New York (State).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

x, 322 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Pardon and parole in New York from the Revolution to the Depression

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2016]

Summary:

The pardon is an act of mercy, tied to the divine right of kings. Why did New York retain this mode of discretionary justice after the Revolution? And how did governors' use of this prerogative change with the advent of the penitentiary and the introduction of parole? This book answers these questions by mining previously unexplored evidence held in official pardon registers, clemency files, prisoner aid association reports, and parole records. This is the first book to analyze the histories of mercy and parole through the same lens, as related but distinct forms of discretionary decision-making. It draws on governors' public papers and private correspondence to probe their approach to clemency, and it uses qualitative and quantitative methods to profile petitions for mercy, highlighting controversial cases that stirred public debate. Political pressure to render the use of discretion more certain and less personal grew stronger over the nineteenth century, peaking during constitutional conventions and reaching its height in the Progressive Era. Yet. New York's legislators left the power to pardon in the governor's hands, where it remains today. Unlike previous works that portray parole as the successor to the pardon, this book shows that reliance upon and faith in discretion has proven remarkably resilient, even in the state that led the world toward penal modernity Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: pardon and parole in the empire state

Governing mercy in the emerging republic

Mercy and diversity: the pardon power in the early national period

Debating the pardon in antebellum New York

The pardon and the progenesis of parole in the mid-19th century

Reformulating discretion in the mid- to late-19th century

The entanglement of parole and pardoning in the Progressive Era

The crime wave and the war against discretionary justice in the 1920s

Epilogue: mercy, parole and the failed search for penal certainty

A note on sources

Governors of New York, 1777-1942.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-305) and index.

ISBN:

9781479899920

1479899925

OCLC:

950543338