Hip-hop justice

“The American criminal justice system is so dysfunctional that it presents well-intentioned people with a dilemma.  Should good people cooperate with it?” Paul Butler should know whereof he speaks:  he is a former federal prosecutor. Speaking of prison, he says, “The criminal justice system gives the state a monopoly on exercising that kind of retribution. ....

Wrongdoing (and heroism) in context

Philip Zimbardo’s 2007 book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, provides an in-depth description and evaluation of his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. To study the dynamics of prison, this famous experiment randomly assigned college student to be guards or inmates in a mock prison. Within a very short time the project had....