Analyses of crime and justice in an unprecedented time

While COVID-19 lockdowns affected nearly everyone worldwide, feelings of anxiety and fear were exacerbated for those already entangled in the criminal justice system. Scholars recognized the unique opportunity to study crime and the justice system’s response during this period, though they soon realized that determining the pandemic’s effects would be a complicated, nuanced process.

Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic features analyses and findings from more than thirty contributors in eleven essays. The collection examines the multifaceted social, economic, cultural, legislative, and policy responses to COVID-19 and their impacts on crime and justice. It also explores how professionals across the criminal justice system—police officers, campus police officers, attorneys, judges, correctional staff, and community supervision agents—adapted to unprecedented challenges.

The book provides real-world evidence of how unconventional solutions and groundbreaking practices were implemented in response to a global crisis. Contributors analyze how incarcerated individuals, their families, and their supervisors dealt with the fear of transmission, medical care, and death. Their findings, which are necessarily dependent on timing, place, measurement, and operationalization, include both change and stasis, both negative and positive outcomes. For instance, while minor and property-related offenses initially declined, violent crimes like homicide and intimate partner violence increased. Drug usage patterns changed, leading to a rise in opioid overdoses, and despite the rise in digital interactions, there was no significant difference in self-reported cybervictimization. Furthermore, rates of gang-related crimes did not decrease. Policy and public health responses reshaped criminal activities, influencing the methods and motivations behind theft, child and elder abuse, and other offenses. This volume includes in-depth examinations of certain often-overlooked crimes, such as labor trafficking, and provides direct insights into the job challenges faced by criminal justice professionals, from probation personnel to labor rights advocates.

Emerging innovations in health risk management within correctional facilities led to increased awareness and focus on specific types of crime. Responses to the pandemic revealed significant challenges, such as burnout among justice system personnel, difficulties in adapting and innovating, and challenges in providing services to vulnerable populations.

Through diverse perspectives and empirical approaches ranging from advanced statistical analysis to qualitative interviews, Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic offers a comprehensive exploration of the complexities that affect research results.  It showcases the resilience and innovation within the criminal justice field and details the challenges professionals in this area tackled during a universally trying time, presenting valuable lessons for future crises. 

The outbreak of COVID-19 caused unprecedented upheaval as countries across the globe raced to curb the already catastrophic spread of the disease while also planning for changes in every sector of society. In particular, the pandemic had a major effect on U.S. higher education, with most institutions pivoting to online teaching and forcing instructors and students adapt to a “new normal.” With so much uncertainty abounding, Higher Education amid the COVID-19 Pandemic documents first-hand experiences from faculty and students in order to help navigate the path to supporting teaching and learning in the wake of such turbulent times, and beyond. The essays in this volume contextualize the setting of higher education as the outbreak occurred, explore how faculty and students adapted their work-life (im)balance as they transitioned to distance learning, describe teaching and learning across institution types (such as community college, tribal college, historically black college and university), provide strategies for adjusting teaching based on discipline (such as art, biology, education), and look at emerging trends in the future of the professoriate. With essays from a diverse range of experts, this volume will serve as a comprehensive guide to many affected higher education communities.

Asian countries have dealt with COVID-19 with varying levels of success. The WHO’s lack of effective leadership in the region has resulted in increasingly contested global health governance. The pandemic continues to undermine global health, and the highly interdependent economies in Asia have exposed the speed with which pandemics can now spread. The security of migrant workers is more precarious than ever. Millions have been stranded and face limited access to health services. Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health Governance, Migrant Labour, and International Health Crises provides an accessible framework for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia through the lens of global governance in health and labour.

The first authoritative source on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for racial and ethnic minorities.

To understand racial disparities in COVID-19 infections and deaths, we must first understand how they are linked to racial inequality. In the United States, the material advantages afforded by whiteness lead to lower rates of infections and deaths from COVID-19 when compared to the rates among Black, Latino, and Native American populations. Most experts point to differences in population density, underlying health conditions, and proportions of essential workers as the primary determinants in the levels of COVID-19 deaths.

The national response to the pandemic has laid bare the fundamentals of a racialized social structure. Assembled by a prestigious group of sociologists, this volume examines how particularly during the first year of COVID-19, the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic led to different and poorer outcomes for Black, Latino, and Native American populations. While color-blindness shaped national discussions on essential workers, charity, and differential mortality, minorities were overwhelmingly affected. The essays in this collection provide a mix of critical examination of the progress and direction of our COVID-19 response, personal accounts of the stark difference in care and outcomes for minorities throughout the United States, and offer recommendations to create a foundation for future response and research during the critical early days.

Smart Health Technologies for the COVID-19 Pandemic: Internet of medical things perspectives looks at the role technology has played to monitor, map and fight the global COVID-19 pandemic. Chapters outline risk assessment methodologies and social distancing and infection control technologies in the face of this disease outbreak.

A collection of first-person narratives offering a vivid, nuanced look at the lived and shared experiences of Bering Strait communities in the COVID-19 era, Stronger Together is a unique collaboration between the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum in Nome, Alaska, and over forty community members, artists, and poets from across the Bering Strait region.
 
The featured artists narrativize works inspired by the pandemic, from walrus ivory masks and sealskin face coverings to scenes of subsistence activities and informal family portraits. Full-color illustrations enliven the text with vibrant images of local community members, activities, and artwork from those who call this northern expanse of rolling tundra and icy seas home.
 
Stronger Together features hopeful and redemptive behind-the-scenes perspectives of how remote Alaskan communities endured the COVID-19 pandemic and appeals to anyone looking for hopeful and redemptive stories of this time, as well as museum, public arts, and culture program administrators; student and scholars of Indigenous and Alaska Native languages and culture; the Alaska anthropology community; artists and art enthusiasts; and those with a general interest in Alaska.