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John Hagedorn, who has long been an expert witness in gang-related court cases, claims that what transpires in the trials of gang members is a far cry from what we would consider justice. In Gangs on Trial, he recounts his decades of experience to show how stereotypes are used against gang members on trial and why that is harmful. Hagedorn uses real-life stories to explain how implicit bias often replaces evidence and how the demonization of gang members undermines fairness. Moreover, a “them and us” mentality leads to snap judgments that ignore the complexity of gang life in America.

Gangs on Trial dispels myths about gangs and recommends tactics for lawyers, mitigation specialists, and expert witnesses as well as offering insights for jurors. Hagedorn describes how minds are subconsciously “primed” when a defendant is identified as a gang member, and discusses the “backfire effect,” which occurs when jurors hear arguments that run counter to their beliefs. He also reveals how attributional errors, prejudice, and racism impact sentences of nonwhite defendants.

Hagedorn argues that dehumanization is the psychological foundation of mass incarceration. Gangs on Trial advocates for practical sentencing reforms and humanizing justice.

Exploring the rich phenomenological and psychological insights of Gerda Walther

This is the first major study of Gerda Walther (1897–1977), an important but underappreciated figure in the early phenomenological movement and one of the founding members of the coeducational Freiburg Phenomenological Society. Walther saw herself, along with Hedwig Conrad Martius and Edith Stein, as a student of the phenomenological movement charged with the preservation of its philosophical legacy and the extension of its practice. As Antonio Calcagno elucidates in this learned but accessible biographical account, she served as an important bridge between the Freiburg school of phenomenology, marked by Edmund Husserl’s idealism, and the realist branch that emerged in Munich, where she completed her studies with Alexander Pfänder. Her work has remained little known, however, especially to English-language readers.

Calcagno provides a comprehensive picture of Walther’s philosophical corpus and ideas, from her early investigations to her later writings, while highlighting the originality of her own phenomenological work. He shows how she challenged certain key claims of phenomenology and provided unique solutions to the problems she encountered. The phenomenology that Walther leaves us with is deeply marked by her emphasis on the importance of psyche, spirit, and personhood for achieving a phenomenological methodology and understanding. We find in her work a rich phenomenological psychology that explores not only the limit phenomena of the discipline but also the deep structure of inner psychic life framed in personalist terms.

Maturation is a way we evaluate others and ourselves. It serves as a guidepost for our own behavior, often starting in adolescence. In Grow Up, Will You? Michael Rocque considers maturation across the life-course, providing a cultural and scholarly history of maturation before demonstrating how components of maturation develop, how they can be influenced, and their consequences for behavior and other life outcomes. He shows how biology and psychology propel us towards adulthood, but also how milestones, like graduating or getting married, produce a point of maturation.

Looking at examples from pop cultural movies, such as Juno, where a pregnant teenager faces numerous challenges and is forced to grow up quickly, Rocque explains how maturity has been defined and how it evolves. Such examples address key issues related to maturation, including timing and social expectations. He also introduces scientific conceptualizations and breaks down ways of measuring.

Ultimately, Grow Up, Will You? offers practical knowledge, programs, and approaches that can positively influence human development while also protecting a sense of childhood. Now grow up, will you?