Michaela Soyer's Books

Lost Childhoods

Poverty, Trauma, and Violent Crime in the Post-Welfare Era

By: Michaela Soyer

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Lost Childhoods

Poverty, Trauma, and Violent Crime in the Post-Welfare Era

By: Michaela Soyer

Lost Childhoods focuses on the life-course histories of thirty young men serving time in the Pennsylvania adult prison system for crimes they committed when they were minors. The narratives of these young men, their friends, and relatives reveal the invisible yet deep-seated connection between the childhood traumas they suffered and the violent criminal behavior they committed during adolescence. By living through domestic violence, poverty, the crack epidemic, and other circumstances, these men were forced to grow up fast all while familial ties that should have sustained them were broken at each turn. The book goes on to connect large-scale social policy decisions and their effects on family dynamics and demonstrates the limits of punitive justice.

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Page Count

156

Publisher

University of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520296710

ISBN 13

9780520296718

A Dream Denied

Incarceration, Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America

By: Michaela Soyer

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A Dream Denied

Incarceration, Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America

By: Michaela Soyer

A Dream Denied' shows how the narrative of American Dream shapes the offending trajectories of twenty-three young Latino and African American men in Boston and Chicago. Believing in the American Dream helps the teenagers to cope with the pains of incarceration. However, without the ability to experience themselves as creative actors, reproducing the rhetoric of American meritocracy leaves the teenagers unprepared to negotiate the complex and frustrating process of desistance and reentry.

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Page Count

184

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520290445

ISBN 13

9780520290440

The Golem in German Social Theory

By: Gad Yaʼir,Michaela Soyer

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The Golem in German Social Theory

By: Gad Yaʼir,Michaela Soyer

The Golem in German Social Theory provides an innovative and bold interpretation of German social theory. Authors Yair and Soyer argue that German scholars have been continually preoccupied with ancient, religiously-based myths that criticize the ideals of the enlightenment, exemplified by the 16th-century narrative of the Golem rising over its master.

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Page Count

188

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739120115

ISBN 13

9780739120118

The Price of Freedom

Criminalization and the Management of Outsiders in Germany and the United States

By: Michaela Soyer

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The Price of Freedom

Criminalization and the Management of Outsiders in Germany and the United States

By: Michaela Soyer

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Seeking to shed light on how we might end mass incarceration, The Price of Freedom compares the histories and goals of the American and German justice systems. Drawing on repeated in-depth interviews with incarcerated young men in the United States and Germany, Michaela Soyer argues that the apparent relative lenience of the German criminal justice system is actually founded on the violent enforcement of cultural homogeneity at the hands of the German welfare state. Demonstrating how both societies have constructed a racialized underclass of outsiders over time, this book emphasizes that criminal justice reformers in the United States need to move beyond European models in order to build a truly just, diverse society.

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Page Count

214

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520394267

ISBN 13

9780520394261

A Dream Denied

Incarceration, Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America

By: Michaela Soyer

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A Dream Denied

Incarceration, Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America

By: Michaela Soyer

Young minority men are often portrayed in popular media as victims of poverty and discrimination. A Dream Denied delves deeper, investigating the social and cultural implications of the “American dream” narrative for young minority men in the juvenile justice systems in Boston and Chicago. This book connects young male offenders’ cycles of desistance and recidivism with normative assumptions about success and failure in American society, exposing a tragic disconnect between structural reality and juvenile justice policy. This book challenges us to reconsider how American society relates to its most vulnerable members, how it responds to their personal failures, and how it promises them a better future.

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