TALLAHASSEE—Florida State College of Law D’Alemberte Professor Dan  Markel has published a new criminal justice book reflecting research that could impact  criminal cases around the nation. 

Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties (Oxford  University Press 2009), coauthored with Jennifer M. Collins and Ethan J. Lieb, offers a  synthetic view of the intersection between crime, punishment and the family. It answers two basic questions: How does the American criminal justice system address a  defendant’s family status and how should a defendant’s family status be recognized, if at  all, in the criminal justice system? The book will be featured at an upcoming Yale Law Journalsymposium. 

“In recent years, scholars have been successful in analyzing the indirect effects of various criminal justice policies and practices on the family. Unfortunately, few people  have recognized the variety of laws expressly drawn to privilege or disadvantage persons based on family status alone,” says Markel. “Our book surveys and critiques the panoply  of laws intentionally targeting one’s family status and the underlying goals of such laws, offering an array of innovative policy recommendations that we hope will be of interest  to anyone seeking the improvement of our criminal justice system.”  

According to Robert Weisberg of Stanford Law School, “this boldly original book  takes on the astonishingly under­examined subject of the explicit and conscious connections drawn between our criminal law institutions and the family.” 

Markel is a prolific scholar in the area of criminal law. His work has been  published in leading law reviews and he also has written for or appeared as a  commentator in a wide variety of national and international media outlets. 

Markel’s book is one of four recently published by the Florida State Law faculty. In addition to being productive scholars, Florida State Law faculty members are active  speakers and experts for professional groups around the nation, testifying both before the  Florida Legislature and the United States Congress.