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Restorative Justice Initiatives In Marin County: Mitigating The Impacts Of The School-To-Prison Pipeline On Youth, Gina Dudley

Social Justice | Senior Theses

My senior thesis project delves into Restorative Justice's role in addressing the school-to-prison pipeline in Marin County. Restorative Justice prioritizes repairing the harm caused by crime to individuals, relationships, and communities, advocating for offenders to take responsibility and make amends rather than solely facing punishment (Restorative Justice Exchange, 2022). My capstone aims to pinpoint factors driving student exclusion from schools and subsequent entanglement in the legal system while highlighting how restorative approaches can prevent such outcomes. Additionally, it discusses the benefits of removing police officers from schools and reducing reliance on law enforcement within educational settings. My research will use …

The Co-Optation Of Restorative Justice And Its Consequences For An Abolitionist Future, Alicia Virani

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article explores the ways in which RJ [restorative justice] has been co-opted, argues that RJ’s core principles can never coexist with the criminal punishment system, and analyzes how RJ co-optation is a barrier to abolitionist goals. It proceeds in three parts. In Part I, I present the fundamental principles upon which RJ processes should be based. While many scholars and practitioners have identified the lack of a consistent RJ definition by which to guide the work, I propose that there are fundamental principles that serve to guide RJ, and these are in stark contrast with the principles and realities …

Crj 6900 Policing, Oscar J. Montesdeoca

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Computationally Assessing Suspicion, Wesley M. Oliver, Morgan A. Gray, Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Law enforcement officers performing drug interdiction on interstate highways have to decide nearly every day whether there is reasonable suspicion to detain motorists until a trained dog can sniff for the presence of drugs. The officers’ assessments are often wrong, however, and lead to unnecessary detentions of innocent persons and the suppression of drugs found on guilty ones. We propose a computational method of evaluating suspicion in these encounters and offer experimental results from early efforts demonstrating its feasibility. With the assistance of large language and predictive machine learning models, it appears that judges, advocates, and even police officers could …

Unreasonable Traffic Stops, Sam Kamin

William & Mary Law Review

In 1996, the Supreme Court announced in Whren v. United States that a traffic stop is constitutional if there is probable cause to believe a traffic infraction has occurred. So long as the officers who stop an individual can point—even after the fact—to any violation of the traffic laws, their actual, subjective motivations for initiating a stop are legally irrelevant. Case-by-case determination of reasonableness is unnecessary in the traffic stop context, the Court concluded, because the balancing of interests has already been done. Unlike warrantless entries into homes, the use of deadly force, or unannounced warranted entries, a traffic stop …

Good Policing Practices Are Difficult, Even For The Avengers, Melanie Reid

Cleveland State Law Review

Policing, as a topic, is complicated. Many have strong views as to what police should or should not be doing and how effectively they are doing it. Too often policing has become polarized with various perspectives disagreeing as to the future of policing. Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, and Policing Abolition movements are on one spectrum compared to the Blue Lives Matter Movement or other mayoral or police union initiatives. This is clearly a time to collaborate and learn from the various perspectives to bring hope and change in the future. Lawyers, academics, community members, and police officers alike …

The Effectiveness Of Canines In Law Enforcement, Shelly Stroud, Riley Kaufmann

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Police K-9s play a multifaceted role in policing including crime control and public relations.The advent of these police specialty units coincided with the movement to professionalize policing and have been used to aid law enforcement since the start of the 20th century.

We will demonstrate the role of a working K-9 and the many different areas that are covered in law enforcement such as: bite, detection, narcotics, firearms, explosives, and technology. We will examine the role of the K-9 handler and the impact of their relationship with their k-9 and how this bond influences the effectiveness of law enforcement tasks.

Toward Accessing Hiv-Preventative Medication In Prisons, Scott Shimizu

Northwestern University Law Review

The Eighth Amendment is meant to protect incarcerated individuals against harm from the state, including state inaction in the face of a known risk of harm. While the Eighth Amendment’s protection prohibits certain prison disciplinary measures and conditions of confinement, the constitutional ambit should arguably encompass protection from the serious risk of harm of sexual assault, as well as a corollary to sexual violence: the likelihood of contracting a deadly sexually transmitted infection like HIV. Yet Eighth Amendment scholars frequently question the degree to which the constitutional provision actually protects incarcerated individuals.

This Note draws on previous scholarship on cruel …

Barcoding Bodies: Rfid Technology And The Perils Of E-Carceration, Jackson Samples

Duke Law & Technology Review

Electronic surveillance now plays a central role in the criminal legal system. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are tracked by ankle monitors and smartphone technology. And frighteningly, commentators and policymakers have now proposed implanting radio frequency identification (“RFID”) chips into people’s bodies for surveillance purposes. This Note examines the unique risks of these proposals—particularly with respect to people on probation and parole—and argues that RFID implants would constitute a systematic violation of individual privacy and bodily integrity. As a result, they would also violate the Fourth Amendment.

Use Of Restrictive Housing In The Juvenile Justice System, Caleb D. Purvis, April Terry

SACAD: John Heinrichs Scholarly and Creative Activity Days

In recent years, the term solitary confinement was replaced with restrictive housing (RH) as it had a less negative tone. However, the terms both represent the same process of isolating individuals in cells with nearly no contact with others. Restrictive housing has many negative effects, including, but not limited to deteriorating mental health and increased rates of recidivism. Such practices are not limited to the adult system as incarcerated youth are also subjected to various forms of restrictive housing (e.g., protective custody, disciplinary and administrative segregation). While those who oppose the use of RH call this cruel and unusual punishment, …

The Impact Of State Laws On Officer-Involved Deaths (Oids), Morgan J. Steele, Ziwei Qi

SACAD: John Heinrichs Scholarly and Creative Activity Days

While the public debates whether law enforcement has a problem with mis- or over-using force, the field lacks critical information concerning how often officers use force in their dealings with citizens. Consequently, the various reforms proposed have little evidence supporting them. Using data from Mapping Police Violence combined with census and LEOKA data, we examine the impact of U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence and the restrictions that each state placed on law enforcement’s ability to use force and what constituted reasonable force within each state. We found that while the state’s population size and violent crime rate were consistently strong predictors …

Whom Do Prosecutors Protect?, Vida Johnson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Prosecutors regard themselves as public servants who fight crime and increase community safety on behalf of their constituents. But prosecutors do not only seek to protect those they are supposed to serve. Instead, prosecutors often trade community safety, privacy, and even the constitutional rights of the general public to enlarge police power. Prosecutors routinely advocate for weaker public rights, shield police from public accountability, and fail to prosecute police when they break the law.

This Article will show how prosecutors often protect police at the expense of the public. This Article suggests a novel theory of evaluating the conduct of …

Police Officers’ Perceptions Regarding Their Interactions With The Disabled In Kankakee County, Jilliann M. English

ELAIA

Background Previous research shows the rate of crime against people with disabilities is significantly higher than the general population. Despite this, gaps in the training and resources for officers to assist those with disabilities may exist. Eadens et al. (2008) explored this issue by evaluating officer attitudes towards intellectual disabilities. Kankakee County has a significant disabled population, and Illinois is ranked very low in the improvement of related policies, making this a valuable area of interest. Methods This study utilized the modified version of the Social Distance Questionnaire (SDQ) used by Eadens et al. (2008), which is both qualitative and …

Combating Substance Abuse And Violence In Jackson County, Missouri: A Public Health Approach To The "War On Drugs", Danielle Bukacheski, Grant Baker, Stephen R. Bough

UMKC Law Review

In 1989, Jackson County, Missouri, made history - voters passed the first tax solely dedicated to funding substance abuse prevention and treatment. Today, the COMmunity Backed Anti-Crime Tax ("COMBAT") continues to annually generate between $25 to $30 million that supports Jackson County courts, the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office, local law enforcement agencies, and nonprofit organizations focusing on prevention and treatment. COMBAT has achieved success through its de-emphasis on punitive law enforcement practices and emphasis on public health. Instead of focusing on the prosecution of drug-related offenses, COMBAT is leading a more holistic "War on Drugs" by funding community-based resources to …

The Model Law Enforcement Officer And Other First Responder's Deflection Act: A National Blueprint For Creating Successful Deflection Programs Across The Country, Marc Consalo

UMKC Law Review

The idea of finding alternatives to the traditional approach of arresting, prosecuting, and punishing an individual for criminal behavior in the hopes it will deter future illegal conduct is not new. In 1947, the Judicial Conference of the United States met to make recommendations for the first diversion programs focusing on youthful offenders. Approximately fifteen years later, states began to explore diversion as an option for some adult lawbreakers.

The birth of diversion generated a novel approach to addressing criminal activity. However, before any individual could participate in a diversion program, law enforcement arrested the person which imposed a host …

Building A Successful Team In A Problem-Solving Court: The Western District Of Missouri Model, Carie Allen, Stephen R. Bough, Lajuana Counts, Arthur Diaz, Jeffrey Mccarther, Katie Meister, James Parker

UMKC Law Review

Problem-solving courts work. We know that reentry programs and intensive supervision programs like drug courts are effective alternatives to incarceration that reduce recidivism. For example, the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri's Reentry Court has an 85.7% success rate for graduates, meaning they complete their term of supervised release without any new charges. A reduction of recidivism means hefty savings of tax-payer dollars. More importantly, successful problem-solving courts mean people engage in their communities, raise families, work productive jobs, and pay taxes.

Courts and legislators and executive branches around the country are increasingly turning to problem …

Problem-Solving Courts And The Outcome Oversight Gap, Erin R. Collins

UMKC Law Review

The creation of a specialized, “problem-solving” court is a ubiquitous response to the issues that plague our criminal legal system. The courts promise to address the factors believed to lead to repeated interactions with the system, such as addiction or mental illness, thereby reducing recidivism and saving money. And they do so effectively – at least according to their many proponents, who celebrate them as an example of a successful “evidence-based,” data-driven reform. But the actual data on their efficacy is underwhelming, inconclusive, or altogether lacking. So why do they persist?

This Article seeks to answer that question by scrutinizing …

A New Generation Of Reform In Drug Enforcement In Kansas City, Jean Peters Baker

UMKC Law Review

Jackson County, Missouri has been at the forefront of drug policy reform for decades, with the establishment of one of America's first Drug Courts in the early 1990s. This Article will delve into the impact of the county's shift in drug policy on the drug court model, both positive and negative, and where the county expects to go in the future. We will examine what we currently understand about drugs, including the destructive effects of drugs on individuals and their families, the history of the War on Drugs and its lack of impact, and the statistics on drug crimes and …

Kansas City Municipal Court's Domestic Violence Court Programming, Courtney A. Wachal, Gerald Sorensen, Jenna Phelps, Nephateri Hill

UMKC Law Review

The Kansas City Municipal Domestic Violence Court identifies cases as domestic violence if they involve intimate partner violence, violations of protective order, interfamily violence, or cases where there is a child witness. This court manages a large caseload of domestic violence violations that vary widely in the severity of the charges and the levels of violence.

The Kansas City Municipal Domestic Violence Court has prioritized their probation resources by focusing services on those cases that are most in need of supervision and on those cases most likely to be receptive to services. This article will discuss The Compliance Docket and …

The Minimalist Alternative To Abolitionism: Focusing On The Non-Dangerous Many, Christopher Slobogin Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

In "The Dangerous Few: Taking Seriously Prison Abolition and Its Skeptics," published in the Harvard Law Review, Thomas Frampton proffers four reasons why those who want to abolish prisons should not budge from their position even for offenders who are considered dangerous. This Essay demonstrates why a criminal law minimalist approach to prisons and police is preferable to abolition, not just when dealing with the dangerous few but also as a means of protecting the non-dangerous many. A minimalist regime can radically reduce reliance on both prisons and police, without the loss in crime prevention capacity and legitimacy that is …

Social Ecology, Preventive Intervention, And The Administrative Transformation Of The Criminal Legal System, Mark R. Fondacaro

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article outlines an administrative model of criminal justice that provides a conceptual framework and empirical justification for transforming our criminal legal system from a backward-looking, adjudicative model grounded in principles of retribution toward a forward-looking model grounded in consequentialist principles of justice aimed at crime prevention and recidivism reduction. The Article reviews the historical roots and justifications for our current system, along with recent advances in the behavioral, social, and biological sciences that inform why and how the system fuels injustice. The concept of social ecology is introduced as an organizing framework for: (1) understanding why individuals do or …

Police Chases And Pit Maneuvers: Examining The Role Of Officer Conduct In Pursuit-Related Felony Murder Convictions, Margaret L. R. Dubose

Georgia State University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court has described a police officer's decision to terminate a high-speed car chase by making physical contact with the fleeing vehicle as a "choice between two evils." Indeed, while many speed-related deaths occur on Georgia's roadways without the involvement of law enforcement, deaths also transpire when officers choose to make such contact through Precision Intervention Technique (PIT) maneuvers.

In 2015, a Georgia jury found a driver guilty of committing felony murder—a conviction which carries with it a life sentence. The victim, a passenger in the driver's speeding car, died after a law enforcement officer performed a …

“Police Yelp”, Natalie Gould

UC Irvine Law Review

This Note discusses failed police accountability measures and suggests a new intervention, “Police Yelp,” that focuses on community control over police officers. The Note discusses the current institutional measures that have attempted to control police but have failed, largely due to their reactive and institutional nature. To better control police and ensure they are policing as communities want to be policed, this Note argues for community control over police through a democratic process, similar to the way that users interact with businesses on Yelp. The Note draws on power shifting as articulated by Jocelyn Simonson, among others, which advocates for …

Making Sense Of Making Parole In New York, Alexandra Mcglinchy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For many individuals incarcerated in New York, the initial step toward freedom begins with an interview with the Board of Parole. This process, however, is frequently a complex and challenging one, characterized by repeated denials and extended incarcerations. The disparity in outcomes – where one individual may receive over 20 denials and another is granted parole on their first attempt – highlights the ambiguity and inconsistency in the parole decision-making process. This project aims to clarify the factors that influence parole decisions by concentrating on measurable variables. These include age, race, duration of sentence served, proportion of sentence served, type …

Veterans Treatment Courts: Broadening Eligibility For Veterans Convicted Of Violent Offenses, Mark Dela Peña

Catholic University Law Review

Veterans treatment courts (VTCs) have been gaining widespread popularity as a tool to divert justice-involved veterans from the criminal justice system. While a step in the right direction, most of these courts categorically exclude violent offenders for eligibility. Many jurisdictions conflate violent offenses with serious offenses, even when many violent offenses lack any physical harm. Additionally, prosecutors wield almost unbridled discretion in determining whether or not someone is charged with an offense considered to be violent, determining VTC eligibility even before a case reaches a sentencing hearing.

This comment argues for admitting veterans convicted of violent offenses into VTCs. This …

Consent Searches And Underestimation Of Compliance: Robustness To Type Of Search, Consequences Of Search, And Demographic Sample, Roseanna Sommers, Vanessa K. Bohns

Law & Economics Working Papers

Most police searches today are authorized by citizens’ consent, rather than probable cause or reasonable suspicion. The main constitutional limitation on so-called “consent searches” is the voluntariness test: whether a reasonable person would have felt free to refuse the officer’s request to conduct the search. We investigate whether this legal inquiry is subject to a systematic bias whereby uninvolved decision-makers overstate the voluntariness of consent and underestimate the psychological pressure individuals feel to comply. We find evidence for a robust bias extending to requests, tasks, and populations that have not been examined previously. Across three pre-registered experiments, we approached participants …

Decentralizing The Nigerian Police Force: A Plausible Approach To Hinterland Securities, Amobi P. Chiamogu, Uchechukwu P. Chiamogu

Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies

The structure of the Nigerian police has overtime depicted a centralized composition that negate principles of power sharing in a federal system of government. The complexities and diverse nature of policing in Nigeria remains the bane to effective and virile administration and management of the organization. The office of the Commissioner of Police vis-à-vis those of State Governors spell contradictions in power configuration from both the Constitution and the Police Act. The enactment of vigilante services and neighbourhood watches by state governments are indicative of a failing security system especially at the component units of the Nigerian federation. The hinterlands …

Unshielded: How The Police Can Become Touchable, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

This Review proceeds in three Parts. First, Part I examines Shielded’s text, highlighting Schwartz’s analysis of the problem of unaccountable police, the many barriers to holding police accountable, and her proposed solutions. Part II then critically examines Schwartz’s work, examining pieces of the problem she left undiscussed and the relative shortcomings of her discussion of possible solutions. Finally, Part III takes an abolitionist approach, delving into potential nonreformist reforms and the solution of full abolition, as well as examining the most significant objection to abolitionist approaches: the problem of violence.

1983, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

This Piece embraces a fictional narrative to illustrate deep flaws in our legal system. It borrows its basic structure and a few choice lines from George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Like Orwell’s novel, it is set in the not-too-distant future to comment on problems already emerging in the present. The footnotes largely provide examples of some of those problems and how courts have treated them in a constitutional law context. The title (itself quite close to Orwell’s own title) is a reference to our chief civil rights statute, while the story deals with a critical threat to that …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …