Digital Commons Network^™

Prison’S Spoilt Identities: Racially Structured Realities Within And Beyond, Nafis Hanif

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article begins by seeking an explanation for the solidarity between Malay inmates and guards in perpetrating abusive and discriminatory treatment towards Malay transvestites. In the course of explaining an empirical phenomenon in the Singapore prison, this article has examined Singapore's history and ethnic demography, the ethnic Malay minority's lack of socio-economic development and modernisation vis-a-vis the ethnic Chinese majority, geo-politics, the ideology and strategic choices of the state's political elite and their implications for inter-ethnic interactions between Malays and Chinese. As this article will argue, prison culture, rather than being divorced from larger society, is in effect able to …

Pushing Weight, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

The plight of the black athlete in United States professional and collegiate sports reflects a historical road burdened by strident discrimination, yielding assimilation and gleeful exploitation. As African American athletes began to be permitted to enter the lineups of storied professional sports clubs beginning in the 1950s, they did so only on the strict conditions placed upon them by the status quo white male dominated regime. Often the very terms of black athlete participation required a rigid commitment to - covering - racial identity and outright suppression of self. Once African American athletes burst onto the nation's consciousness in the …

Discretionary Decision-Making In The Criminal Justice System And The Black Offender: Some Alternatives, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.

Discretionary Justice And The Black Offender, Taunya Lovell Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

No abstract provided.

Law Enforcement In Subordinated Communities: Innovation And Response, Richard Delgado

Michigan Law Review

Policing styles and policy reform today exhibit a ferment that we have not seen since the turbulent sixties. The reasons propelling reform include some of the same forces that propelled it then - minority communities agitating for a greater voice, demands for law and order - but also some that are new, such as the greater premium that society places on security in a post-9/11 world. Three recent books discuss this new emphasis on styles of policing. Each centers on policing in minority communities. Steve Herbert's Citizens, Cops, and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community examines the innovation known as …

Addressing The Real Problem Of Racial Profiling In Seattle, Washington, Whitney Rivera

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Let's Not Jump To Conclusions: Approaching Felon Disenfranchisement Challenges Under The Voting Rights Act, Thomas G. Varnum

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 invalidates voting qualifications that deny the right to vote on account of race or color. This Article confronts a split among the federal appellate courts concerning whether felons may rely on Section 2 when challenging felon disenfranchisement laws. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allows felon disenfranchisement challenges under Section 2; however, the Second and Eleventh Circuits foresee unconstitutional consequences and thus do not. After discussing the background of voting rights jurisprudence, history of felon disenfranchisement laws, and evolution of Section 2, this Article identifies the points of contention among the …

Throwing Black Babies Out With The Bathwater: A Child-Centered Challenge To Same-Sex Adoption Bans, Tanya M. Washington

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This article advances an orphan-centered constitutional challenge to placement bans that highlights the impact of these bans on Black orphans. It asserts permanency, and the stability and security that permanent placement provides, as interests embraced by the best interests of the child standard and protected against state infringement by Substantive Due Process guarantees. It also argues that orphans possess a negative liberty interest in freedom from state action that categorically forecloses adoption without conducting an individualized review of the orphan's needs or the competencies of the potential parents. This article's challenge to the constitutionality of these bans is situated within …

Challenges Of Tough Love: Examining San Francisco's Community Justice Center And Evaluating Its Prospects For Success, Todd W. Daloz

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Decaying urban neighborhoods are a reality in cities across the United States. As various local governments work to improve the quality of life for the residents of such areas through increased law enforcement, many have come up against the limitations of the criminal justice system as a tool for change. This note examines the history and challenges of quality-of-life ordinances and the growth and development of community courts as a reaction to ineffective urban courts and as a structure for enabling change. The author focuses specifically on the new community justice center in San Francisco and offers an assessment of …

The Unmet Promises Of Care Not Cash, Teddy Ky-Nam Miller

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

In November of 2002 San Francisco voters approved Proposition N, titled Care Not Cash, with the intent that it would reduce homelessness and improve the health and welfare of homeless persons receiving General Assistance. This note examines the effectiveness of Care Not Cash in combating homelessness and in achieving its promise of services and aid with the curtailment of General Assistance. In evaluating Care Not Cash's effectiveness, the author reviews homeless assistance programs employed by cities and municipalities throughout the United States. Additionally, the author explores alternative homeless outreach programs currently existent in San Francisco which have been effective in …

On Thin Ice: Cracking Down On The Racial Profiling Of Immigrants And Implementing A Compassionate Enforcement Policy, Abby Sullivan

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This note explores racial profiling in the enforcement of federal immigration law. In consistently deferring to the judgment of immigration officers, the United States Supreme Court has vested Immigration and Customs Enforcement with broad and sweeping discretion to adopt racist law enforcement practices that would be impermissible outside of the immigration context. In doing so, the Court has taken the erroneous position that immigration proceedings are purely civil and therefore do not require the procedural protections that collectively form the pillar of the criminal justice system. A myriad of studies demonstrate that immigrants are significantly less likely than their American-born …

Simplify You, Classify You: Stigma, Stereotypes And Civil Rights In Disability Classification Systems, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

In this paper I consider the question of the extent to which sanism and pretextuality - the factors that contaminate all of mental disability law - do or do not equally contaminate the special education process, and the decision to label certain children as learning disabled. The thesis of this paper is that the process of labeling of children with intellectual disabilities implicates at least five conflicts and clusters of policy issues:

* The need to insure that all children receive adequate education

* The need to insure that the cure is not worse than the illness (that is, that …

Punishment, Deterrence And Social Control: The Paradox Of Punishment In Minority Communities, Jeffery Fagan, Tracey L. Meares

Faculty Scholarship

Since the early 1970s, the number of individuals in jails and state and federal prisons has grown exponentially. Today, nearly two million people are currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails. The growth of imprisonment has been borne disproportionately by. African-American and Hispanic men from poor communities in urban areas. Rising.incarceration should have greatly reduced the crime rate. After all, incapacitated offenders were no longer free to rob, assault, steal, or commit other crimes. However, no large-scale reduction in crime was detected until the mid-1990s. The failure of crime rates to decline commensurately with increases in the …

The Current State Of Residential Segregation And Housing Discrimination: The United States' Obligations Under The International Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination, Michael B. De Leeuw, Megan K. Whyte, Dale Ho, Catherine Meza, Alexis Karteron

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The United States government accepted a number of obligations related to housing when it ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ("CERD"). For example, the United States government must ensure that all people enjoy the rights to housing and to own property, without distinction as to race; cease discriminatory actions, including those that are discriminatory in effect regardless of intent; and take affirmative steps to remedy past discrimination and eradicate segregation. This Article discusses the United States government's compliance with those obligations, as well as the importance of meaningful compliance in maintaining the United …

A Closing Keynote: A Comment On Mass Incarceration In The United States, David Rudovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The African-American Child Welfare Act: A Legal Redress For African-American Disproportionality In Child Protection Cases, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article proposes a radical change in the way African-American children and families are handled within the legal system when abuse and neglect are at issue. African-American disproportionality in child protection cases is significant for the United States because documentation shows that African-American children are overrepresented in the child welfare system in forty-eight states, although research shows that there is no difference in the occurrence of child abuse and neglect among the races. The first part of the article presents an overview of disproportionality by presenting the national statistics and research, revealing where racial bias and disparate treatment occurs within …

Prosecuting The Jena Six, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Indian Law Clinics And Externship Symposium Roundtable Discussion: Lawyering For Indigenous People, Tribal Law Journal

Tribal Law Journal

Several native and non-native Indian Law clinicians and scholars participated in a roundtable discussion on June 22, 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico to discuss lawyering for indigenous people. The attendees were organized into three different groups: discussants, respondents, and participants. The discussants began the dialogue and discussed their experiences in representing tribes to representing individual native clients in various areas of law. They discussed what it means as a lawyer "to do no harm" and their roles and challenges in teaching students how to serve native populations. The respondents provided their responses to the various topics presented by the discussants. …

Symposium On Pursuing Racial Fairness In Criminal Justice: Twenty Years After Mccleskey V. Kemp, Jeffrey Fagan, Mukul A. Bakhshi

Faculty Scholarship

Last year marked the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in McCleskey v. Kemp, a case whose ramifications for the pursuit of racial equality within criminal justice are still felt today. McCleskey set an impossibly high bar for constitutionally-based challenges seeking fundamental racial fairness in capital punishment. The McCleskey decision strengthened a jurisprudential climate that shifted and increased the burden onto defendants seeking constitutional relief from discriminatory and biased decisions at every step of the criminal justice process, from arrest to conviction and punishment. The McCleskey court articulated a crime-control rationale for tolerance of error and refused to …

“Whites Only Tree,” Hanging Nooses, No Crime?: Limiting The Prosecutorial Veto For Hate Crimes In Louisiana And Across America, Tamara F. Lawson

Articles

News coverage of three nooses hanging from the "whites only tree" at Jena High School, in Jena, Louisiana, created public outcry. Criticism rose as the public learned that District Attorney Reed Walters exercised his prosecutorial discretion to decline to press charges against the white students that admitted hanging the nooses, yet over zealously charged black students with attempted murder for conduct normally considered a battery or a school-yard-fight. The apparent lack of equity in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion became the focus of heated debate. Although the Jena High School incidents occurred in 2006, the Jena story is unpleasantly reminiscent …