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"Immigrants Are Not Criminals": Respectability, Immigration Reform, And Hyperincarceration, Rebecca Sharpless Dec 2015

"Immigrants Are Not Criminals": Respectability, Immigration Reform, And Hyperincarceration, Rebecca Sharpless

Rebecca Sharpless

Scholars and law reformers advocate for better treatment of immigrants by invoking a contrast with people convicted of a crime. This Article details the harms and limitations of a conceptual framework that relies on a contrast with people—citizens and noncitizens—who have been convicted of a criminal offense and proposes an alternate approach that better aligns with the racial critique of our criminal justice system. Noncitizens with a criminal record are overwhelmingly low-income people of color. While some have been in the United States for a short period of time, many have resided in the United States for much longer. Many …

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The "Darden Dilemma": Should African Americans Prosecute Crimes?, Kenneth B. Nunn Nov 2014

The "Darden Dilemma": Should African Americans Prosecute Crimes?, Kenneth B. Nunn

Kenneth B. Nunn

Christopher Darden (prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial) has come to epitomize the burdens that African American prosecutors face as they perform their professional tasks. Moreover, the "Darden Dilemma" has become a generic term for the anguish that these prosecutors endure as they negotiate between competing allegiances to the African American community and the State. Much has been written about the sense of isolation that African American prosecutors feel when confronting the conflict between their roles as prosecutors and their obligations to the African American community. This article argues that African Americans should not prosecute crimes in the current criminal …

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Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff Jun 2012

Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff

Alexandra Natapoff

Misdemeanor convictions are typically dismissed as low-level events that do not deserve the attention or due process accorded to felonies.  And yet with ten million petty cases filed every year, the vast majority of U.S. convictions are misdemeanors.  In comparison to felony adjudication, misdemeanor processing is largely informal and deregulated, characterized by high-volume arrests, weak prosecutorial screening, an impoverished defense bar, and high plea rates.  Together, these engines generate convictions in bulk, often without meaningful scrutiny of whether those convictions are supported by evidence.  Indeed, innocent misdemeanants routinely plead guilty to get out of jail because they cannot afford bail.  …

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Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness, Nick J. Sciullo Dec 2011

Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Many in the legal academy have heard of Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness. It has been making waves. One need only attend any number of legal conferences in the past year or so, or read through the footnotes in recent law review articles. Furthermore, this book has been reviewed in journals from a number of academic fields, suggesting Alexander has provided a text with profound insights across the university and public spheres. While I will briefly talk about the book as a book, I will spend the majority of this …

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