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Development And Accomplishments Of Sentencing Institutes In The Federal Judicial System, Luther W. Youngdahl

Nebraska Law Review

The judges of the United States courts long have been concerned with the improvement of the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts. Over the years one problem in particular—the wide-spread differences in sentencing philosophies and practices—has eluded solution. Deliberations of the Judicial Conference of Senior Circuit Judges jointly with the Committee on the Administration of the Criminal Law of the Judicial Conference of the United States gave rise to a proposal for legislation to permit the establishment of institutes and joint councils on sentencing. Legislation (H.R.J. Res. 424) was approved by the President on August 25, 1958, as …

Table Of Contents, Vol. 45, No. 2

Nebraska Law Review

No abstract provided.

Editors' Page

Nebraska Law Review

Part I of the symposium "The Tasks of Penology: A Symposium on Prisons and Correctional Law" was intended to provide the reader with a general background in the theories and aims of our modern correctional system. These concepts have been constantly changing throughout the history of penology. If there is one "task" upon which there is mutual agreement, it would be rehabilitation, but the question still remains: How do you rehabilitate? There has been a growing realization that modifications have to be made in the traditional penitentiary system to accomplish this goal. It has also been recognized that aspects of …

Corrections In Transition, Myrl E. Alexander

Nebraska Law Review

Imprisonment, as it is used today in this country and in others throughout the world, began as an experiment in punishment and reformation less than 200 years ago. It is still an experiment, and, unfortunately, it will remain an experiment for a long time to come. As a means of punishment and as an instrument with which to change criminal behavior, imprisonment still is a failure when it must be acknowledged that even among the best correctional institutions at least thirty per cent of their inmates become repeaters. Why is this so? Is it that prisons and other correctional institutions, …

Harvey M. Johnsen

Nebraska Law Review

The retirement of Nebraska's first Chief Judge of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Harvey M. Johnsen, is an appropriate occasion to pause and review his career. To this distinguished individual, whose quiet manner, gentle nature, and exquisite sense of dignity harmonize so well with the judicial process this issue is dedicated.

Editors' Page

Nebraska Law Review

James V. Bennett, former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons said in 1960: "[O]ne of the anomalies of our present legal folklore is the fact that the overwhelming majority of lawyers, including those who are elevated to the bench, have never seen with their own eyes how the kind of medicine they prescribe is actually administered." In light of this anomaly, three issues of the Nebraska Law Review will be devoted primarily to a discussion of post-conviction institutions and procedures. This issue contains articles from “A Symposium on Prisons and Correctional Law (Part I).”

International Concern With Crime And Corrections, Frank Loveland

Nebraska Law Review

International concern with crime and corrections is not a recent phenomenon. The first International Penal and Penitentiary Congress (IPPC) was held in London in 1872. When the United Nations was established, it was decided that its role should include a program for the prevention of crime and treatment of offenders. The IPPC at the time of its last Congress, held at The Hague in 1950, agreed to the transfer of its functions to the United Nations. The first of the quinquennial Congresses on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders was held in Geneva in 1955, the second …

The Emergence Of Correctional Law And The Awareness Of The Rights Of The Convicted, Eugene N. Barkin

Nebraska Law Review

The administration of criminal justice consists of four major areas: the arrest and charge of the commission of the offense; the trial and appeal; the disposition after a verdict of guilty; and finally the implementation of the judgment. Criminal law has traditionally been treated lightly by most law schools, practicing lawyers, and even the bench. And the most neglected area of this neglected field of law has related to the disposition of the offender's case; that is, sentencing and his rights thereafter. The purpose of this brief discussion is to promote awareness of the myriad of complex legal and human …

The Criminal Law System, Karl Menninger M.D.

Nebraska Law Review

Our highly civilized nation has the most crime of any country in the world. Our beloved President was only recently assassinated by a nonentity who was himself assassinated before a trial could be held. Our jails are full, our court dockets are jammed. Every state is enlarging its prison "facilities" at the very moment that all progressive states are reducing the capacities and populations of their state hospitals. While four-fifths of the patients in our state hospitals are now discharged within a few months of their admission, seventy per cent of the people in jail receiving the standard penological "treatment" …

The Impact Of The Vicinage Requirement: An Empirical Look, Dale W. Broeder

Nebraska Law Review

This is rather an introductory sampling article drawn from data generated by what is now familiarly known as the University of Chicago Jury Project. It was a study of twenty-three consecutively tried jury trials in a federal district court in the Midwest. The author personally observed all of such trials from beginning to end. All but a few lawyers serving in them were intensively interviewed, and with the court's permission, 225 jurors participating in such cases were interviewed. There were sixteen civil cases and seven criminal cases.

I. Introduction

II. The Data … A. Juror Knowledge of Local Conditions … …

What Is Wrong With The Prison System?, Nathan Leopold

Nebraska Law Review

The prisons of today are a failure, for they are not effective instruments of rehabilitation of their inmates. To remedy this failure requires a complete revision of our penal philosophy and a firm adherence to rehabilitation as the only function to be served.

I. Retaliation

II. Deterrence

III. Removal from Society

IV. Rehabilitation

V. Work

VI. Education

VII. Psychiatric Services

VIII. Self-Government

IX. Summary

Toward A More Enlightened Sentencing Procedure, Theodore Levin

Nebraska Law Review

The inequities of sentences for criminal offenders present one of the great problems in the administration of criminal justice. The impact of an individual judge's background, personality, and prejudices on the sentences which he pronounces has increasingly become a matter of legitimate public concern. Courts, in the sentencing of convicted persons, must be something other than mechanical instruments of punishment. The symbolic blindfold on the statue of Justice was never intended to obscure from the sight of the judge an understanding of the human being who stands before him awaiting judgment. The quality of sentencing must concern us no less …

Punishment, Corrections, And The Law, Gerhard O. W. Mueller

Nebraska Law Review

I. Prison as Punishment or Correction

II. The Specific Aims of Our Correctional Scheme … A. The Three Allegedly Non-Utilitarian Ingredients of the Correctional System … (1) Vindication … (2) Retribution … (3) Penitence … B. The Three Utilitarian Ingredients of the Correctional System … (1) Neutralization … (2) Deterrence … (a) General Deterrence … (b) Special Deterrence … (c) Resocialization

III. Punishment or Correction as Law … A. Legislative Participation in the Shaping of Correctional Policy … B. Subjection of Correctional theory and Practice to the Rule of Law