Law Commons^™

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 …

Reflections Of A Non-Abolitionist Admirer Of The Police Abolition Movement, Corey Stoughton

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

To acknowledge that the abolition movement made reform better is not to reduce the movement to that purpose. For the non-abolitionist, the end of reform is better policing. For the abolitionist, reform is at best “a strategy or tactic toward transformation,” meaning contesting and ultimately eliminating policing. These are not compatible visions. But even if the collaboration between holders of these visions is just a tactical alliance, it is a tactical alliance that is producing good results. Perhaps those good results will lay a foundation for abolition, or perhaps they will seed in abolitionists’ fertile imaginations a positive vision of …

The Shadow Of The Law Of The Police, Adam A. Davidson

Michigan Law Review

A review of Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable. By Joanna Schwartz.

Sheriffs, Shills, Or Just Paying The Bills?: Rethinking The Merits Of Compelling Merchant Cooperation With Third-Party Policing In The Aftermath Of George Floyd’S Death, Stephen Wilks

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article frames the killing of George Floyd as the result of flawed business regulation. More specifically, it captures the expansion of third-party policing paradigms throughout local nuisance abatement regulations over a period of time that coincided with the militarization of policing culture across the United States. Premised on the notion that law enforcement alone cannot succeed in reducing crime and disorder, such regulations transform grocery stores, pharmacies, bars, and other retail spaces into surveillance hubs by prescribing situations that obligate businesses to contact the police. This regulatory framework, however, sustains the larger historical project of rationalizing enhanced scrutiny of …

Policing For Profit: A Constitutional Analysis Of Washington State’S Civil Forfeiture Laws, Julia Doherty

Seattle University Law Review

The summer of 2020 reignited a conversation about the relationship between race and policing in the United States. While many have taken the opportunity to scrutinize the racially discriminate components of our criminal justice system, comparable aspects of civil law must be equally scrutinized. A particular area of concern pertains to racially biased policing and the concept of “policing for profits” with Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities (BIPOC), which is accomplished mainly through civil asset forfeiture at a state and federal level.

Enhancing The Representation Of Women: How Gender Diversity Signals And Acknowledgement Affect Attraction To Men-Dominated Professions, Thomas P. Depatie, Anmol Sachdeva, Comila Shahani-Denning, Rebecca Grossman, Kevin P. Nolan

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

While organizations around the world recognize the importance of gender diversity and inclusion, many struggle to reach gender parity (Sneader & Yee, 2020). Particularly, women account for less than 15% of all sworn police officers (Donohue Jr, 2020). Considering signaling theory and novel research in organizational impression management, we examined the utility of various recruitment messaging techniques for attracting women job seekers to professions dominated by men, at both a consulting firm and law enforcement agency. Women evaluating consulting firm materials perceived greater behavioral integrity and were subsequently more attracted to the organization if recruitment messages included both high gender …

Why Do The Police Reject Counseling? An Examination Of Necessary Changes To Police Subculture., Noel Otu, Ntiense E. Otu

Journal of Health Ethics

Abstract

This paper reviews the concept of police subculture and examines its role in the management and acceptance of treatment for stress-related injury. In particular, we examine the impact of stigma that attaches to treatment within this subculture. The persistence of the dominant police subculture remains a significant obstacle to officers seeking treatment for stress-related illnesses. The subculture has historically resisted acknowledging the need for treatment in response to the occupational and/or organizational stress-related injury that results from frequent exposure to work-related trauma. Many police administrators are still embedded within and resist changes to the subculture, which results in an …

Race And Washington’S Criminal Justice System: 2021 Report To The Washington Supreme Court, Task Force 2.0

Washington Law Review

RACE & WASHINGTON’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM:

EDITOR’S NOTE

As Editors-in-Chief of the Washington Law Review, Gonzaga Law Review, and Seattle University Law Review, we represent the flagship legal academic publications of each law school in Washington State. Our publications last joined together to publish the findings of the first Task Force on Race and the Criminal Justice System in 2011/12. A decade later, we are honored to join once again to present the findings of Task Force 2.0. Law journals have enabled generations of legal professionals to introduce, vet, and distribute new ideas, critiques of existing legal structures, and reflections …

Stepping Into The Shoes Of The Department Of Justice: The Unusual, Necessary, And Hopeful Path The Illinois Attorney General Took To Require Police Reform In Chicago, Lisa Madigan, Cara Hendrickson, Karyn L. Bass Ehler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Policing And Procedural Justice: Shaping Citizens' Identities To Increase Democratic Participation, Tracey Meares

Northwestern University Law Review

Like the education system, the criminal justice system offers both formal, overt curricula—found in the Bill of Rights, and informal or “hidden” curricula—embodied in how people are treated in interactions with legal authorities in courtrooms and on the streets. The overt policing curriculum identifies police officers as “peace officers” tasked with public safety and concern for individual rights, but the hidden curriculum, fraught with racially targeted stop and frisks and unconstitutional exercises of force, teaches many that they are members of a special, dangerous, and undesirable class. The social psychology of how people understand the fairness of legal authorities—procedural justice—is …

From Harm Reduction To Community Engagement: Redefining The Goals Of American Policing In The Twenty-First Century, Tom R. Tyler

Northwestern University Law Review

Society would gain if the police moved away from the goal of harm reduction via crime reduction and toward promoting the economic, social, and political vitality of American communities. Research suggests that the police can contribute to this goal if they design and implement their policies and practices in ways that promote public trust. Such trust develops when the police exercise their authority in ways that people evaluate as being procedurally just.

Disparate Impact In Big Data Policing, Andrew D. Selbst

Georgia Law Review

Data-driven decision systems are taking over. No
institution in society seems immune from the
enthusiasm that automated decision-making generates,
including-and perhaps especially-the police. Police
departments are increasingly deploying data mining
techniques to predict, prevent, and investigate crime.
But all data mining systems have the potential for
adverse impacts on vulnerable communities, and
predictive policing is no different. Determining
individuals' threat levels by reference to commercial
and social data can improperly link dark skin to higher
threat levels or to greater suspicion of having
committed a particularcrime. Crime mapping based
on historical data can lead to more arrests for nuisance
crimes …

The U.S. Supreme Court And The Nation’S Post-Ferguson Controversies, Christopher E. Smith

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Closing The Gap Between What Is Lawful And What Is Right In Police Use Of Force Jurisprudence By Making Police Departments More Democratic Institutions, Jonathan M. Smith

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was shot to death in Ferguson, Missouri, by police officer Darren Wilson. Members of the Ferguson community rose up in response. Protests demanding that police violence against African Americans cease and that accountability for police misconduct be addressed erupted across the country, and they have not subsided since. Incidents in Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; WallerCounty, Texas; and elsewhere have kept the movement alive. The mass media, the political elite, and the White middle class woke up to a reality that had been long known to communities of color – force is used disproportionately against …

Criminalizing The Classroom: The Rise Of Aggressive Policing And Zero Tolerance Discipline In New York City Public Schools, Udi Ofer

NYLS Law Review

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 …

Police And Democracy, David Alan Sklansky

Michigan Law Review

Part I of the Article describes the emergence in postwar America of a particular understanding of a democracy, an understanding generally referred to as "democratic pluralism," "analytic pluralism," "pluralist theory," or simply "pluralism." We will spend a fair bit of time unpacking pluralism, because its fine points will prove important when we turn to the task of tracing its reflections in criminal procedure. That task is taken up in Part II, which examines the ways in which the central tenets of democratic pluralism found echoes in criminal procedure - construed broadly to include not only jurisprudence and legal scholarship but …

Cultural Context Matters: Terry's "Seesaw Effect", Frank Rudy Cooper

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of The "Unprofessional Profession", Gerald Caplan

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing by Edwin J. Delattre

Order And Civil Liberties: A Complex Role For The Police, George Edwards

Michigan Law Review

The Honorable Edward J. Jeffries was Mayor of the City of Detroit at the time. He was a great mayor; but he had not known that this terror was imminent or that it was even possible. This attitude was shared by most of the city's residents, and to say that Detroit was not ready for this outburst of racial strife would be to put it mildly. In this respect, every mayor in America would find it useful to read a recent journalistic account of the events of that twenty-four-hour period. The authors of this commentary were not very kind in …