Law Commons^™

The Future Will Require Learning How To Exist In A Multicultural Society, Vanessa Lopez-Littleton

UCF Forum

Why should I have to tell my sons to respect the police?

Meeting The Youthful Inmate Standard: Addressing Operations, Finding Promising Practices And Knowing The Law, Brenda V. Smith, Elissa Rumsey, Carmen Daugherty

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Racial Justice Study: An Examination Of Ticket Citations In The City Of Mankato, Minnesota, Meagan Hammers, C. J. Hays, Hannah Laniado

Public Sociology Publications and Projects

This study examines if there is racial disparity in policing in the city of Mankato, Minnesota by examining all traffic ticket citations given for a six-month period in 2014. The authors created a data set and examined statistical relationships between the observed race of those receiving tickets and the types of tickets received. This study discovered statistically significant findings of over policing of minorities; while minorities represent roughly ten percent the population in Mankato, they make up approximately 22% of the population cited. Further, minorities were about three times more likely than whites to receive a ticket for administrative offenses, …

What We Should Learn From Garner And Ferguson Cases, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Empirical Law And Economics, Jonah B. Gelbach, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Empirical work has grown in importance in law and economics. This growth coincides with improvements in research designs in empirical microeconomics more generally. In this essay, we provide a stylized discussion of some trends over the last two or three decades, linking the credibility revolution in empirical micro to the ascendancy of empirical work in law and economics. We then provide some methodological observations about a number of commonly used approaches to estimating policy effects. The literature on the economics of crime and criminal procedure illustrates the ways in which many of these techniques have been used successfully. Other fields, …

Future Of The Fourth Amendment: The Problem With Privacy, Poverty And Policing, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

For decades, the reasonable expectation of privacy has been the primary standard by which courts have determined whether a "search" has occurred within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court's recent decision in U.S. v. Jones, however, has reinvigorated the physical trespass doctrine's importance when determining whether there has been a "search" triggering constitutional protection. Recognizing the unpredictability of the reasonable expectation of privacy doctrine and that doctrine's bias against the urban poor, many scholars hope that the Jones opinion may ameliorate the class divide that has developed in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

This Article argues that while …

The Inverse Relationship Between The Constitutionality And Effectiveness Of New York City "Stop And Frisk", Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

New York City sits at the epicenter of an extraordinary criminal justice phenomenon. While employing aggressive policing tactics, such as “stop and frisk,” on an unprecedented scale, the City dramatically reduced both violent crime and incarceration – with the connections between these developments (if any) hotly disputed. Further clouding the picture, in August 2013, a federal district court ruled the City’s heavy reliance on “stop and frisk” unconstitutional. Popular and academic commentary generally highlights isolated pieces of this complex story, constructing an incomplete vision of the lessons to be drawn from the New York experience. This Article brings together all …

An End To Silence: Inmate's Handbook On Identifying And Addressing Sexual Abuse, 3rd Edition, Brenda V. Smith

Reports

"Though many correctional agencies have taken steps to comply with PREA standards and create safer environments for individuals in their care, inmates in custody still face sexual abuse and harassment by staff or other inmates. Staff and inmates still report problems identifying those at risk of sexual abuse, reporting sexual abuse, and holding those responsible for sexual abuse accountable. This publication is a tool for educating inmates about legal and other mechanisms, including the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), that can provide protection and redress from sexual abuse in custodial settings" (p. 5). Sections of this handbook are: introduction; what …

Dna Helps Clear Man's Name From Rape Charge After 24 Years, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Structure And Limits Of Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton

All Faculty Scholarship

The book The Structure and Limits of Criminal Law (Ashgate) collects and reprints classic articles on three topics: the conceptual structure of criminal law doctrine, the conduct necessary and that sufficient for criminal liability, and the offender culpability and blameworthiness necessary and that sufficient for criminal liability. The collection includes articles by H.L.A. Hart, Sanford Kadish, George Fletcher, Herbert Packer, Norval Morris, Gordon Hawkins, Andrew von Hirsch, Bernard Harcourt, Richard Wasserstrom, Andrew Simester, John Darley, Kent Greenawalt, and Paul Robinson. This essay serves as an introduction to the collection, explaining how each article fits into the larger debate and giving …

Challenges Facing Massachusetts Agencies, Richard Ferrari

Public Affairs Capstones Collection

For many residents of Massachusetts corrections is a part of the public sector that remains hidden behind tall walls topped with barbed wire. These walls do not just keep the inmate population on the inside, but keep the public out. This capstone provides a view from inside the walls of our corrections facilities. Interviews with high ranking corrections administrators throughout Massachusetts give an insiders perspective into the challenges facing Massachusetts corrections agencies. Over a billion dollars is spent on corrections in Massachusetts alone. This capstone looks at how that money is spent and the policies that dictate how our corrections …

Benefits To Adolescents Who Perform Community Service: A Perspective From Adolescent Health Researchers, Gary Hopkins, Duane C. Mcbride, Brent C. Featherston, Peter C. Gleason, Jacqueline Moreno

Faculty Publications

In the arenas of health, social scientists have learned over the past two decades that engagement in community service among adolescents often result in valuable outcomes. In other words, the persons being served are not the only ones benefiting from the experience, the providers of the service benefit as well. The purpose of this paper is to share with the legal community some of what we as social science researchers have learned from our research and also learned from the research of others in both health and education regarding benefits of community service among adolescents. We also will share with …

Flawed Coalitions And The Politics Of Crime, David Jaros

All Faculty Scholarship

Bipartisanship can be dangerous. In the late 1970s, liberal and conservative forces united to discard two centuries of federal sentencing practice and usher in an era of fixed guidelines that would reshape the criminal justice landscape. In the decades that followed, liberals would come to bitterly regret their alliance with conservative sentencing reformers. The guideline regime established by the Sentencing Reform Act ultimately advanced hardline conservative criminal justice goals that were antithetical to the objectives of many of the Act’s former liberal supporters.

Researchers have shown that a particular cognitive bias — cultural cognition — can explain why intense partisan …

Drones, Henry H. Perritt Jr., Eliot O. Sprague

All Faculty Scholarship

Abstract

Drone technology is evolving rapidly. Microdrones—what the FAA calls “sUAS”—already on the market at the $1,000 level, have the capability to supplement manned helicopters in support of public safety operations, news reporting, and powerline and pipeline patrol, when manned helicopter support is infeasible, untimely, or unsafe.

Larger drones–"machodrones”–are not yet available outside battlefield and counterterrorism spaces. Approximating the size of manned helicopters, but without pilots, or with human pilots being optional, their design is still in its infancy as designers await greater clarity in the regulatory requirements that will drive airworthiness certification.

This article evaluates drone technology and design …

Murder Mitigation In The Fifty-Two American Jurisdictions: A Case Study In Doctrinal Interrelation Analysis, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The essay surveys the law in the fifty-two American jurisdictions with regard to the three doctrines that commonly provide a mitigation or defense to murder liability: common law provocation and its modern counterpart, extreme mental or emotional disturbance; the so-called diminished capacity defense and its modern counterpart, mental illness negating an offense element; and the insanity defense. The essay then examines the patterns among the jurisdictions in the particular formulation they adopt for the three doctrines, and the combinations in which those formulations commonly appear in different jurisdictions. After this review, the essay steps back to see what kinds of …

Building Bridges: Fostering Dialogue And Shared Understanding Between Communities And Government Agencies, Eben Weitzman, Darren Kew

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Professors Eben Weitzman and Darren Kew of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies facilitate dialogue among state and federal law enforcement agencies and representatives of Muslim and Sikh communities to help foster shared understanding and navigate challenges and opportunities inherent in their relationship. Working with the BRIDGES program, they are using group dialogue to help stakeholders build lasting, productive connections.

"Not Just A Common Criminal": The Case For Sentencing Mitigation Videos, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

Sentencing mitigation or sentencing videos are a form of visual legal advocacy that is produced on behalf of defendants for use in the sentencing phases of criminal cases (from charging to clemency). The videos are typically short (5 to 10 minutes or so) nonfiction films that explore a defendant’s background, character, and family situation with the aim of raising factual and moral issues that support the argument for a shorter or more lenient sentence. Very few examples of mitigation videos are in the public domain and available for viewing. This article provides a complete analysis of the constituent elements of …

Street Diversion And Decarceration, Mary Fan

Articles

States seeking more cost-effective approaches than imprisoning drug offenders have explored innovations such as drug courts and deferred prosecution. These treatment-based programs generally involve giving diversion discretion to prosecutors and judges, actors further down the criminal processing chain than police. The important vantage of police at the gateway of entry into the criminal system has been underutilized. [para] The article explores developing the capacity of police to take a public health approach to drug offending by engaging in street diversion to treatment rather than criminal processing. This approach entails giving police therapeutic discretion—the power to sort who gets treatment rather …

Amicus Curiae Brief Of The National Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers Supporting Respondent. Plumhoff V. Rickard, 134 S.Ct. 2012 (2014) (No. 12-1117), 2014 Wl 507161, Eric Schnapper, David M. Porter

Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Development And Initial Findings Of An Implementation Process Measure For Child Welfare System Change, Mary I. Armstrong, Julie S. Mccrae, Michelle Graef, Tammy Richards, David Lambert, Charlotte Lyn Bright, Cathy Sowell

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

This article describes a new measure designed to examine the process of implementation of child welfare systems change. The measure was developed to document the status of the interventions and strategies that are being implemented and the drivers that are being installed to achieve sustainable changes in systems. The measure was used in a Children’s Bureau-supported national effort to assess the ongoing implementation of 24 systems-change projects in child welfare jurisdictions across the country. The article describes the process for measure development, method of administration and data collection, and quantitative and qualitative findings.

Foreword: The Death Penalty In Decline: From Colonial America To The Present, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article traces the history of capital punishment in America. It describes the death penalty's curtailment in colonial Pennsylvania by William Penn, and the substantial influence of the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria -- the first Enlightenment thinker to advocate the abolition of executions -- on the Founding Fathers' views. The Article also describes the transition away from "sanguinary" laws and punishments toward the "penitentiary system" and highlights the U.S. penal system's abandonment of non-lethal corporal punishments.

Preempting The Police, David Jaros

All Faculty Scholarship

Fighting crime requires that we vest police with extensive discretion so that they can protect the public. Unfortunately, the nature of police work makes it difficult to ensure that law enforcement authority is not abused. This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that a great deal of questionable police activity exists in the legal shadows — unregulated practices that do not violate defined legal limits because they have generally eluded both judicial and legislative scrutiny. Local law enforcement strategies, like the maintenance of unauthorized police DNA databases and the routine practice of initiating casual street encounters, threaten fundamental notions of …

Quick Reference Guide: Confidentiality And Privilege Exceptions And Mandatory Reporting Obligations Of Rape Crisis Counselors, Brenda V. Smith

Reports

NOTE: The aim of the Quick Reference Guide (QRG) is to give agencies and individual a quick reference for reporting obligations of rape crisis counselors. The QRG supplements the Fifty State Survey of Confidentiality and Privilege Statutes Rape Crisis/ Sexual Assault Counselors. We have listed the exceptions to confidentiality and privilege in commonly used statutory language. Specific language varies by state. For the full citations associated with this QRG, please refer to the Quick Chart or the Fifty State Survey.

Ending Silence: Demanding Safety From Sexual Assault - I Reported, Brenda V. Smith, Caleb J. Bess, Rebecca I. Heinsen, Jaime V. Yarussi, Michael J. Auger

Reports

Ending Silence: Demanding Safety from Sexual Assault & Youth Speaking Up about Sexual Abuse in Custody are a series of graphic novels for adult and juvenile inmates in custodial settings. These graphic novels are intended to educate inmates about how to identify and address incidents of sexual assault. The plot lines in these graphic novels dramatize situations we know occur in custodial settings. The use of graphic novels in community education projects is well established. By presenting information through an illustrative medium, these novels aim to disseminate information about the sexual abuse reporting process to inmates at all literacy levels. …

Personal Curtilage: Fourth Amendment Security In Public, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Do citizens have any Fourth Amendment protection from sense-enhancing surveillance technologies in public? This article engages a timely question as new surveillance technologies have redefined expectations of privacy in public spaces.This article proposes a new theory of Fourth Amendment security based on the ancient theory of curtilage protection for private property. Curtilage has long been understood as a legal fiction that expands the protection of the home beyond the formal structures of the house. Curtilage recognizes a buffer zone beyond the four corners of the home that deserves protection, even in public, even if accessible to public view. Based on …

The Growth Of Incarceration In The United States: Exploring Causes And Consequences, Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, F. Stevens Redburn

Publications and Research

After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled in the past four decades. The Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration in the United States was established under the auspices of the National Research Council, supported by the National Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to review evidence on the causes and consequences of these high incarceration rates and the implications of this evidence for public policy.

Our work encompassed research on, and analyses of, the …

The Impact Of Prison Arts Programs On Inmate Attitudes And Behavior: A Quantitative Evaluation, Larry Brewster

Public and Nonprofit Administration

California has been a leader in prison fine arts programs. Arts-in-Corrections, the granddaddy of them all, enjoyed a highly successful 30 year run until its closure in 2010 as a result of the state's budget crisis. This study evaluates three demonstration projects modeled after AIC, and prison theater programs offered through The Actors' Gang's Prison Project and Marin Shakespeare. Inmates from San Quentin, Soledad, New Folsom and CRC, Norco state prisons participated in the study. Pre-and Post surveys designed to measure changes in attitudes and behavior were administered at the start and finish of each 12-week arts program. The surveys …

Law Enforcement And Training, Erika Tremblay

Master in Public Administration Theses

No abstract provided.

Masculinity & Title Ix: Bullying And Sexual Harassment Of Boys In The American Liberal State, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Lethal Injection And The Right Of Access: The Intersection Of The Eighth And First Amendments, Timothy F. Brown

Faculty Publications, School of Management

The Spring and Summer of 2014 have witnessed renewed debate on the constitutionality of the death penalty after a series of high profile legal battles concerning access to lethal injection protocols and subsequent questionable executions. Due to shortages in the drugs traditionally used for the lethal injection, States have changed their lethal injection protocols to shield information from both the prisoners and the public. Citing public safety concerns, the States refuse to release information concerning the procurement of the drugs to the public. Such obstruction hinders the public’s ability to determine the cruelty of the punishment imposed and creates the …