Law Commons^™

Policing Criminal Justice Data, Wayne Logan, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article addresses a matter of fundamental importance to the criminal justice system: the presence of erroneous information in government databases and the limited government accountability and legal remedies for the harm that it causes individuals. While a substantial literature exists on the liberty and privacy perils of large multi-source data assemblage, often termed "big data," this article addresses the risks associated with the collection, generation and use of "small data" (i.e., individual-level, discrete data points). Because small data provides the building blocks for all data-driven systems, enhancing its quality will have a significant positive effect on the criminal justice …

Predictive Prosecution, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Police in major metropolitan areas now use “predictive policing” technologies to identify and deter crime. The early successes of predictive policing have led a few prosecutor’s offices to adopt quasi-“predictive prosecution” strategies. Predictive prosecution involves the identification and targeting of suspects deemed most at risk for future serious criminal activity, and then the use of that information to shape bail determinations, charging decisions, and sentencing arguments. This type of “Moneyball” prosecution has begun in New York City and Chicago, and this essay addresses the promise and peril of this new technology.This essay for the Wake Forest Law Review’s Symposium on …

Arbitrary Detention? The Immigration Detention Bed Quota, Anita Sinha

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

When President Obama took office in 2009, Congress through appropriations linked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) funding to “maintaining” 33,400 immigration detention beds a day. This provision, what this Article refers to as the bed quota, remains in effect, except now the mandate is 34,000 beds a day. Since 2009, DHS detentions of non-citizens have gone up by nearly 25 percent. To accommodate for this significant spike over a relatively short period of time, the federal government has relied considerably on private prison corporations to build and operate immigration detention facilities.

This Article takes a comprehensive look at …

Frontlines: Policing At The Lexus Of Race And Mental Health, Camille Nelson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

he last several years have rendered issues at the intersection of race, mental health, and policing more acute. The frequency and violent, often lethal, nature of these incidents is forcing a national conversation about matters which many people would rather cast aside as volatile, controversial, or as simply irrelevant to conversations about the justice system. It seems that neither civil rights activists engaged in the work of advancing racial equality nor disability rights activists recognize the potent combination of negative racialization and mental illness at this nexus that bring policing practices into sharp focus. As such, the compounding dynamics and …

The Prosecutor's Ethical Duty To End Mass Incarceration, Angela J. Davis

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Vilifying The Vigilante: A Narrowed Scope Of Citizen's Arrest, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Ira P. Robbins* The doctrine of citizen’s arrest in the United States has been ignored for far too long. In every jurisdiction in the United States, a private person may lawfully detain another and often may even use physical force to do so. Placing such power in the hands of ordinary, untrained individuals creates the possibility that citizens will misuse or abuse the privilege, sometimes with serious consequences for both the arrestor and the arrestee. This risk is compounded by the disparate treatment of the citizen’s arrest doctrine in different jurisdictions and the ambiguities inherent in many of the doctrine’s …

Law Enforcement Access To Data Across Borders: The Evolving Security And Rights Issues, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.