Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Law
Antiracist Remedial Approaches In Judge Gregory’S Jurisprudence, Leah M. Litman
Antiracist Remedial Approaches In Judge Gregory’S Jurisprudence, Leah M. Litman
Articles
This piece uses the idea of antiracism to highlight parallels between school desegregation cases and cases concerning errors in the criminal justice system. There remain stark, pervasive disparities in both school composition and the criminal justice system. Yet even though judicial remedies are an integral part of rooting out systemic inequality and the vestiges of discrimination, courts have been reticent to use the tools at their disposal to adopt proactive remedial approaches to address these disparities. This piece uses two examples from Judge Roger Gregory’s jurisprudence to illustrate how an antiracist approach to judicial remedies might work.
Down To The Last Strike: The Effect Of The Jury Lottery On Criminal Convictions, Scott Kostyshak, Neel U. Sukhatme
Down To The Last Strike: The Effect Of The Jury Lottery On Criminal Convictions, Scott Kostyshak, Neel U. Sukhatme
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
How much does luck matter to a criminal defendant in a jury trial? We use rich data on jury selection to causally estimate how parties who are randomly assigned a less favorable jury (as proxied by whether their attorneys exhaust their peremptory strikes) fare at trial. Our novel identification strategy uniquely captures variation in juror predisposition using data unobserved by the econometrician but observed by attorneys. Criminal defendants who lose the “jury lottery” are more likely to be convicted than similarly-situated counterparts, with a significant increase (18-20 percentage points) for Black defendants. Our results are robust to alternate specifications and …
The Criminal Justice System And Latinos In An Emerging Latino Area, Betina Cutaia Wilkinson
The Criminal Justice System And Latinos In An Emerging Latino Area, Betina Cutaia Wilkinson
Latino Public Policy
The topic of my study is Latinos’ attitudes and experiences with the criminal justice system in an emerging Latino area. There is an extensive amount of research on African Americans’ experiences and views of the criminal justice system yet our knowledge of Latinos’ experiences with the criminal justice system is quite scant. Still, a few studies have provided some foundation for our understanding of this topic. We know that immigrant policing is associated with Latinos’ reduced trust in government agencies and its programs (Cruz Nichols et al. 2018a). Restrictive immigration policies negatively impact Latinos’ physical and mental health (Cruz Nichols …
Rethinking The Boundaries Of "Criminal Justice", Benjamin Levin
Rethinking The Boundaries Of "Criminal Justice", Benjamin Levin
Publications
This review of The New Criminal Justice Thinking (Sharon Dolovich & Alexandra Natapoff, eds.) tracks the shifting and uncertain contours of “criminal justice” as an object of study and critique.
Specifically, I trace two themes in the book:
(1) the uncertain boundaries of the “criminal justice system” as a web of laws, actors, and institutions; and
(2) the uncertain boundaries of “criminal justice thinking” as a universe of interdisciplinary scholarship, policy discourse, and public engagement.
I argue that these two themes speak to critically important questions about the nature of criminal justice scholarship and reform efforts. Without a firm understanding …
The Scale Of Misdemeanor Justice, Megan T. Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson
The Scale Of Misdemeanor Justice, Megan T. Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article seeks to provide the most comprehensive national-level empirical analysis of misdemeanor criminal justice that is currently feasible given the state of data collection in the United States. First, we estimate that there are 13.2 million misdemeanor cases filed in the United States each year. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, this number is not rising. Both the number of misdemeanor arrests and cases filed have declined markedly in recent years. In fact, national arrest rates for almost every misdemeanor offense category have been declining for at least two decades, and the misdemeanor arrest rate was lower in 2014 than …
The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention [Batterer Intervention Program (Bip) Standards Data, As Of 2015], Carolyn B. Ramsey
The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention [Batterer Intervention Program (Bip) Standards Data, As Of 2015], Carolyn B. Ramsey
Research Data
These 19 comparative data tables relating to state and local certification standards for batterer intervention programs (BIPs), as of 2015, are electronic Appendices B-T to Carolyn B. Ramsey, The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence and the Failure of Intervention, 120 Penn. St. L. Rev. 337 (2015), available at http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/56/. Appendix A is not reproduced here because it simply contains citations to the state and local standards, but it is published with the journal article.
Newsroom: The Jail Trap: Mass Incarceration In Ri, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Newsroom: The Jail Trap: Mass Incarceration In Ri, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Economic Interest Convergence In Downsizing Imprisonment, Spearit
Economic Interest Convergence In Downsizing Imprisonment, Spearit
Articles
This Essay employs a variation of the “interest convergence” concept to examine the competing interests at stake in downsizing imprisonment in the United States. In the last few decades, the country has become the world leader in both incarceration rates and number of inmates. Reversing these trends is a common goal of multiple parties, who advocate prison reform under different rationales. Some advocate less imprisonment as a means of tempering the disparate effects of imprisonment on individual offenders and the communities to which they return. Others support downsizing based on conservative values that favor reduced government size, spending, and interference …
Is Color Blind Justice Also Culturally Blind? The Cultural Blindness In Justice, Shiv Narayan Persaud
Is Color Blind Justice Also Culturally Blind? The Cultural Blindness In Justice, Shiv Narayan Persaud
Journal Publications
As diverse ethnic groups continue to experience numeric growth and societal grounding in America, their advocacies for culturally competent representation within the legal system cannot be ignored or underplayed. Undoubtedly, some professions such as mental and physical health, and their related sectors, have developed and continue to integrate cultural competencies into their respective practices. Others such as the legal profession seem to lag in their advocacies and promotion of culturally competent practices.
In the criminal justice system, where discretionary legal decision-making authority is commonplace and may grossly affect the civil liberties of the citizenry, a paucity of standards requiring cultural …
Lethal Discrimination, J. Thomas Sullivan
Retrying Race, Anthony V. Alfieri
Race Prosecutors, Race Defenders, Anthony V. Alfieri
Prosecuting Violence/Reconstructing Community, Anthony V. Alfieri
Prosecuting Violence/Reconstructing Community, Anthony V. Alfieri
Articles
For two centuries, the private violence of American history has paraded into courts for public trial. Often dramatized by the spectacle of rape and murder, the public trials of private violence increasingly are seen to decide the fates of both the accused and the victim of crime. The fate of community, whether the community of the victim, the accused, or the public, seems at first blush untouched by such trials. Like victims and their families, however, communities struck by violence suffer profound loss. That loss is expressed in the destruction of public discourse, reason, and citizenship. This public ruin is …
Prosecuting Race, Anthony V. Alfieri
Prosecuting Race, Anthony V. Alfieri
Articles
Theoreticians and practitioners in the American criminal justice system increasingly debate the role of racial identity, racialized narratives, and race-neutral representation in law, lawyering, and ethics.
This debate holds special bearing on the growing prosecution and defense of acts of racially motivated violence. In this continuing investigation of the prosecution and defense of such violence, Professor Alfieri examines the recent federal prosecution of five white New York City police officers charged with assaulting Abner Louima, a young male Haitian immigrant, in 1997. Professor Alfieri presents a race conscious, community-oriented model of prosecutorial discretion guided by constitutional precepts, citizenship ideals, professionalism …
(Er)Race-Ing An Ethic Of Justice, Anthony V. Alfieri
Race Trials, Anthony V. Alfieri
Race-Ing Legal Ethics, Anthony V. Alfieri