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Judicial Elections, Public Opinion, And Their Impact On State Criminal Justice Policy, Travis N. Taylor

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation explores whether and how the re-election prospects faced by trial court judges in many American states influence criminal justice policy, specifically, state levels of incarceration, as well as the disparity in rates of incarceration for Whites and Blacks. Do states where trial court judges must worry about facing reelection tend to encourage judicial behavior that results in higher incarceration rates? And are levels of incarceration and racial disparities in the states influenced by the proportion of the state publics who want more punitive policies? These are clearly important questions because they speak directly to several normative and empirical …

Drug Law Reform—Retreating From An Incarceration Addiction, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Now, thirty years into the "war on drugs," views about the law's reliance on punishment to fix the drug problem are less conciliatory and more absolute: "[t]he notion that 'the drug war is a failure' has become the common wisdom in academic ... circles." Those who have most closely studied the results of the "war" believe that it has "accomplished little more than incarcerating hundreds of thousands of individuals whose only crime was the possession of drugs." More importantly, they believe that it has had little if any effect on the drug problem: "Despite the fact that the number of …

Drug Law Reform--Retreating From An Incarceration Addiction, Robert G. Lawson

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Turning Jails Into Prisons—Collateral Damage From Kentucky's War On Crime, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The primary purpose of this article is to scrutinize Kentucky's ever-increasing reliance on local jails for the incarceration of state prisoners. This objective cannot be achieved without an examination of the problems that compel counties and cities to allow (and even encourage) the state to capture their jails for this use. The first half of the article (Parts I-IV) provides general information about jails (including some pertinent history), contains a detailed description of jail functions (including some that have descended upon jails by default), and concludes with a discussion of what the state has done over two decades to convert …

In The Belly Of The Beast: A Comparison Of The Evolution And Status Of Prisoners' Rights In The United States And Europe, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Another epidemic has hit the international community. This one, however, is not derived from an unknown bacterial agent. Instead, it originates from a variety of social agents. The epidemic? The explosion in the number of people incarcerated in the global community. As of June 1997, the United States' prison population exceeded 1,700,000. This figure is consistent with the United States' status as one of the world's largest jailers. Like the United States, Europe's prison population has escalated. The growth in France's prison population is representative of the epidemic's trans-Atlantic scope.

The Article is divided into several sections. The first section …