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Fourteen Years Later: The Capital Punishment System In California, Robert M. Sanger
Fourteen Years Later: The Capital Punishment System In California, Robert M. Sanger
Robert M. Sanger
Fourteen years ago, the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment issued a Report recommending 85 reforms in the criminal justice system in that state to help minimize the possibility that an innocent person would be executed. The following year, this author conducted an empirical study, later published in the Santa Clara Law Review, to determine if California’s system was in need of the same reforms. The study concluded that over ninety-two percent of the same reforms were needed in California. In addition, the study showed that the California system had additional weaknesses beyond those of Illinois that also could lead to …
How Much Punishment Is Enough?: Embracing Uncertainty In Modern Sentencing Reform, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock
How Much Punishment Is Enough?: Embracing Uncertainty In Modern Sentencing Reform, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock
Jalila Jefferson-Bullock
It has now become fashionable to loudly proclaim that the U.S. criminal justice system is irreparably broken and requires a complete dismantling and total reconfiguration. The evidence is robust and the record is clear. Prisons are bloated and bursting with prisoners; budgets are ill endowed to support them; and offenders, due to excessive periods of unfruitful incapacitation, reenter society lacking in contributable and marketable skills. Racial disparities continue to corrupt charging and sentencing decisions; police brutality and human massacre are, woefully, commonplace; and the cycle continues.
The United States’ criminal sentencing laws too often fail to advance any legitimate law …