Law Commons^™

Making Civil Immigration Detention “Civil,” And Examining The Emerging U.S. Civil Detention Paradigm, Mark Noferi

Mark L Noferi

In 2009, the Obama Administration began to reform its sprawling immigration detention system by asking the question, “How do we make civil detention civil?” Five years later, after opening an explicitly-named “civil detention center” in Texas to public criticism from both sides, the Administration’s efforts have stalled. But its reforms, even if fully implemented, would still resemble lower-security criminal jails.

This symposium article is the first to comprehensively examine the Administration’s efforts to implement “truly civil” immigration detention, through new standards, improved conditions, and greater oversight. It does so by undertaking the first descriptive comparison of the U.S.’s two largest …

Parole: Corpse Or Phoenix?, Paul J. Larkin Jr.

Paul J Larkin Jr.

Parole, once praised for its contribution to the rehabilitative ideal and later vilified for its close association with the same goal, no longer plays a major role in the twenty-first century federal criminal justice system, having been replaced by fixed mandatory sentences and sentencing guidelines. Congress believed a mandatory Sentencing Guidelines system was the ideal means of ending or ameliorating the nationwide sentencing disparities that had plagued the federal criminal justice process for most of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, after initially and repeatedly upholding that mandatory Sentencing Guidelines system, the Supreme Court ultimately kicked that approach to the curb as …

Clemency, Parole, Good-Time Credits, And Crowded Prisons: Reconsidering Early Release, Paul J. Larkin Jr.

Paul J Larkin Jr.

No abstract provided.

Guidelines As Guidelines: Lessons From The History Of Sentencing Reform, Rakesh Kilaru

Rakesh Kilaru

Over the last thirty years, sentencing guidelines have become an increasingly prominent feature of the American criminal justice system. Between the Supreme Court’s Apprendi-Blakely-Booker line of cases, dedicated law reviews like the Federal Sentencing Reporter, multitudinous other law review pieces, and Doug Berman’s famous sentencing blog, a great deal of ink has been spilled discussing the contours and future of guidelines reform. Most of this scholarship, however, falls in one of two camps. In one camp are scholars who chronicle the history of sentencing guidelines in particular states. In the other are scholars who discuss guidelines as a national phenomenon, …

The Prison-Keeper's Dilemma: Unsustainable And Undesirable Business Practices In Privatized Corrections, Stephen Raher

Stephen Raher

During the well-documented expansion of the American prison system in the late twentieth century, privately operated correctional institutions experienced an especially pronounced rate of growth. A substantial body of research has addressed operational shortcomings of private prisons, but less attention has been devoted to the business-law aspects of correctional outsourcing. This paper explores some of the persistent contractual and fiscal problems that arise when prison operation is delegated to for-profit firms.

Non-governmental prison operation inevitably leads to reduced transparency when private operators seek to prevent public access to operational information, typically by citing a proprietary interest in business records. Although …