Law Commons^™

Psicopatologia E Poder. Uma Lição De "Mentes Perigosas", Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Por vezes, incomoda-se até ao insuportável o cidadão, ou o trabalhador, ou o morador comum, com as atitudes de um político, de um patrão ou de um capataz, ou mesmo de um colega, de um autarca, enfim, de uma autoridade ou de um agente da autoridade. Primeiro, são comportamentos suaves e calculistas antes de obter o poder e, uma vez com ele, passam a ver-se práticas autoritariamente aberrantes, despóticas, e até criminosas. Analisamos muitas vezes essas práticas como "mau feitio", "má disposição", e, se formos magnânimos, como o preço da eficiência. Mas em que medida o "mau carácter" não é …

Tough On Crime (On The State's Dime): How Violent Crime Does Not Drive California Counties’ Incarceration Rates—And Why It Should

W. David Ball

California’s prisons are dangerously and unconstitutionally overcrowded; as a result of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Plata v. Schwarzenegger, the state must act to reduce its prison population or face court-ordered prisoner releases. The state’s plans to reduce overcrowding are centered around what it calls criminal justice “realignment”, whereby California will send a portion of the state prison population to county facilities. The plan faces opposition from county officials, who see it as pushing the state’s problem on to the counties.

But what if state prison overcrowding is really a county problem? I argue that state prison overcrowding is …

A Criminal Moment In Time, Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo

Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo

Criminal law jurisprudence considers the concepts of motive, intent and the forbidden act integral to the justice process. Throughout the common law jurisdictions, this trio overshadows a central theme that is a precursor to all criminal acts – the idea of a social responsibility continuum or cognitive dependency. While motive is dispositional on a wider application, intent is situational and is a product of one’s socio-cultural experience. The forbidden act, though central to the process, constitutes ‘a faithful mirror of thought’ – the consummation of a deliberate and manipulated cognition. The nexus between the three subjects extends beyond the Cartesan …

Prevention Of Identity Theft: A Review Of The Literature, Portland State University. Criminology And Criminal Justice Senior Capstone

Criminology and Criminal Justice Senior Capstone Project

With advances in technology and increases in impersonal electronic transactions, identity theft IT) is becoming a major problem in today’s society. One may ask why IT is growing in America. The answer is simple, as a review of literature reveals: IT is extremely hard to detect, prevent, and prosecute.

There are many ways people can protect themselves, their identities and secure their personal information; many do not concern themselves with this knowledge, however, until they become victims of this crime, themselves. With advances in technology, offenders are often turning to new methods to access information and use it for financial …

Why Should States Pay For Prisons, When Local Officials Decide Who Goes There?, W. David Ball

Faculty Publications

In the United States, states typically pay for prisons, even though the decisions that lead to prison admissions — arresting, charging, and sentencing — are made by local officials. The practice of state subsidies is relatively recent: there were no state prisons in the early part of the country’s history, and even as state institutions began to be developed, they largely supported themselves financially, rendering the notion of subsidies moot. Given the political economy of local decision-making, local preferences are unlikely to result in optimally-sized state prison populations. This Article suggests that since state prison subsidies may not be desirable …

Gangs, Violence, And Victims In El Salvador, Guatemala, And Honduras, Juan J. Fogelbach

San Diego International Law Journal

Country conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras will require U.S. courts to address complex protection law issues involving current and former gang members, as well as their victims. For example, just three months after the Seventh Circuit's decision, the Sixth Circuit also held that former gang members were a particular social group. In order to ensure proper handling of these cases, advocates, adjudicators, government attorneys, and judges must acquire a high level of understanding of gangs and violence in the affected countries. To facilitate this process, this paper will synthesize and analyze publicly available information on gangs and violence …

From Rapists To Superpredators: What The Practice Of Capital Punishment Says About Race, Rights And The American Child, Robyn Linde

Faculty Publications

At the turn of the 20^th century, the United States was widely considered to be a world leader in matters of child protection and welfare, a reputation lost by the century’s end. This paper suggests that the United States’ loss of international esteem concerning child welfare was directly related to its practice of executing juvenile offenders. The paper analyzes why the United States continued to carry out the juvenile death penalty after the establishment of juvenile courts and other protections for child criminals. Two factors allowed the United States to continue the juvenile death penalty after most states in …

Policing In The United States: Balancing Crime Fighting And Legal Rights, John Eterno Ph.D.

Faculty Works: Criminal Justice and Legal Studies

Policing in any nation is an inextricable and essential aspect of the existing government. The government of the United States is an elected democracy. It is a tripartite system including legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Essentially, the legislature creates the laws, the executive is charged with enforcing laws, and the judiciary interprets the laws. At the federal level these branches are the president, Congress, and federal courts (the highest court being the United States Supreme Court). Because the founding fathers of the U.S. (the authors and supporters of the Constitution of the United States) feared tyranny, no branch of government …

Modal Retributivism: A Theory Of Sanctions For Attempts And Other Criminal Wrongs, Anthony M. Dillof

University of Richmond Law Review

Rather than building the case for modal retributivism from the ground up, this article takes the existing components of retributive thought and reassembles them into a sounder structure. The cogency of the argument against harm-based retributivism andthe appeal of modal retributivism will likely be strongest forthose who allow reason, as opposed to intuition, a leading role in resolving moral issues.

Losing The War Against Dirty Money: Rethinking Global Standards On Preventing Money Laundering And Terrorism Financing, Richard K. Gordon

Faculty Publications

Following a brief overview in Part I.A of the overall system to prevent money laundering, Part I.B describes the role of the private sector, which is to identify customers, create a profile of their legitimate activities, keep detailed records of clients and their transactions, monitor their transactions to see if they conform to their profile, examine further any unusual transactions, and report to the government any suspicious transactions. Part I.C continues the description of the preventive measures system by describing the government's role, which is to assist the private sector in identifying suspicious transactions, ensure compliance with the preventive measures …

Death Is Not So Different After All: Graham V. Florida And The Court's "Kids Are Different" Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Mary E. Berkheiser

Scholarly Works

In Graham v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court declared that life sentences without the possibility of parole for non-homicides are off limits for all juveniles. Following its lead in Roper v. Simmons, the landmark decision in which the Court abolished the juvenile death penalty, the Court expanded on its Eighth Amendment juvenile jurisprudence by ruling that locking up juveniles for life based on crimes other than homicides is cruel and unusual and, therefore, prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. With that ruling, the Court erected a categorical bar to incarcerating forever those not yet adults at the time …

"A Good Man Always Knows His Limitations": Overconfidence In Criminal Offending, Thomas Loughran, Ray Paternoster, Alex R. Piquero, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Traditional criminological research in the area of rational choice and crime decisions places a strong emphasis on offenders’ perceptions of risk associated with various crimes. Yet, this literature has thus far generally neglected the role of individual overconfidence in both the formation of subjective risk perceptions and the association between risk and crime. In other types of high risk behaviors which serve as analogs to crime, including stock trading and uncertain business and investment decisions, overconfidence is shown to have a stimulating effect on an individuals’ willingness to engage in these behaviors. Using data from two separate samples, this paper …

Emotion, Neuroscience, And Law: A Comment On Darwin And Greene, John Mikhail

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Darwin’s (1871) observation that evolution has produced in us certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct that lack any obvious basis in individual utility is a useful springboard from which to clarify the role of emotion in moral judgment. The problem is whether a certain class of moral judgments is “constituted” or “driven by” emotion (Greene 2008, p. 108) or merely correlated with emotion while being generated by unconscious computations (e.g., Huebner et al. 2008). With one exception, all of the “personal” vignettes devised by Greene and colleagues (2001, 2004) and subsequently used by other researchers (e.g., Koenigs et …

Contempt Of Congress, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Deterring Serious And Chronic Offenders, Thomas A. Loughran, Alex R. Piquero, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Edward P. Mulvey

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines ways of deterring serious and chronic offenders based on evidence from the Pathways to Desistance Study, which addresses the issue of perceptions of deterrence and looks into the mechanisms of deterrence for serious offenders. After a brief overview of the Pathways study, the chapter reviews empirical evidence that demonstrates the rationality of high-risk adolescents regarding involvement in crime. It argues that offenders take into account rational-choice perceptions in their offending decisions and goes on to discuss the elasticity and malleability of these perceptions, and whether adolescent offenders act differently when they change risk and cost perceptions. It …

When Gangs Were White: Race, Rights, And Youth Crime In New York City, 1954–1964, Anders Walker

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

¡Silencio! Undocumented Immigrant Witnesses And The Right To Silence, Violeta R. Chapin

Publications

At a time referred to as "an unprecedented era of immigration enforcement," undocumented immigrants who have the misfortune to witness a crime in this country face a terrible decision. Calling the police to report that crime will likely lead to questions that reveal a witness's immigration status, resulting in detention and deportation for the undocumented immigrant witness. Programs like Secure Communities and 287(g) partnerships evidence an increase in local immigration enforcement, and this Article argues that undocumented witnesses' only logical response to these programs is silence. Silence, in the form of a complete refusal to call the police to report …