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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Color Of Crime: The Case Against Race-Based Suspect Descriptions, Bela August Walker
The Color Of Crime: The Case Against Race-Based Suspect Descriptions, Bela August Walker
Bela August Walker
Law enforcement in the United States relies on racial identifiers as a crucial part of suspect descriptions. Unlike racial profiling, this practice is regarded as both an essential tool for law enforcement and as an unproblematic use of race. However, given the racial history of the United States, such descriptors, particularly “Black,” have developed in such a way to create an extremely large and unreliable category. Due to these factors, the use of race as a physical descriptor in suspect decisions is both discriminatory and inefficient. Employing race as an identifying characteristic allows law enforcement officers broad discretionary powers that …
Living "Off-Stage": The Semiotic Potential Of Narrative In Paula Johnson's Inner Lives: Voices Of African-American Women In Prison, Emily Houh
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
The hopelessness and hopefulness in the voices of the women profiled in Inner Lives exemplify a semiotic response to the racism that permeates the criminal justice and prison systems in the United States. This article asks how, in the telling of their stories and living of their lives, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women profiled in the book engage in a working semiotics. The extraordinary thing about the narratives collected by Johnson is that they describe how women who have been placed at the very bottom of the American social consciousness are successfully constructing their own image-repertoires rather than accepting …
A Healer Or An Executioner: The Proper Role Of A Psychiatrist In A Criminal Justice System, Gregory Dolin
A Healer Or An Executioner: The Proper Role Of A Psychiatrist In A Criminal Justice System, Gregory Dolin
All Faculty Scholarship
This article argues that despite the benefits of ridding the criminal justice system of some uncertainty and ignorance with respect to mental health issues, the very close involvement of psychiatrists in the criminal justice system as practiced in the United States is not only illogical and bad policy, but also unethical from the viewpoint of medical ethics. Part II of this article will lay the groundwork for the argument by discussing the history of the insanity defense, and of science's involvement with criminal justice; while Part III, will look into the association of science and the administration of justice in …