Law Commons^™

Social Trust In Criminal Justice: A Metric, Joshua Kleinfeld, Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg

Notre Dame Law Review

What is the metric by which to measure a well-functioning criminal justice system? If a modern state is going to measure performance by counting something—and a modern state will always count something—what, in the criminal justice context, should it count? Remarkably, there is at present no widely accepted metric of success or failure in criminal justice. Those there are—like arrest rates, conviction rates, and crime rates—are deeply flawed. And the search for a better metric is complicated by the cacophony of different goals that theorists, policymakers, and the public bring to the criminal justice system, including crime control, racial justice, …

Sentencing In Indiana: Appellate Review Of The Trial Court's Discretion, John Eric Smithburn

Journal Articles

Two significant developments, legislative and judicial, have taken place in Indiana criminal law in recent months which may offer an effective response to the problem of unguided discretionary sentencing. The Indiana Penal Code has been revised to require that the trial court, before sentencing a convicted felon, conduct a separate hearing for the purpose of determining the appropriate sentence and to make a record of the hearing which must include a statement of the court's reasons for selecting the sentence imposed. The General Assembly has also provided specific directives which the trial court must consider in determining a proper sentence …

Codification, Reform, And Revision: The Challenge Of A Modern Federal Criminal Code, John L. Mcclellan

Journal Articles

The four chief factors influencing the quality of American justice were identified by Dean Roscoe Pound as personnel, administration, procedure, and the substantive law. It is certain that better judges, prosecutors, and enforcement officers, better organization of courts, better administrative methods, and more adequate administrative personnel must come first in any effective program for the improvement of our nation's system of criminal justice. At the same time, the men who staff that system will be guided by an authoritatively prescribed criminal procedure, and they will be giving effect to an authoritatively prescribed criminal law. An archaic code of procedure and …

Jury Consideration Of Parole, Fernand N. Dutile

Journal Articles

Under our system of criminal justice, a jury faces two basic decisions: the determination of guilt and, in many cases, the selection of an appropriate penalty for the convicted. In both instances the jurors' impressions of the parole system could be crucial. For example, the jury's notion—correct or incorrect—that the defendant will be eligible for parole very quickly if sentenced to prison may cause it to compromise on the issue of guilt. In cases where the jury has discretion in setting the penalty, this notion may seduce it into selecting the death penalty over life imprisonment.

There are additional problems …