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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
Misdemeanor Decriminalization, Alexandra Natapoff
Misdemeanor Decriminalization, Alexandra Natapoff
Alexandra Natapoff
As the United States reconsiders its stance on mass incarceration, misdemeanor decriminalization has emerged as an increasingly popular reform. Seen as a potential cure for crowded jails and an overburdened defense bar, many states are eliminating jailtime for minor offenses such as marijuana possession and driving violations, replacing those crimes with so-called “nonjailable” or “fine-only” offenses. This form of reclassification is widely perceived as a way of saving millions of state dollars—nonjailable offenses do not trigger the right to counsel—while easing the punitive impact on defendants, and it has strong support from progressives and conservatives alike.
But decriminalization has a …
Gideon's Servants And The Criminalization Of Poverty, Alexandra Natapoff
Gideon's Servants And The Criminalization Of Poverty, Alexandra Natapoff
Alexandra Natapoff
In ways that slip beneath the doctrinal radar, public defenders often behave like social workers. They find drug treatment and jobs for their clients, and intervene with landlords and employers. Conversely — and ironically — many civil welfare service providers act increasingly like law enforcement officials. Teachers call the police on their students, while welfare case workers often refer their clients for prosecution. This role-switching — by criminal lawyers and civil servants alike — is a function of the tight connection between criminalization and poverty: poor people tend to get swept up in the criminal system and such encounters tend …
Gideon's Promise And Peril, Alexandra Natapoff
Gideon's Promise And Peril, Alexandra Natapoff
Alexandra Natapoff
The challenge of structural reform and the right to counsel in the misdemeanor system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESeGH0RoROs
Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff
Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff
Alexandra Natapoff
Misdemeanor convictions are typically dismissed as low-level events that do not deserve the attention or due process accorded to felonies. And yet with ten million petty cases filed every year, the vast majority of U.S. convictions are misdemeanors. In comparison to felony adjudication, misdemeanor processing is largely informal and deregulated, characterized by high-volume arrests, weak prosecutorial screening, an impoverished defense bar, and high plea rates. Together, these engines generate convictions in bulk, often without meaningful scrutiny of whether those convictions are supported by evidence. Indeed, innocent misdemeanants routinely plead guilty to get out of jail because they cannot afford bail. …
Deregulating Guilt: The Information Culture Of The Criminal System, Alexandra Natapoff
Deregulating Guilt: The Information Culture Of The Criminal System, Alexandra Natapoff
Alexandra Natapoff
The criminal system has an uneasy relationship with information. On the one hand, the criminal process is centrally defined by stringent evidentiary and information rules and a commitment to public transparency. On the other, largely due to the dominance of plea bargaining, criminal liability is determined by all sorts of unregulated, non-public information that never pass through the quality control of evidentiary, discovery, or other criminal procedure restrictions. The result is a process that generates determinations of liability that are often unmoored from systemic information constraints. This phenomenon is exemplified, and intensified, by the widespread use of criminal informants, or …
2007 Congressional Testimony On Confidential Informants, Alexandra Natapoff
2007 Congressional Testimony On Confidential Informants, Alexandra Natapoff
Alexandra Natapoff
2007 Hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on the use of confidential criminal informants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mav9tOvmWcQ
Speechless: The Silencing Of Criminal Defendants, Alexandra Natapoff
Speechless: The Silencing Of Criminal Defendants, Alexandra Natapoff
Alexandra Natapoff
Over one million defendants pass through the criminal justice system every year, yet we almost never hear from them. From the first Miranda warnings, through trial or guilty plea, and finally at sentencing, most defendants remain silent. They are spoken for by their lawyers or not at all. The criminal system treats this pervasive silencing as protective, a victory for defendants. This Article argues that this silencing is also a massive democratic and human failure. Our democracy prizes individual speech as the main antidote to governmental tyranny, yet it silences the millions of poor, socially disadvantaged individuals who directly face …