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Selected Works

2018

Criminal law

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

Connecting The Disconnected: Communication Technologies For The Incarcerated, Neil Sobol Nov 2018

Connecting The Disconnected: Communication Technologies For The Incarcerated, Neil Sobol

Neil L Sobol

Incarceration is a family problem—more than 2.7 million children in the United States have a parent in jail or prison. It adversely impacts family relationships, financial stability, and the mental health and well-being of family members. Empirical research shows that communications between inmates and their families improve family stability and successful reintegration while also reducing the inmate’s incidence of behavioral issues and recidivism rates. However, systemic barriers significantly impact the ability of inmates and their families to communicate. Both traditional and newly developed technological communication tools have inherent advantages and disadvantages. In addition, private contracting of communication services too often …

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“Collusion” And The Criminal Law, Robert M. Sanger Sep 2018

“Collusion” And The Criminal Law, Robert M. Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

The journalistic use of the term “collusion” in the air; it might be a good time for a refresher. This article will make an effort to cover the general framework of federal crimes in which a potential target (i.e., a would be defendant if a case were filed) had a guilty mind but did not directly do the ultimate act. Looked upon from the “collusion” perspective, it is a situation where a person did something with others in which some illegal result was attempted or accomplished by some or all of the participants. Broadly construed, inchoate crimes would include attempt, …

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A New Philosophy In The Supreme Court, Robert M. Sanger Aug 2018

A New Philosophy In The Supreme Court, Robert M. Sanger

Robert M. Sanger

This is a positive article about the soon-to-be-newlyminted United States Supreme Court. No, this is not written by a guest columnist and, yes, the present author still holds progressive views regarding criminal justice. Assuming the Supreme Court and other branches of government continue to function – even if in less than an optimal fashion – we, as lawyers, have to work with what we have. We have a conservative Supreme Court with, presumably, conservative principles, and that is with which we must work. One of the characteristics often seen in individual Supreme Court Justices is the tendency to rise above …

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Fighting Fines & Fees: Borrowing From Consumer Law To Combat Criminal Justice Debt Abuses, Neil L. Sobol Jul 2018

Fighting Fines & Fees: Borrowing From Consumer Law To Combat Criminal Justice Debt Abuses, Neil L. Sobol

Neil L Sobol

Although media and academic sources often describe mass incarceration as the primary challenge facing the American criminal justice system, the imposition of criminal justice debt may be a more pervasive problem. On March 14, 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) requested that state chief justices forward a letter to all judges in their jurisdictions describing the constitutional violations associated with the illegal assessment and enforcement of fines and fees. The DOJ’s concerns include the incarceration of indigent individuals without determining whether the failure to pay is willful and the use of bail practices that result in impoverished defendants remaining in …

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Lessons Learned From Ferguson: Ending Abusive Collection Of Criminal Justice Debt, Neil L. Sobol Jul 2018

Lessons Learned From Ferguson: Ending Abusive Collection Of Criminal Justice Debt, Neil L. Sobol

Neil L Sobol

On March 4, 2015, the Department of Justice released its scathing report of the Ferguson Police Department calling for “an entire reorientation of law enforcement in Ferguson” and demanding that Ferguson “replace revenue-driven policing with a system grounded in the principles of community policing and police legitimacy, in which people are equally protected and treated with compassion, regardless of race.” Unfortunately, abusive collection of criminal justice debt is not limited to Ferguson. This Article, prepared for a discussion group at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference in July 2015, identifies the key findings in the Department of Justice’s report …

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Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol Jul 2018

Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol

Neil L Sobol

Debtors’ prisons should no longer exist. While imprisonment for debt was common in colonial times in the United States, subsequent constitutional provisions, legislation, and court rulings all called for the abolition of incarcerating individuals to collect debt. Despite these prohibitions, individuals who are unable to pay debts are now regularly incarcerated, and the vast majority of them are indigent. In 2015, at least ten lawsuits were filed against municipalities for incarcerating individuals in modern-day debtors’ prisons. Criminal justice debt is the primary source for this imprisonment.

Criminal justice debt includes fines, restitution charges, court costs, and fees. Monetary charges exist …

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Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied: We Must End Our Failed Experiment In Deferring Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Peter Reilly Mar 2018

Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied: We Must End Our Failed Experiment In Deferring Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Peter Reilly

Peter R. Reilly

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), deferred prosecution agreements are said to occupy an “important middle ground” between declining to prosecute on the one hand, and trials or guilty pleas on the other. A top DOJ official has declared that, over the last decade, the agreements have become a “mainstay” of white collar criminal law enforcement; a prominent criminal law professor calls their increased use part of the “biggest change in corporate law enforcement policy in the last ten years.”

However, despite deferred prosecution’s apparent rise in popularity among law enforcement officials, the article sets forth the argument …

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Unaccompanied Youth And Private-Public Order Failures, Jordan Woods Dec 2017

Unaccompanied Youth And Private-Public Order Failures, Jordan Woods

Jordan Blair Woods

Each year, approximately 1.7 million “unaccompanied youth” under the age of 18 live on their own in homelessness or in other unstable living conditions. Many of these youth ran away or were kicked out of their families or child welfare placements. Others became homeless upon or soon after being released from juvenile detention.
 
As this Article describes, the government responds to unaccompanied youth through a complex web of family-centered interventions in both the child welfare and the juvenile justice systems. Child welfare responses adopt a view of unaccompanied youth as victims of negative family circumstances and respond by altering …

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Unaccompanied Youth And Private-Public Order Failures, Jordan Woods Dec 2017

Unaccompanied Youth And Private-Public Order Failures, Jordan Woods

Jordan Blair Woods

Each year, approximately 1.7 million “unaccompanied youth” under the age of 18 live on their own in homelessness or in other unstable living conditions. Many of these youth ran away or were kicked out of their families or child welfare placements. Others became homeless upon or soon after being released from juvenile detention.

As this Article describes, the government responds to unaccompanied youth through a complex web of family-centered interventions in both the child welfare and the juvenile justice systems. Child welfare responses adopt a view of unaccompanied youth as victims of negative family circumstances and respond by altering their …

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