Law Commons^™

Eliminating The Criminal Debt Exception For Debtors' Prison, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Although the exact number is unknown due to poor documentation, the data available suggests nearly a quarter of the current incarcerated population is detained due to a failure to pay their legal financial obligations. In federal courts alone, the amount of criminal legal debt owed to the U.S. government in fiscal year 2017 totaled more than $27 billion, and to third parties, more than $96 billion, not including interest. In 2004, approximately sixty-six percent of all prison inmates were assessed a fine or fee as part of their criminal sentence.4 Not surprisingly, legal financial obligations disproportionately impact poor defendants and …

Turning Jails Into Prisons—Collateral Damage From Kentucky's War On Crime, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The primary purpose of this article is to scrutinize Kentucky's ever-increasing reliance on local jails for the incarceration of state prisoners. This objective cannot be achieved without an examination of the problems that compel counties and cities to allow (and even encourage) the state to capture their jails for this use. The first half of the article (Parts I-IV) provides general information about jails (including some pertinent history), contains a detailed description of jail functions (including some that have descended upon jails by default), and concludes with a discussion of what the state has done over two decades to convert …

Difficult Times In Kentucky Corrections—Aftershocks Of A "Tough On Crime" Philosophy, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The objective of this article is to cast some light on corrections system problems brought on by elevated (and possibly unnecessary) levels of incarceration, and especially on problems that trouble the Kentucky corrections system and threaten to undermine the effectiveness of the state's justice system. Part II describes how the country came to embrace sentencing policies and practices capable of producing "a penal system of a severity unmatched in the Western world.” Part III describes Kentucky's embrace of equally harsh sentencing policies and practices and the inmate population explosion that has occurred as a direct result of those policies and …

The Enforcement Of Prisoners’ Rights In The United States: An Access To The Courts Issue, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article examines how the development and status of the rights of incarcerated people is significantly effected by their ability to access the judiciary; specifically the federal judicial system. The relatively recent explosion in the American prison population provided the impetus for researching this topic. The objective was to examine whether this tremendous rise in the number of people incarcerated in U.S. penal facilities had impacted the posture of the rights afforded to these individuals. One conclusion reached was that the rise in the prison population had harshly eroded the right of access to the courts. The exploration of the …

In The Belly Of The Beast: A Comparison Of The Evolution And Status Of Prisoners' Rights In The United States And Europe, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Another epidemic has hit the international community. This one, however, is not derived from an unknown bacterial agent. Instead, it originates from a variety of social agents. The epidemic? The explosion in the number of people incarcerated in the global community. As of June 1997, the United States' prison population exceeded 1,700,000. This figure is consistent with the United States' status as one of the world's largest jailers. Like the United States, Europe's prison population has escalated. The growth in France's prison population is representative of the epidemic's trans-Atlantic scope.

The Article is divided into several sections. The first section …

Prison Reform Issues For The Eighties: Modification And Dissolution Of Injunctions In The Federal Courts, Sarah N. Welling, Barbara W. Jones

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

During the past two decades, federal courts have become involved in the supervision of state and local prison systems. This supervisory role is the result of a new type of litigation, the institutional reform lawsuit. These lawsuits originate when prisoners sue state or local prison administrators, alleging unconstitutional conditions of confinement. Plaintiffs usually seek a permanent injunction outlining a plan to eliminate the offending conditions. As prison litigation matured, the normal evolution of these lawsuits led to new questions taking center stage in the 1980's, questions of injunction, modification, and dissolution.

This article begins with a summary examination of prison …

Sentencing: The Good, The Bad, And The Enlightened, Rutheford B. Campbell Jr., Bill Cunningham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In June, 1968 the Kentucky Crime Commission, in keeping with legislative instruction, made certain recommendations for a change in Kentucky's current treatment of crime and punishment. Within its report was a suggestion that sentencing in all non-capital criminal cases be rendered by the judge instead of the jury. Thus, it must be emphasized that this discussion is confined only to sentencing in noncapital cases.

The authors have arrived at a definite recommendation which is offered at the conclusion of the paper. It is our opinion that the suggestion outlined is not only the most efficient and proper but also the …