Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Law Enforcement and Corrections (8)
- Criminal Law (7)
- Criminal Procedure (6)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (5)
- Civil Rights and Discrimination (4)
-
- Criminology and Criminal Justice (4)
- Legal Studies (4)
- Constitutional Law (3)
- Law and Society (3)
- Courts (2)
- Fourth Amendment (2)
- Law and Race (2)
- Administrative Law (1)
- Behavioral Economics (1)
- Criminology (1)
- Dispute Resolution and Arbitration (1)
- Economics (1)
- Education (1)
- Evidence (1)
- Judges (1)
- Law and Economics (1)
- Legal Education (1)
- Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (1)
- Legal Profession (1)
- Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation (1)
- Prison Education and Reentry (1)
- Public Affairs (1)
- Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration (1)
- Public Economics (1)
- Institution
Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Law
Creating A Better, Fairer Criminal Justice System, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris
Creating A Better, Fairer Criminal Justice System, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris
Articles
In the Fall 2022 semester, 14 law (Outside) students from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and 14 incarcerated (Inside) students at the State Correctional Institution at Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, took a full-semester class together called "Issues in Criminal Justice and the Law." The class, taught and facilitated by Professor David Harris, utilized the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program pedagogy, emphasizing dialogic learning and peer teaching. The semester culminated with a group project, with the topic selected by the students: "creating a better, fairer criminal justice system." Members of the class organized themselves into small groups, each working for …
Federal (De)Funding Of Local Police, Stephen Rushin, Roger Mikalski
Federal (De)Funding Of Local Police, Stephen Rushin, Roger Mikalski
Faculty Publications & Other Works
Across the political spectrum, politicians, commentators, and activists frequently invoke federal funding as a lever to induce changes in local police behavior. But can federal funding function as an effective policy lever at the local level? Is federal funding or the threat of defunding a sufficiently strong tool to effectuate deeply contentious policy goals over local opposition?
This Essay conducts an empirical examination of federal funding for local and state police agencies in the United States. It finds that the federal government remains a relatively minor contributor to local police budgets. We find that federal funding only reaches a minority …
Police Arbitration, Stephen Rushin
Police Arbitration, Stephen Rushin
Faculty Publications & Other Works
Before punishing an officer for professional misconduct, police departments often provide the officer with an opportunity to file an appeal. In many police departments, this appeals process culminates in a hearing before an arbitrator. While numerous media reports have suggested that arbitrators regularly overturn or reduce discipline, little legal research has comprehensively examined the outcomes of police disciplinary appeals across the United States.
In order to better understand the use of arbitration in police disciplinary appeals and build on prior research, this Article draws on a dataset of 624 arbitration awards issued between 2006 and 2020 from a diverse range …
Federal (De)Funding Of Local Police, Roger Michalski, Stephen Rushin
Federal (De)Funding Of Local Police, Roger Michalski, Stephen Rushin
Faculty Publications & Other Works
Across the political spectrum, politicians, commentators, and activists frequently invoke federal funding as a lever to induce changes in local police behavior. But can federal funding function as an effective policy lever at the local level? Is federal funding or the threat of defunding a sufficiently strong tool to effectuate deeply contentious policy goals over local opposition?
This Essay conducts an empirical examination of federal funding for local and state police agencies in the United States. It finds that the federal government remains a relatively minor contributor to local police budgets. We find that federal funding only reaches a minority …
Law Enforcement Organization Relationships With Prosecutors, Daniel C. Richman
Law Enforcement Organization Relationships With Prosecutors, Daniel C. Richman
Faculty Scholarship
Although police departments and prosecutor’s oces must closely collaborate, their organizational roles and networks, and the distinctive perspectives of their personnel, will inevitably and regularly lead to forceful dialogue and disruptive friction. Such friction can occasionally undermine thoughtful deliberation about public safety, the rule of law, and community values. Viewed more broadly, however, these interactions promote just such deliberation, which will become even healthier when the dialogue breaks out of the closed world of criminal justice bureaucracies and includes the public to which these bureaucracies are ultimately responsible. This chapter explores such organizational interactions and their value.
Reimagining Criminal Justice: A New System Is Required For Police Accountability, Thomas Johnson
Reimagining Criminal Justice: A New System Is Required For Police Accountability, Thomas Johnson
Reimagining Criminal Justice
In 1997 Daniel Mendoza was shot by an off-duty Las Vegas Metro police offcer. The offcer who pulled the trigger had been drinking heavily and wanted to “harass dopers and bangers.” The offcer in question fired into a group of people from the passenger side of a vehicle. This offcer was tried and convicted, which sounds like a success.
However, when an offcer is not stopped before killing a citizen without regard to whether there was a suspected crime, it highlights a problem of accountability.
State Attorneys General As Agents Of Police Reform, Stephen Rushin, Jason Mazzone
State Attorneys General As Agents Of Police Reform, Stephen Rushin, Jason Mazzone
Faculty Publications & Other Works
State attorneys general can and should play an important role in remedying police violations of constitutional rights. In 1994, Congress enacted 42 U.S.C. § 14141 to authorize the U.S. Attorney General to seek equitable relief against state and local police departments engaged in patterns or practices of misconduct. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has used this statute to reform some of the nation’s most troubled police departments. However, the DOJ has lacked the resources to pursue more than a few cases each year and the Trump Administration has recently announced it would no longer enforce § 14141.
In response, a …
The Effect Of Police Oversight On Crime And Allegations Of Misconduct: Evidence From Chicago, Bocar A. Ba, Roman G. Rivera
The Effect Of Police Oversight On Crime And Allegations Of Misconduct: Evidence From Chicago, Bocar A. Ba, Roman G. Rivera
All Faculty Scholarship
Does policing the police increase crime? We avoid simultaneity effects of increased public oversight during a major scandal by identifying events in Chicago that only impacted officers’ self-imposed monitoring. We estimate crime’s response to self- and public-monitoring using regression discontinuity and generalized synthetic control methods. Self-monitoring, triggered by police union memos, significantly reduced serious complaints without impacting crime or effort. However, after a scandal, both civilian complaints and crime rates rise, suggesting that higher crime rates following heightened oversight results from de-policing and civilian behavior simultaneously changing. Our research suggests that proactive internal accountability improves police-community relations without increasing crime.
Interrogating Police Officers, Stephen Rushin, Atticus Deprospo
Interrogating Police Officers, Stephen Rushin, Atticus Deprospo
Faculty Publications & Other Works
This Article empirically evaluates the procedural protections given to police officers facing disciplinary interrogations about alleged misconduct. It demonstrates that state laws and collective bargaining agreements have insulated many police officers from the most successful interrogation techniques.
The first part of this Article builds on previous studies by analyzing a dataset of police union contracts and state laws that govern the working conditions in a substantial cross section of large and midsized American police departments. Many of these police departments provide officers with hours or even days of advanced notice before a disciplinary interrogation. An even larger percentage of these …
Accounting For Prosecutors, Daniel C. Richman
Accounting For Prosecutors, Daniel C. Richman
Faculty Scholarship
What role should prosecutors play in promoting citizenship within a liberal democracy? And how can a liberal democracy hold its prosecutors accountable for playing that role? Particularly since I’d like to speak in transnational terms, peeling off a distinctive set of potential “prosecutorial” contributions to democracy – as opposed to those made by other criminal justice institutions – is a challenge. Holding others – not just citizens but other institutions – to account is at the core of what prosecutors do. As gatekeepers to the adjudicatory process, prosecutors shape what charges are brought and against whom, and will (if allowed …
New Approaches To Data-Driven Civilian Oversight Of Law Enforcement: An Introduction To The Second Nacole/Cjpr Special Issue, Daniel L. Stageman, Nicole M. Napolitano, Brian Buchner
New Approaches To Data-Driven Civilian Oversight Of Law Enforcement: An Introduction To The Second Nacole/Cjpr Special Issue, Daniel L. Stageman, Nicole M. Napolitano, Brian Buchner
Publications and Research
In April of 2016, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) and John Jay College partnered to sponsor the Academic Symposium “Building Public Trust: Generating Evidence to Enhance Police Accountability and Legitimacy.” This essay introduces the Criminal Justice Policy Review Special Issue featuring peer-reviewed, empirical research papers first presented at the Symposium. We provide context for the Symposium in relation to contemporary national discourse on police accountability and legitimacy. In addition, we review each of the papers presented at the Symposium, and provide in-depth reviews of each of the manuscripts included in the Special Issue.
The Duty Of Responsible Administration And The Problem Of Police Accountability, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon
The Duty Of Responsible Administration And The Problem Of Police Accountability, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon
Faculty Scholarship
Many contemporary civil rights claims arise from institutional activity that, while troubling, is neither malicious nor egregiously reckless. When law-makers find themselves unable to produce substantive rules for such activity, they often turn to regulating the actors’ exercise of discretion. The consequence is an emerging duty of responsible administration that requires managers to actively assess the effects of their conduct on civil rights values and to make reasonable efforts to mitigate harm to protected groups. This doctrinal evolution partially but imperfectly converges with an increasing emphasis in public administration on the need to reassess routines in the light of changing …
Across The Hudson: Taking The Stop And Frisk Debate Beyond New York City, David A. Harris
Across The Hudson: Taking The Stop And Frisk Debate Beyond New York City, David A. Harris
Articles
This article presents the results of a survey conducted by the author of 56 police departments across the country concerning the practice of data collection on stop and frisk practices of those police departments. These results are discussed against the backdrop of the debate on stop and frisk, examined in this article through a review of the legal basis for the practice and its use by police departments. The article then argues that greater data collection efforts in places other than New York City, where such efforts have been more robust than elsewhere, could broaden and deepen the debate on …
How Accountability-Based Policing Can Reinforce - Or Replace - The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule, David A. Harris
How Accountability-Based Policing Can Reinforce - Or Replace - The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule, David A. Harris
Articles
In Hudson v. Michigan, a knock-and-announce case, Justice Scalia's majority opinion came close to jettisoning the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. The immense costs of the rule, Scalia said, outweigh whatever benefits might come from it. Moreover, police officers and police departments now generally follow the dictates of the Fourth Amendment, so the exclusionary rule has outlived the reasons that the Court adopted it in the first place. This viewpoint did not become the law because Justice Kennedy, one member of the five-vote majority, withheld his support from this section of the opinion. But the closeness of the vote on …
Legislative Oversight Of Police: Lessons Learned From An Investigation Of Police Handling Of Demonstrations In Washington, D.C., Mary M. Cheh
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
There are various ways to oversee police behavior including internal discipline, civilian review boards, civil law suits, and criminal prosecutions. These are important tools but an equally important but less examined mechanism is legislative oversight, and, in particular, the legislative investigation. A legislature may choose to review police policies concerning the use of surveillance, informants and undercover operatives, the implementation of community policing, the use of force, eradication of gang activity, and perhaps most prominently in the post 9/11 world, counter terrorism initiatives. All of these matters involve policy decisions at the departmental level and not actions taken at the …