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Full-Text Articles in Law
Designing For Justice: Pandemic Lessons For Criminal Courts, Cynthia Alkon
Designing For Justice: Pandemic Lessons For Criminal Courts, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
March 2020 brought an unprecedented crisis to the United States: COVID-19. In a two-week period, criminal courts across the country closed. But, that is where the uniformity ended. Criminal courts did not have a clear process to decide how to conduct necessary business. As a result, criminal courts across the country took different approaches to deciding how to continue necessary operations and in doing so many did not consider the impact on justice of the operational changes that were made to manage the COVID-19 crisis. One key problem was that many courts did not use inclusive processes and include all …
Griffin V. Illinois: Justice Independent Of Wealth, Neil Sobol
Griffin V. Illinois: Justice Independent Of Wealth, Neil Sobol
Faculty Scholarship
More than sixty years ago in Griffin v. Illinois, Justice Hugo Black opined that equal justice cannot exist as long as “the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.” While Griffin dealt with the limited issue of the inability of a defendant to pay for an appellate transcript, the Supreme Court and legislatures would subsequently extend Black’s equal justice analysis to cases involving other forms of criminal justice debt assessed at trial, appeal, incarceration, and probation. Despite the promise of these judicial and legislative pronouncements, indigent defendants, relative to defendants with financial …
Connecting The Disconnected: Communication Technologies For The Incarcerated, Neil Sobol
Connecting The Disconnected: Communication Technologies For The Incarcerated, Neil Sobol
Faculty Scholarship
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 …
Hard Bargaining In Plea Bargaining: When Do Prosecutors Cross The Line?, Cynthia Alkon
Hard Bargaining In Plea Bargaining: When Do Prosecutors Cross The Line?, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
Well over 90 percent of all criminal cases in the United States are resolved by plea bargaining and not by trial. This means that how plea bargaining works impacts nearly every criminal defendant. However, there are few restrictions to protect defendants in the negotiating process. One serious problem is that prosecutors regularly use hard bargaining tactics such as exploding offers, threats to add enhancements, take-it-or-leave-it offers, and threats to seek the death penalty. These hard bargaining tactics contribute to the often highly coercive atmosphere of plea bargaining that can lead innocent defendants to plead guilty. Pressure to plead guilty can …
A Federal Certificate Of Rehabilitation Program: Providing Federal Ex-Offenders More Opportunity For Successful Reentry, Lisa A. Rich
A Federal Certificate Of Rehabilitation Program: Providing Federal Ex-Offenders More Opportunity For Successful Reentry, Lisa A. Rich
Faculty Scholarship
The purpose of this Article is to propose a new federal certificate of rehabilitation program. The creation of such a program not only would help the thousands of federal offenders released back into their communities every year overcome employment barriers but would also serve as a model for states to use in addressing the need of their own burgeoning population of former offenders. In order to understand the magnitude of the problem, it is essential to understand the pool of offenders affected by their criminal history, the intent of the federal agencies to assist this disadvantaged group, and the barriers …
Lessons Learned From Ferguson: Ending Abusive Collection Of Criminal Justice Debt, Neil L. Sobol
Lessons Learned From Ferguson: Ending Abusive Collection Of Criminal Justice Debt, Neil L. Sobol
Faculty Scholarship
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 …