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Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law
Prosecutors And Mass Incarceration, Shima Baughman
Prosecutors And Mass Incarceration, Shima Baughman
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
It has long been postulated that America’s mass incarceration phenomenon is driven by increased drug arrests, draconian sentencing, and the growth of a prison industry. Yet among the major players—legislators, judges, police, and prosecutors—one of these is shrouded in mystery. While laws on the books, judicial sentencing, and police arrests are all public and transparent, prosecutorial charging decisions are made behind closed doors with little oversight or public accountability. Indeed, without notice by commentators, during the last ten years or more, crime has fallen, and police have cut arrests accordingly, but prosecutors have actually increased the ratio of criminal court …
Does Bail Reform Increase Crime? An Empirical Assessment Of The Public Safety Implications Of Bail Reform In Cook County, Illinois, Paul Cassell, Richard Fowles
Does Bail Reform Increase Crime? An Empirical Assessment Of The Public Safety Implications Of Bail Reform In Cook County, Illinois, Paul Cassell, Richard Fowles
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
Recently bail reform issues have been in the news across the country, as concerns about fair treatment of defendants and possible public safety risks from expanding pretrial release have collided. These issues involve important empirical questions, including whether releasing more defendants before trial leads to additional crimes. An opportunity to investigate this public safety issue has developed in Chicago, our nation’s third largest city. There, the Office of the Chief Judge of the Cook County Courts adopted new bail reform measures in September 2017 and reviewed them empirically in May 2019. Cook County’s Bail Reform Study concluded that the new …