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Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law

Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff Jun 2012

Misdemeanors, Alexandra Natapoff

Alexandra Natapoff

Misdemeanor convictions are typically dismissed as low-level events that do not deserve the attention or due process accorded to felonies.  And yet with ten million petty cases filed every year, the vast majority of U.S. convictions are misdemeanors.  In comparison to felony adjudication, misdemeanor processing is largely informal and deregulated, characterized by high-volume arrests, weak prosecutorial screening, an impoverished defense bar, and high plea rates.  Together, these engines generate convictions in bulk, often without meaningful scrutiny of whether those convictions are supported by evidence.  Indeed, innocent misdemeanants routinely plead guilty to get out of jail because they cannot afford bail.  …

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Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness, Nick J. Sciullo Dec 2011

Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Many in the legal academy have heard of Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness. It has been making waves. One need only attend any number of legal conferences in the past year or so, or read through the footnotes in recent law review articles. Furthermore, this book has been reviewed in journals from a number of academic fields, suggesting Alexander has provided a text with profound insights across the university and public spheres. While I will briefly talk about the book as a book, I will spend the majority of this …

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