Criminal Law Commons^™

Professor Jeffrey Bellin: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Jeffrey Bellin

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Homicide And Drug Trafficking In Impoverished Communities In Brazil, Elenice De Souza De Souza Oliveira, Braulio Figueiredo Alves Da Silva, Flavio Luiz Sapori, Gabriela Gomes Cardoso

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Many studies demonstrate that homicides are heavily concentrated in impoverished neighborhoods, but not all socially disadvantaged neighborhoods are hotbeds of violence. Conducted in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, this study hypothesizes that the association between high rates of homicide and impoverished areas is influenced by the emergence of a specific type of street drug-dealing common to favelas (slums). The study applies econometric techniques to police data on homicides and drug arrests from 2008 to 2011, as well as 2010 Census data, to test its hypothesis. The findings provide insight into the development of crime prevention policies in areas of high social vulnerability.

Controlled Observation: The Challenges Of Therapy For The Mentally Ill Incarcerated Population, Esther Tingué

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Popular perception and objective of incarceration is confinement, brutality and in some cases inhumane conditions. But what about the incarcerated population who suffer from the additional burden of mental illness? How does confinement affect mentally ill inmates? This capstone project asks: (1) how do individuals/organizations provide rehabilitative services in this evolved culture of crime and punishment? And (2) how is therapy provided in a restricted environment? I examine these questions from the perspective of the therapist, the person who (in a restricted environment) takes on the responsibility of treating and managing the effects of mental illness for this population.

Drug Courts And The Following Of The Federal Guidelines, Charles James Souza

Master’s Theses and Projects

During the 1980’s, drug offense were running high within the United States. The court system along with the police and other fields were forced to form other methods of dealing with offenders who have a substance abuse problem. In 1989, the first drug court in the United States was formed in the state if Florida. The idea was to create a therapeutic method to help those who are committing non-violent criminal acts due to their addiction. The goal of drug court was to get offenders the treatment they needed so they would not resort to criminal activity. Drug court personal …

Modern-Day Witch Hunts: How The Mental Health Industry Abuses Patients And The Judiciary While Committing Fraud, Joan L. Roberts Mrs.

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

Locked Up And Locked Out: True Stories Of Individuals Who Experienced The Intersection Between Homelessness And The Criminal Justice System, Jean Johnson

Senior Honors Projects

JEAN JOHNSON (Criminology & Criminal Justice)

Locked Up and Locked Out: True Stories of the Interlocking Cycle of

Homelessness and the Criminal Justice System

Sponsor: Jill Doerner (Criminology & Criminal Justice, Sociology & Anthropology), Heather Johnson (Writing & Rhetoric)

Key locks work when a key made with teeth is placed into a cylinder with a series of pins and tumblers. If you don’t insert the right key one or more of the pins will remain in the way, preventing the key from turning and the lock will remain closed. According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, tens of …

Safe Consumption Sites And The Perverse Dynamics Of Federalism In The Aftermath Of The War On Drugs, Deborah Ahrens

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In this Article, I explore the complicated regulatory and federalism issues posed by creating safe consumption sites for drug users—an effort which would regulate drugs through use of a public health paradigm. This Article details the difficulties that localities pursuing such sites and other non-criminal-law responses have faced as a result of both federal and state interference. It contrasts those difficulties with the carte blanche local and state officials typically receive from federal regulators when creatively adopting new punitive policies to combat drugs. In so doing, this Article identifies systemic asymmetries of federalism that threaten drug policy reform. While traditional …

Recognizing The Need For Mental Health Reform In The Texas Department Of Criminal Justice, Kara Mchorse

St. Mary's Law Journal

The ways in which mental health care and the criminal justice system interact are in desperate need of reform in Texas. The rate of mental illness in Texas is higher than the current state of mental health care can provide for. While state hospitals were once the primary care facilities of those with mental illness, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has taken on that role in the last few decades; and when the criminal justice system becomes entangled with mental health care, it often leads to “unmitigated disaster.” If Texas continues to allow the TDCJ to act as …

'Terroristic Threats' And Covid-19: A Guide For The Perplexed, Chad Flanders, Courtney Federico, Eric Harmon, Lucas Klein

All Faculty Scholarship

The first few months of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States saw the rise of a troubling sort of behavior: people would cough or spit on people or otherwise threaten to spread the COVID-19 virus, resulting in panic and sometimes thousands of dollars’ worth of damages to businesses. Those who have been caught doing this — or have filmed themselves doing it — have been charged under so-called “terroristic threat” statutes. But what is a terroristic threat, and is it an appropriate charge in these cases? Surprisingly little has been written about these statutes given their long history and …

Bioethics, Law, And The Opioid Crisis: Revisiting The Concept Of Incarceration Versus Rehabilitation, Zachary J. Krauss

Bioethics in Faith and Practice

The opioid crisis has taken America by storm and is causing more deaths each year than ever originally anticipated. Our current approach to addressing the opioid crisis involves two separate approaches, one from the medical/rehabilitation side of the problem, and one from the criminal justice side. This article serves as a revisiting of the discussion of the intricate balance that must be reached between rehabilitation and incarceration in order to adequately address the problem.

Exploring The Relationship Between Drug And Alcohol Treatment Facilities And Violent And Property Crime: A Socioeconomic Contingent Relationship, Christopher Salvatore, Travis A. Taniguchi

Christopher Salvatore

Siting of drug and alcohol treatment facilities is often met with negative reactions because of the assumption that these facilities increase crime by attracting drug users (and possibly dealers) to an area. This assumption, however, rests on weak empirical footings that have not been subjected to strong empirical analyses. Using census block groups from Philadelphia, PA, it was found that the criminogenic impact of treatment facilities in and near a neighborhood on its violent and property crime rates may be contingent on the socioeconomic status (SES) of the neighborhood. Paying attention to both the density and proximity of facilities in …

Is Emerging Adulthood Influencing Moffitt’S Developmental Taxonomy? Adding The “Prolonged” Adolescent Offender, Christopher Salvatore, Travis A. Taniguchi, Wayne Welsh

Christopher Salvatore

The study of offender trajectories has been a prolific area of criminological research. However, few studies have incorporated the influence of emerging adulthood, a recently identified stage of the life course, on offending trajectories. The present study addressed this shortcoming by introducing the "prolonged adolescent" offender, a low-level offender between the ages of 18 and 25 that has failed to successfully transition into adult social roles. A theoretical background based on prior research in life-course criminology and emerging adulthood is presented. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health analyses examined the relationship between indicators of traditional turning …

The Effects Of Criminal Embeddedness On School Violence In Brazil, Elenice De Souza De Souza Oliveira, Braulio Figueiredo Alves Da Silva, Silvio Segundo Salej Higgins

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study examines the influence of criminal embeddedness on the intensity of criminal behavior among primary and secondary school students in a large Brazilian city. A database conceived by the Center for the Study of Crime and Public Security at the Federal University in Minas Gerais is used to analyze the involvement of youths displaying delinquent behavior at home or at school and how school performance and peer relationships are effected. Based on differential association and learning theories, the main hypotheses are (1) the greater the criminal embeddedness, the lower the degree of school satisfaction as well as future expectation …

Texas, The Death Penalty, And Intellectual Disability, Megan Green

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

Mental Health Jail Diversion: A Therapeutic Approach To Offending In Twenty-First Century America, Ryan J. Parent

Criminology Student Work

This analysis is concerned with understanding the facets of criminal justice diversion programs that successfully improve the mental wellbeing of participants and, as a subsequent effect, reduce offending amongst the mentally ill populous in the United States. An inquiry of pre-program and post-program data from both adult and juvenile mental health specific programs reveals that participation amongst both groups shows a meaningful reduction in new/repeat offending in comparison to non-participants. The data shows that the expansion of law enforcement Crisis Intervention Team’s (CIT’s) has a compounding effect to the positive results. A review of these programs in Australia indicates that …

Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act: Pragmatic Reforms In Support Of Research, Tania M. Bubela, Erika Kleiderman, Zubin Master, Ubaka Ogbogu, Vardit Ravitsky, Amy Zarzeczny, Bartha Maria Knoppers

Office of the Provost

Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act is long overdue for Parliamentary review. We argue that the current regulation of research using human reproductive materials is not proportionate, not responsive to the uncertain threats posed to human and environmental health and safety, and is not considerate of diverse values in a democratic society. We propose tailored regulatory carve-outs for in vitro research for currently prohibited activities, such as gene editing, and for the exercise of Ministerial Discretion for access by Canadians to experimental in vivo interventions that are currently prohibited, such as mitochondrial replacement therapy. Our recommendations are bounded by constitutional constraints …

Brief Of Amicus Curiae 290 Criminal Law And Mental Health Law Professors In Support Of Petitioner's Request For Reversal And Remand, Kahler V. Kansas, 18-6135 (U.S. June 6, 2019), Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Amici curiae are a group of philosophically and politically diverse law school professors and scholars in the fields of criminal law and mental health from a variety of disciplines who have been teaching and writing about the insanity defense and related issues throughout their careers. They include the authors of leading criminal law and mental health law treatises and casebooks and numerous important scholarly books and articles.

Amici believe this case raises important questions about principles of criminal responsibility, the integral role of the insanity defense in Anglo-American law, and the inadequacy of the “mens rea alternative” to the traditional …

The Treatment Of People With Mental Illness In The Criminal Justice System: The Example Of Oneida County, New York, Alexander Black '19, Kylie Davis '18, Kenneth Gray '20, Connor O'Shea '18, Alexander Scheuer '18, Samantha Walther '18, Nico Yardas '18, Frank M. Anechiarico, Ralph Eannace, Jennifer Ambrose

Student Scholarship

This publication is two-fold: an executive summary and the report itself. The executive summary provides a general overview of the larger report, on the criminalization of the mentally ill. It begins by summarizing three case studies from the report that concern the intersection of mental health issues and the criminal justice system in Oneida County in New York State. It then provides a brief historical overview of mental health issues and the criminal justice system before going on to discuss the current best practices in addressing the criminalization of the mentally ill, including law-enforcement mechanisms, mental health courts, and reintegration …

Exploring Places Of Street Drug Dealing In A Downtown Area In Brazil: An Analysis Of The Reliability Of Google Street View In International Criminological Research, Elenice De Souza Oliveira, Ko-Hsin Hsu

Elenice De Souza Oliveira

This study assesses the reliability of Google Street View (GSV) in auditing environmental features that help create hotbeds of drug dealing in Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest cities. Based on concepts of “crime generators” and “crime enablers,” a set of 40 items were selected using arrest data related to drug activities for the period between 2007 and 2011. These items served to develop a GSV data collection instrument used to observe features of 135 street segments that were identified as drug dealing hot spots in downtown Belo Horizonte. The study employs an intra-class correlation (ICC) statistics as a measure …

Parsing The Behavioral And Brain Mechanisms Of Third-Party Punishment, Owen D. Jones, Matthew Ginther, Richard J. Bonnie, Morris B. Hoffman, Francis X. Shen, Kenneth W. Simons, Rene Marois

Owen Jones

The evolved capacity for third-party punishment is considered crucial to the emergence and maintenance of elaborate human social organization and is central to the modern provision of fairness and justice within society. Although it is well established that the mental state of the offender and the severity of the harm he caused are the two primary predictors of punishment decisions, the precise cognitive and brain mechanisms by which these distinct components are evaluated and integrated into a punishment decision are poorly understood.

Using a brain-scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we implemented a novel experimental design to …

Organizations As Evil Structures, Cary Federman, Dave Holmes

Cary Federman

Nursing practice in forensic psychiatry opens new horizons in nursing. This complex, professional, nursing practice involves the coupling of two contradictory socioprofessional mandates: to punish and to provide care. The purpose of this chapter is to present nursing practice in a disciplinary setting as a problem of governance. A Foucauldian perspective allows us to understand the way forensic psychiatric nursing is involved in the governance of mentally ill criminals through a vast array of power techniques (sovereign, disciplinary, and pastoral), which posit nurses as “subjects of power.” These nurses are also “objects of power” in that nursing practice is constrained …

Voices Unheard: Women And Their Children In Nepal’S Incarceration System, Aune Nuyttens, Mikayla Rose

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research project focused on women in Nepal’s incarceration system. Our goal was to hear and share their stories with the hopes of humanize and de-stigmatize perceptions of female prisoners in and outside of Nepal. A central component to these stories, as we learned, was also the story of prisoner’s children and the NGOs who provide assistance to this vulnerable group of women and their children. The researchers travelled to the east and west of Kathmandu to visit rural and urban prisons in Nepal, and visited various children homes, however the research was based out of Kathmandu, where many of …

Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care, Wendy A. Bach

William & Mary Law Review

In 2013, state legislators sitting at the heart of America’s opiate epidemic created the crime of fetal assault. Although they offered a fairly standard series of criminologic rationales to justify the legislation, they also posited that the creation of this crime was a precondition to secure treatment (or care) resources for women addicted to opiates. This extraordinary supposition—that criminalizing conduct creates a road to care—is an outgrowth of three interlinked socio-legal trends: the building of the carceral state, the criminalization of poverty, and the rapid growth, since the late 1980s, of a new generation of problem-solving courts. Framed in this …

Neurohype And The Law: A Cautionary Tale, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter suggests that for conceptual, empirical, and practical reasons, neuroscience in general and non-invasive brain imaging in particular are not likely to revolutionize the law and our conception of ourselves, but may make modest contributions to legal policy and case adjudication if the legal relevance of the science is properly understood.

Death With Dignity For The Seemingly Undignified: Denial Of Aid In Dying In Prison, Kathleen Messinger

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The medical community has fundamentally changed how we think about life and death. Humans in privileged parts of the world are living longer and have access to life-saving treatment. The focus on quantity of life then has shifted to emphasizing quality of life and questioning whether longevity should at the expense of comfort or satisfaction. The conversation surrounding quality of life, and by extension end-of-life care, has included whether a competent adult has a right, or should have a right to end their own life on their own terms. The history of aid in dying is wrought with political ideology, …

Mentally Ill, Or Mentally Ill And Dangerous?: Rethinking Civil Commitments In Minnesota, Eliot T. Tracz

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Opioids And Converging Interests, Mary Crossley

Articles

Written as part of Seton Hall Law Review’s Symposium on “Race and the Opioid Crisis: History and Lessons,” this Essay considers whether applying the lens of Professor Derrick Bell’s interest convergence theory to the opioid crisis offers some hope of advancing racial justice. After describing Bell’s interest convergence thesis and identifying racial justice interests that African Americans have related to the opioid crisis, I consider whether these interests might converge with white interests to produce real racial progress. Taken at face value, white politicians’ statements of compassion toward opioid users might signal a public health-oriented approach to addiction, representing …

Ethical Cannabis Lawyering In California, Francis J. Mootz Iii

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Cannabis has a long history in the United States. Originally, doctors and pharmacists used cannabis for a variety of purposes. After the Mexican Revolution led to widespread migration from Mexico to the United States, many Americans responded by associating this influx of foreigners with the use of cannabis, and thereby racializing and stigmatizing the drug. After the collapse of prohibition, the federal government repurposed its enormous enforcement bureaucracy to address the perceived problem of cannabis, despite the opposition of the American Medical Association to this new prohibition. Ultimately, both the states and the federal government classified cannabis as a dangerous …

Falling Between The Cracks: Understanding Why States Fail In Protecting Our Children From Crime, Michal Gilad

All Faculty Scholarship

The article is the first to take an inclusive look at the monumental problem of crime exposure during childhood, which is estimated to be one of the most damaging and costly public health and public safety problem in our society today. It takes-on the challenging task of ‘naming’ the problem by coining the term Comprehensive Childhood Crime Impact or in short the Triple-C Impact. Informed by scientific findings, the term embodies the full effect of direct and indirect crime exposure on children due to their unique developmental characteristics, and the spillover effect the problem has on our society as …

What U.S Defense Attorneys Know About Facial Composites, Marisa H. Jaross

Student Theses

The Innocence Project’s DNA exoneration database (2018) indicates that approximately 27% of wrongful conviction cases containing eyewitness evidence also included a composite or sketch[1] of the perpetrator. This statistic is alarming, given that composites are rarely used in criminal investigations (PERF, 2013), but not surprising considering “good” composites are notoriously difficult to construct (e.g., Wells, Charman, & Olson, 2005). It is well understood that eyewitness evidence can be particularly persuasive evidence of guilt for juries and thus we were interested in learning more about how defense attorneys prepare for trial with respect to this specific type of eyewitness evidence. …