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Selected Works

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Criminal law

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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race

Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol Jul 2018

Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol

Neil L Sobol

Debtors’ prisons should no longer exist. While imprisonment for debt was common in colonial times in the United States, subsequent constitutional provisions, legislation, and court rulings all called for the abolition of incarcerating individuals to collect debt. Despite these prohibitions, individuals who are unable to pay debts are now regularly incarcerated, and the vast majority of them are indigent. In 2015, at least ten lawsuits were filed against municipalities for incarcerating individuals in modern-day debtors’ prisons. Criminal justice debt is the primary source for this imprisonment.

Criminal justice debt includes fines, restitution charges, court costs, and fees. Monetary charges exist …

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Hate Crime Law And The Limits Of Inculpation, Janine Young Kim Dec 2005

Hate Crime Law And The Limits Of Inculpation, Janine Young Kim

Janine Kim

Critics sometimes maintain that hate crime law punishes an offender for her motive and character and is therefore doctrinally and morally illegitimate. This manuscript explores the concept of culpability to examine this challenge, and argues that critics inaccurately assume that our criminal law conditions culpability on a robust understanding of choice. This inaccuracy significantly undermines the doctrinal critique against hate crime law, which in fact appears to be consistent with many other laws that consider motive and character as relevant factors in determining degree of guilt and proportionate punishment. Notwithstanding the apparent doctrinal validity of hate crime law, the author …

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