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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
When Poverty Is The Worst Crime Of All: A Film Review Of Gideon’S Army (2013), Jessica S Henry
When Poverty Is The Worst Crime Of All: A Film Review Of Gideon’S Army (2013), Jessica S Henry
Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This review of the Sundance Award-winning documentary film, Gideon’s Army, examines the disparate impact of the criminal justice system on the poor and, particularly, poor people of color.
Degradation Ceremonies And The Criminalization Of Low-Income Women, Kaaryn Gustafson
Degradation Ceremonies And The Criminalization Of Low-Income Women, Kaaryn Gustafson
UC Irvine Law Review
No abstract provided.
What The Sentencing Commission Ought To Be Doing Reducing Mass Incarceration, Lynn Adelman
What The Sentencing Commission Ought To Be Doing Reducing Mass Incarceration, Lynn Adelman
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Beginning in the 1970s, the United States embarked on a shift in its penal policies, tripling the percentage of convicted felons sentenced to confinement and doubling the length of their sentences. This shift included a dramatic increase in the prosecution and incarceration of drug offenders. As a result of its move toward long prison sentences, the United States now incarcerates so many people that it has become an outlier; this is not just among developed democracies, but among all nations, including highly punitive states such as Russia and South Africa, and also in comparison to the United States' own long-standing …
A Latina Law Professor's Personal Perspective After The Zimmerman Trial Verdict, Maritza I. Reyes
A Latina Law Professor's Personal Perspective After The Zimmerman Trial Verdict, Maritza I. Reyes
Journal Publications
No abstract provided.
Leniency As A Miscarriage Of Race And Gender Justice, Aya Gruber
Leniency As A Miscarriage Of Race And Gender Justice, Aya Gruber
Publications
No abstract provided.
Legal Punishment As Civil Ritual: Making Cultural Sense Of Harsh Punishment, Spearit
Legal Punishment As Civil Ritual: Making Cultural Sense Of Harsh Punishment, Spearit
Articles
This work examines mass incarceration through a ritual studies perspective, paying explicit attention to the religious underpinnings. Conventional analyses of criminal punishment focus on the purpose of punishment in relation to legal or moral norms, or attempt to provide a general theory of punishment. The goals of this work are different, and instead try to understand the cultural aspects of punishment that have helped make the United States a global leader in imprisonment and execution. It links the boom in incarceration to social ruptures of the 1950s and 1960s and posits the United States’ world leader status as having more …
Neofeminism, Aya Gruber
Neofeminism, Aya Gruber
Publications
Today it is prosaic to say that "feminism is dead." Far from being moribund, feminist legal theory is breaking from its somewhat dogmatic past and forging ahead with new vigor. Many modern feminist legal scholars seek innovative ways to better the legal, social, and economic status of women while simultaneously questioning some of the more troubling moves of second-wave feminism, such as the tendency to essentialize the woman's experience, the turn to authoritarian state policies, and the characterization of women as pure objects or agents. These "neofeminists" prioritize women's issues but maintain a strong commitment to distributive justice and recognize …
In Search Of Racial Justice: The Role Of The Prosecutor, Angela J. Davis
In Search Of Racial Justice: The Role Of The Prosecutor, Angela J. Davis
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This article examines the role of prosecutors in establishing and maintaining racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and examines efforts of the Prosecution and Racial Justice Program of the Ve,:-a Institute of Justice to enact reform within prosecutors' offices. After providing an overview of the debate on causes of such racial disparities generally, the article examines how seemingly race neutral charging and plea-bargaining decisions by prosecutors can actually cause and perpetuate racial disparities. As a model for reforming such practices, the article evaluates and critiques the Prosecution and Racial Justice Program and makes recommendations for how this program can …
Did Booker Increase Sentencing Disparity? Why The Evidence Is Unpersuasive, Sonja B. Starr
Did Booker Increase Sentencing Disparity? Why The Evidence Is Unpersuasive, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
The Sentencing Commission’s recent report on the effects of United States v.Booker makes a number of very worri- some claims.The most alarming is that the gap in sen- tences between otherwise similar Black and White men has nearly quadrupled: from 4.5 percent before Booker, to 15 percent after it, to 19.5 percent after United States v. Kimbrough and United States v.Gall. 1 The Commission further claims that interjudge disparity has increased in two-thirds of the federal districts, and that interdistrict variation has also increased.2 If its findings were accurate, and if these changes could be causally attributed to Booker and …
Across The Hudson: Taking The Stop And Frisk Debate Beyond New York City, David A. Harris
Across The Hudson: Taking The Stop And Frisk Debate Beyond New York City, David A. Harris
Articles
This article presents the results of a survey conducted by the author of 56 police departments across the country concerning the practice of data collection on stop and frisk practices of those police departments. These results are discussed against the backdrop of the debate on stop and frisk, examined in this article through a review of the legal basis for the practice and its use by police departments. The article then argues that greater data collection efforts in places other than New York City, where such efforts have been more robust than elsewhere, could broaden and deepen the debate on …
On Estimating Disparity And Inferring Causation: Sur-Reply To The U.S. Sentencing Commission Staff, Sonja B. Starr, M. Marit Rehavi
On Estimating Disparity And Inferring Causation: Sur-Reply To The U.S. Sentencing Commission Staff, Sonja B. Starr, M. Marit Rehavi
Articles
In this Essay, Professors Starr and Rehavi respond to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s empirical staff’s criticisms of their recent article, which found, contrary to the Commission’s prior work, no evidence that racial disparity in sentences increased in response to United States v. Booker. As Starr and Rehavi suggest, their differences with the Commission perhaps relate to differing objectives. The Commission staff’s reply expresses a lack of interest in identifying Booker’s causal effects; in contrast, that is Starr and Rehavi’s central objective. In addition, Starr and Rehavi’s approach also accounts for disparities arising throughout the post-arrest justice process, extending beyond the …
Mandatory Sentencing And Racial Disparity, Assessing The Role Of Prosecutors And The Effects Of Booker, Sonja B. Starr, M. Marit Rehavi
Mandatory Sentencing And Racial Disparity, Assessing The Role Of Prosecutors And The Effects Of Booker, Sonja B. Starr, M. Marit Rehavi
Articles
This Article presents new empirical evidence concerning the effects of United States v. Booker, which loosened the formerly mandatory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, on racial disparities in federal criminal cases. Two serious limitations pervade existing empirical literature on sentencing disparities. First, studies focus on sentencing in isolation, controlling for the “presumptive sentence” or similar measures that themselves result from discretionary charging, plea-bargaining, and fact-finding processes. Any disparities in these earlier processes are excluded from the resulting sentence-disparity estimates. Our research has shown that this exclusion matters: pre-sentencing decision-making can have substantial sentence-disparity consequences. Second, existing studies have used loose causal inference …