Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

The Missing Algorithm: Safeguarding Brady Against The Rise Of Trade Secrecy In Policing, Deborah Won

Michigan Law Review

Trade secrecy, a form of intellectual property protection, serves the important societal function of promoting innovation. But as police departments across the country increasingly rely on proprietary technologies like facial recognition and predictive policing tools, an uneasy tension between due process and trade secrecy has developed: to fulfill Brady’s constitutional promise of a fair trial, defendants must have access to the technologies accusing them, access that trade secrecy inhibits. Thus far, this tension is being resolved too far in favor of the trade secret holder—and at too great an expense to the defendant. The wrong balance has been struck.

This …

Blue Racing: The Racialization Of Police In Hate Crime Statutes, Christopher Williams

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Content warning: this Article discusses police brutality.

The relationship between race, law, and policing is one that has been analyzed by many scholars throughout U.S. history. The vast majority of research about police has highlighted policing in relation to groups they police, focusing on areas such as policing practices, policies, or involvement in the racialization of minority groups. This scholarship has far outpaced research on actions taken by law enforcement on behalf of law enforcement— specifically, how law enforcement engages in racialization out of self-interest. A better understanding of the ways in which law enforcement engages in racialization that is …

American Informant, Ramzi Kassem

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part of my childhood was spent in Baghdad, Iraq, during the rule of Saddam Hussein. At that time, the regime offered free and universal education and healthcare. Literacy rates in the country surpassed much of the Arabic-speaking world and, indeed, the Global South. As the celebrated Egyptian intellectual, Taha Hussein, famously put it: “Cairo writes; Beirut prints; and Baghdad reads.” Booksellers were everywhere in Baghdad. Its people read voraciously and passionately debated literature, poetry, and a range of other subjects.

But what struck me, even as a child, was the absence of sustained talk about politics in bookshops, markets, and …

9/11 Impacts On Muslims In Prison, Spearit

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

It is no understatement to say that September 11, 2001, is the most important date in the history of American Islam. From this day forth, Muslims would become a target for social wrath and become vilified like at no other time in American history. In one fell swoop, Muslims became the most feared and hated religious group in the country. While analysis of the impacts on Muslims tends to focus on Muslims outside of prison, it is critical to recognize that Muslims in prison were no exception to the post- 9/11 hostilities directed at Muslims. They experienced similarly heightened levels …

Voices From A Prison Pandemic: Lives Lost From Covid-19 At Lakeland Correctional, Kimberly Thomas

Articles

Coronavirus tore through jails and prisons like wildfire. In some states, more than half of the people incarcerated there tested positive for COVID-19; nearly 400,000 people in prison across the United States have tested positive. For people in prison, COVID-19 brought the loss of close friends, solitary confinement, loss of connection with family and programming, lack of information, and fear of contracting the virus. It has also reminded those who are incarcerated of the one-dimensional way in which people in prison are perceived. As stated by one collaborator, Cory Souders, "[s]o many men and women who come to prison are …

Border Searches For Investigatory Purposes: Implementing A Border Nexus Standard, Brenna Ferris

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Border searches are a commonly used exception to the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause and warrant requirements. Using a border search, the government can conduct searches of individuals without any kind of individualized suspicion. Border searches pose a concerning risk to privacy when they are used as a tool for criminal investigations. The Supreme Court has never ruled on searches used in this way, but lower courts are addressing the technique and reaching conflicting decisions. Courts need to take an approach that will protect the privacy interests of individuals while allowing the government to advance its interests in protecting its borders …

Slamming The Courthouse Door: 25 Years Of Evidence For Repealing The Prison Litigation Reform Act, Andrea Fenster, Margo Schlanger

Other Publications

Twenty-five years ago today, in 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The “PLRA,” as it is often called, makes it much harder for incarcerated people to file and win federal civil rights lawsuits. For two-and-a-half decades, the legislation has created a double standard that limits incarcerated people’s access to the courts at all stages: it requires courts to dismiss civil rights cases from incarcerated people for minor technical reasons before even reaching the case merits, requires incarcerated people to pay filing fees that low-income people on the outside are exempt from, makes it hard to find …

The Geopolitics Of American Policing, Andrew Lanham

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. by Stuart Schrader.

Restorative Federal Criminal Procedure, Leo T. Sorokin, Jeffrey S. Stein

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair. by Danielle Sered.

Can Prosecutors End Mass Incarceration?, Rachel E. Barkow

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. by Emily Bazelon.

The Reincorporation Of Prisoners Into The Body Politic: Eliminating The Medicaid Inmate Exclusion Policy, Mira K. Edmonds

Articles

Incarcerated people are excluded from Medicaid coverage due to a provision in the Social Security Act Amendments of 1965 known as the Medicaid Inmate Exclusion Policy (“MIEP”). This Article argues for the elimination of the MIEP as an anachronistic remnant of an earlier era prior to the massive growth of the U.S. incarcerated population and the expansion of Medicaid eligibility under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. It explores three reasons for eliminating the MIEP. First, the inclusion of incarcerated populations in Medicaid coverage would signify the final erasure from the Medicaid regime of the istinction between …

Thirteenth Amendment Litigation In The Immigration Detention Context, Jennifer Safstrom

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes how the Thirteenth Amendment has been used to prevent forced labor practices in immigration detention. The Article assesses the effectiveness of Thirteenth Amendment litigation by dissecting cases where detainees have challenged the legality of labor requirements under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Given the expansion in immigration detention, the increasing privatization of detention, and the significant human rights implications of this issue, the arguments advanced in this Article are not only currently relevant but have the potential to shape ongoing dialogue on this subject.

Rethinking The Reasonable Response: Safeguarding The Promise Of Kingsley For Conditions Of Confinement, Hanna Rutkowski

Michigan Law Review

Nearly five million individuals are admitted to America’s jails each year, and at any given time, two-thirds of those held in jail have not been convicted of a crime. Under current Supreme Court doctrine, these pretrial detainees are functionally protected by the same standard as convicted prisoners, despite the fact that they are formally protected by different constitutional amendments. A 2015 decision, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, declared that a different standard would apply to pretrial detainees and convicted prisoners in the context of use of force: consistent with the Constitution’s mandate that they not be punished at all, pretrial detainees …

Beyond Qualified Immunity, Fred O. Smith Jr.

Michigan Law Review Online

I never watched the video. The descriptions themselves have always felt like enough. Traumatizing enough. Invasive enough. George Floyd, father of two, laying on the ground, as an unfazed officer kneeled on his neck for at least eight minutes and forty-six seconds. He pleaded for his life and cried out to his deceased mother until he met his inevitable death. His name should be said for the record before saying almost anything else. The recording of the chilling final minutes of his life is, in all probability, one of the impetuses for this multi-journal Reckoning and Reform Symposium.