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Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons

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Criminal law and procedure

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Abolition And Environmental Justice, Allegra M. Mcleod Sep 2023

Abolition And Environmental Justice, Allegra M. Mcleod

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During the coronavirus pandemic, movements for penal abolition and racial justice achieved dramatic growth and increased visibility. While much public discussion of abolition has centered on the call to divest from criminal law enforcement, contemporary abolitionists also understand public safety in terms of building new life-sustaining institutions and collective structures that improve human well-being, linking penal divestment to environmental justice. In urging a reimagination of public safety, abolitionists envision much more than decriminalization or a reallocation of police functions to social service agencies or other alternatives to imprisonment and policing. Instead, for abolitionists, meaningful public safety requires, among other things, …


The Burdens Of Representing The Accused In An Age Of Harsh Punishment, Abbe Smith Jan 2004

The Burdens Of Representing The Accused In An Age Of Harsh Punishment, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Defenders bear witness to an awful social experiment gone awry. Punishment has taken the place of every other intervention because it is so simple. It divides the world neatly into good people and bad, the worthy and unworthy, victims and perpetrators. Once we punish the bad, the unworthy, the perpetrators, the rest of us can rest easy. We can say that we are different from them. We can wag our finger at them and assert our moral superiority. In this social and political climate, hardly anyone ever asks why. Why did this man or woman end up this way? What …