Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

Evidentiary Rulings As Police Reform, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

How can law be a mechanism for police reform? The most familiar answer, for legal scholars who work on the regulation of law enforcement, is as a deterrent: the law sets some limit on police behavior and imposes some sanction for violations. But the deterrent model is not the only method through which the law can affect police behaviors. In this article, Stoughton contends that evidentiary considerations have the potential to change both police training and agency culture. Stoughton’s contention is based on the observation that evidentiary considerations have shaped not just police behavior but also the culture of policing …

Law Enforcement's "Warrior Problem", Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

Within law enforcement, few things are more venerated than the concept of the Warrior. Officers are trained to cultivate a “warrior mindset,” the virtues of which are extolled in books, articles, interviews, and seminars intended for a law enforcement audience. An article in Police Magazine opens with a sentence that demonstrates with notable nonchalance just how ubiquitous the concept is: “[Officers] probably hear about needing to have a warrior mindset almost daily.” Modern policing has so thoroughly assimilated the warrior mythos that, at some law enforcement agencies, it has become a point of professional pride to refer to the “police …

Body-Mounted Police Cameras: A Primer On Police Accountability Vs. Privacy, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Immediately following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York Police Department officer, criminal justice advocates called for greater measures to hold police officers accountable for their actions. For many observers, the failure to secure criminal indictments against the officers involved in each of these deaths of unarmed citizens suggested various shortcomings in the criminal justice system.

One of the most hotly contested reform proposals involves requiring police officers to wear body cameras. The NAACP, the ACLU, and The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law …

“First, Do No Harm”: Legal Guidelines For Health Programmes Affecting Adolescents Aged 10–17 Who Sell Sex Or Inject Drugs, Brendan M. Conner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Increasing Police Accountability: Restoring Trust And Legitimacy Through The Appointment Of Independent Prosecutors, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Criminal prosecution of police officers raises a myriad of issues that this Article will begin to explore. First, while there has been a paradigmatic shift in police accountability in recent decades from remedies focusing on individual officers to those focusing on broad organizational reform, this Article will explore the important role that the deterrence rationale of criminal prosecution might play as one tool to address police misconduct. Second, other than deterrence, criminal prosecutions serve numerous goals, including retribution for the harms imposed upon the victims and society for the crimes. Historically, many racial minorities, when compared with their white counterparts, …