Criminology Commons^™

“Private” Crime In Public Housing: Violent Victimization, Fear Of Crime And Social Isolation Among Women Public Housing Residents, Claire M. Renzetti, Shana L. Maier

CRVAW Faculty Journal Articles

Although public housing is typically associated with high crime rates, little research has been done on fear of crime or violent victimization experiences among public housing residents. Moreover, there are few studies that look specifically at women’s fear of crime or violent victimization experiences in public housing, despite the fact that women constitute the majority of public housing residents. These issues were examined in the present study through interviews with female public housing residents in Camden, New Jersey (NJ). The interviews reveal high rates of violent victimization, especially at the hands of intimates and acquaintances. Fear of crime is also …

Should The Victims' Rights Movement Have Influence Over Criminal Law Formulation And Adjudication?, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The victims' rights movement has come into increasing influence in setting criminal justice policy. What can be said about where its influence should be heeded, and where it should not? With regard to substantive criminal law in particular, should the victims' rights movement have influence over its formulation and adjudication? The short answer, on which I'll elaborate below, is that it ought to have influence over criminal law formulation but not necessarily over criminal law adjudication. It ought to have influence over criminal law formulation because there is great benefit in formulations that track shared lay intuitions of justice, and …

Excuses And Dispositions In Criminal Law, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law Scholarship: Three Illusions, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The paper criticizes criminal law scholarship for helping to construct and failing to expose analytic structures that falsely claim a higher level of rationality and coherence than current criminal law theory deserves. It offers illustrations of three such illusions of rationality. First, it is common in criminal law discourse for scholars and judges to cite any of the standard litany of "the purposes of punishment" -- just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation of the dangerous, rehabilitation, and sometimes other purposes -- as a justification for one or another liability rule or sentencing practice. The cited "purpose" gives the rules an aura of …

A Broken System, Part Ii: Why There Is So Much Error In Capital Cases And What Can Be Done About It, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Andrew Gelman, Valerie West, Garth Davies, Alexander Kiss

Faculty Scholarship

There is growing awareness that serious, reversible error permeates America’s death penalty system, putting innocent lives at risk, heightening the suffering of victims, leaving killers at large, wasting tax dollars, and failing citizens, the courts and the justice system.

Our June 2000 Report shows how often mistakes occur and how serious it is: 68% of all death verdicts imposed and fully reviewed during the 1973-1995 study period were reversed by courts due to serious errors.

Analyses presented for the first time here reveal that 76% of the reversals at the two appeal stages where data are available for study were …