Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

Helping The Helpers: The Role Of Organizational Support And Peer Influence On Police Officer Receptivity To Employee Assistance Programs, Kenneth Quick

Publications and Research

Purpose – This study aims to investigate critical differences between police officer willingness to use and recommend an employee assistance program (EAP) to a peer, including the relationship between officer perceptions of macro-level organizational support and micro-level EAP support.

Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 213 police officers from a large, urban police department in the Northeast United States of America is used to evaluate the relationship between officer perceptions of the EAP and the officers’ willingness to use and recommend the EAP to peers. Generalized linear regression models are used to evaluate the moderating effect of perceived organizational support (POS) …

An Investigation Into The Psychological Effects Of Undercover Policing, Cheyenne Ls Jones

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

Throughout history, the evolution of crime has been responded to with an evolution in crime fighting tactics. One of these tactics was undercover operations, which were developed to combat specific varieties of crime beginning with white collar crimes and government corruption. Today, undercover operations are utilized in many other ways as well, ranging from drug stings to online operations targeting sex crimes. While these developments have greatly aided and advanced justice over the years, the time has come to begin addressing the negative effects of undercover operations on the individual officers. Evidence has demonstrated over the years that undercover operations …

Keep Your Hands To Yourself! How Law Enforcement Intrusion Into Education Records Makes Campus Title Ix Courts Necessary: Why Our System Might Be Better Than Most, Jeremy S. Ribando

The Global Business Law Review

Sexual harassment deprives students of equal educational opportunities, and sexual crimes on campus have been and continue to be a serious threat to student safety. Congress established Title IX and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), in part, to guarantee and safeguard both student records and student safety. However, Title IX and FERPA are difficult doctrines to harmonize, and implementing them present serious challenges for University administrations. This Note explores the University’s responsibility to protect students from sexual crimes and their responsibility to prosecute the perpetrators, while simultaneously protecting student records and student confidentiality. This Note also explores …

Obstacles To Proving 24-Hour Lighting Is Cruel And Unusual Under Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Lauren Jaech

Washington Law Review

Twenty-four-hour lighting causes sleep deprivation, depression, and other serious disorders for incarcerated individuals, yet courts often do not consider it to be cruel and unusual. To decide if prison conditions violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, courts follow a two-part inquiry that requires examining the intent of prison officials (known as the subjective prong) as well as the degree of seriousness of the alleged cruel or unusual condition (the objective prong). Incarcerated individuals often file complaints challenging 24-hour lighting conditions. Whether they succeed on these claims may depend on the circuit in which they reside. Judges …

A Call To Abolish Determinate-Plus Sentencing In Washington, Rachel Stenberg

Washington Law Review

For certain incarcerated individuals who commit sex offenses, Washington State’s determinate-plus sentencing structure requires a showing of rehabilitation before release. This highly subjective “releasability” determination occurs after an individual has already served a standard sentence. A review of recent releasability determinations reveals sentences are often extended on arbitrary and inconsistent grounds—especially for individuals who face systemic challenges in prison due to their identity or condition. This Comment shows that the criteria to determine whether individuals are releasable is an incomplete picture of their actual experience in the carceral setting, using the distinct example of incarcerated individuals with mental illness. While …

Expanding Judicial Discretion To Grant Compassionate Release During Covid-19, Deborah Wang

Washington Law Review

In the 1980s, Congress introduced compassionate release to counteract the increased rigidity of our federal sentencing system. This mechanism allowed courts, through a motion filed by the Bureau of Prison’s director, to reduce a prisoner’s sentence if “extraordinary and compelling” circumstances warrant such a reduction. However, because the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) seldom brought these motions, few people were released early via compassionate release. At the same time, public discourse and concerns regarding mass incarceration have continued to grow, causing lawmakers to revisit and revise compassionate release through the First Step Act of 2018 to ensure that this mechanism’s potential …

Exploring Perceptions Of Control Within Offender Cognition And Recidivism Paradigms, Anistasha H. Lightning, Danielle Polage

Student Published Works

Elements of perceived control are associated with recidivism in offender populations. We investigated the application of locus of control to the frequency of personal involvement with the law and to beliefs surrounding the likelihood of future contact with the legal system. We hypothesized that, as the number of sentencings or legal experiences increased, locus of control would externalize. We also predicted that increased legal involvement would lead to greater belief in the likelihood of future involvement. A statistically significant path model suggests that locus of control appears to be a predictor of increased criminality, as opposed to the other way …

Enhancing The Representation Of Women: How Gender Diversity Signals And Acknowledgement Affect Attraction To Men-Dominated Professions, Thomas P. Depatie, Anmol Sachdeva, Comila Shahani-Denning, Rebecca Grossman, Kevin P. Nolan

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

While organizations around the world recognize the importance of gender diversity and inclusion, many struggle to reach gender parity (Sneader & Yee, 2020). Particularly, women account for less than 15% of all sworn police officers (Donohue Jr, 2020). Considering signaling theory and novel research in organizational impression management, we examined the utility of various recruitment messaging techniques for attracting women job seekers to professions dominated by men, at both a consulting firm and law enforcement agency. Women evaluating consulting firm materials perceived greater behavioral integrity and were subsequently more attracted to the organization if recruitment messages included both high gender …

Using Workplace Personality To Guide Improvement Of Law Enforcement Selection, Chase A. Winterberg, Michael A. Tapia, Bradley J. Brummel

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Recurrent police-public conflict suggests misalignment in desired police behavior between police and the public. We explored differences in desired police characteristics between police and members of the American public. Although racial minorities endorsed more negative attitudes of police overall, we found no meaningful differences in desired police characteristics between police and the public or between racial minority and majority participants. Second, we combined multiple criterion-related validation studies in similar jobs via meta-analyses and synthetic validity analyses to identify personality predictors of police performance dimensions. Third, we assessed base rates and adverse impact of these personality characteristics in police. Incumbent officers …

Why Do The Police Reject Counseling? An Examination Of Necessary Changes To Police Subculture., Noel Otu, Ntiense E. Otu

Journal of Health Ethics

Abstract

This paper reviews the concept of police subculture and examines its role in the management and acceptance of treatment for stress-related injury. In particular, we examine the impact of stigma that attaches to treatment within this subculture. The persistence of the dominant police subculture remains a significant obstacle to officers seeking treatment for stress-related illnesses. The subculture has historically resisted acknowledging the need for treatment in response to the occupational and/or organizational stress-related injury that results from frequent exposure to work-related trauma. Many police administrators are still embedded within and resist changes to the subculture, which results in an …

Algorithmic Governance From The Bottom Up, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are both a blessing and a curse for governance. In theory, algorithmic governance makes government more efficient, more accurate, and more fair. But the emergence of automation in governance also rests on public-private collaborations that expand both public and private power, aggravate transparency and accountability gaps, and create significant obstacles for those seeking algorithmic justice. In response, a nascent body of law proposes technocratic policy changes to foster algorithmic accountability, ethics, and transparency.

This Article examines an alternative vision of algorithmic governance, one advanced primarily by social and labor movements instead of technocrats and firms. …

High Time For Change: The Legalization Of Marijuana And Its Impact On Warrantless Roadside Motor Vehicle Searches, Molly E. O'Connell

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The proliferation of marijuana legalization has changed the relationship between driving and marijuana use. While impaired driving remains illegal, marijuana use that does not result in impairment is not a bar to operating a motor vehicle. Scientists have yet to find a reliable way for law enforcement officers to make this distinction. In the marijuana impairment context, there is not a scientifically proven equivalent to the Blood Alcohol Content standard nor are there reliable roadside assessments. This scientific and technological void has problematic consequences for marijuana users that get behind the wheel and find themselves suspected of impaired driving. Without …

The Impermissibility Of Police Deception In Juvenile Interrogations, Gina Kim

Fordham Law Review

Although perjury is a criminal offense in all states and a felony in many, law enforcement may routinely lie to suspects during interrogations. This widespread, judicially authorized practice consists of interrogators making false promises of leniency that the suspect will receive a lighter sentence in exchange for a confession, and making misrepresentations about the evidence against the suspect. Police deception in interrogations becomes even more problematic when used against juvenile suspects because the psychological vulnerability of minors may lead them to succumb to deceptive pressures and even to falsely confess.

This Note explores the debate surrounding the use of police …

Sentencing After Stash Houses: Addressing Manipulation Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Elizabeth Foy Gudgel

Fordham Law Review

In the realm of undercover work, law enforcement has broad discretion to define the contours of a criminal offense. Due to quantity-based provisions in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, federal agents or their informants may coerce an individual into a higher sentencing range by escalating their behavior to align with mandatory minimums or quantifiable offense levels. Because this type of offense is police-initiated, law enforcement has discretion to select the individuals subject to these tactics and influence their eventual sentences. The defenses of sentencing entrapment and sentencing manipulation are meant to combat this discretion. However, these defenses are rarely invoked successfully …

Sentencing Co-Offenders, Ehud Guttel, Ittai Paldor, Gideon Parchomovsky

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

Tort law and criminal law are the two main vehicles utilized by the state to deter wrongful behavior. Despite the many similarities between the two legal fields, they differ in their treatment of collaborations. While tort law divides liability among joint-tortfeasors, criminal law abides by a no-division rule that imposes on each co-offender the full brunt of the sanction. Thus, each of two offenders who jointly steal $1,000, will be subject to the full corresponding penalty (rather than the divided penalty for stealing $500).

This Article demonstrates that in property and financial crimes, the no-division regime of criminal law harms …

Green Crimes In The Empire State: Analyzing The Criminal Enforcement Of Environmental Law In New York, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa Jarrell Ozymy

Pace Environmental Law Review

Ensuring compliance with federal and state environmental laws and deterring future offenses can require the application of criminal enforcement tools. Yet we have a limited understanding of how the criminal enforcement of environmental laws has progressed historically in The Empire State. To explore this phenomenon, we undertake content analysis of federal prosecution summaries for all environmental crime prosecutions stemming from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency criminal investigations from 1983 to 2019. We explore which federal environmental laws were violated, determine which charging statutes were used, analyze sentencing patterns, and illustrate the broader themes that emerge in such prosecutions over 37 years. …

Decarceration's Inside Partners, Seema Tahir Saifee

Fordham Law Review

This Article examines a hidden phenomenon in criminal punishment. People in prison, during their incarceration, have made important—and sometimes extraordinary—strides toward reducing prison populations. In fact, stakeholders in many corners, from policy makers to researchers to abolitionists, have harnessed legal and conceptual strategies generated inside the walls to pursue decarceral strategies outside the walls. Despite this outside use of inside moves, legal scholarship has directed little attention to theorizing the potential of looking to people on the inside as partners in the long-term project of meaningfully reducing prison populations, or “decarceration.”

Building on the change-making agency and revolutionary ideation inside …

Certain Prosecutors: Geographical Arbitrariness, Unusualness, & The Abolition Of Virginia’S Death Penalty, Bernadette M. Donovan

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Virginia’s abolition of the death penalty in 2021 was a historic development. As both a southern state and one of the country’s most active death penalty jurisdictions, Virginia’s transition away from capital punishment represented an important shift in the national landscape. This article considers whether that shift has any constitutional significance, focusing on the effect of Virginia’s abolition on the geographical arbitrariness of the country’s death penalty.

As a starting point, the death penalty in America is primarily regulated by the Eighth Amendment, which bars “cruel and unusual punishments.” The United States Supreme Court has held that the death penalty …

It Just Makes Sense: An Argument For A Uniform Objective Standard For Incarcerated Individuals Bringing Claims Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Pearce Thomson Embrey

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In July 2020, the New York Times published an article on a Department of Justice report detailing the systematic abuse of incarcerated individuals by prison guards within the State of Alabama’s Department of Corrections. This report evidences the challenges faced by incarcerated individuals seeking to vindicate their Eighth Amendment rights. In a legal sense, those individuals who turn to the court system for relief face an almost insurmountable burden of proof. This Note begins by surveying the history of excessive force claims under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as deliberate indifference claims under the Eighth and Fourteenth …

Atkins V. Virginia At Twenty: Still Adaptive Deficits, Still In The Developmental Period, Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume, Brendan Van Winkle

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Twenty years ago, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Eighth Amendment prohibited states from executing persons with intellectual disability. While the Court’s decision is laudable and has saved many of the most vulnerable persons from the executioner, its effect has been undermined by recalcitrant states attempting to exploit language in the opinion permitting states to create procedures to implement the (then) new categorical prohibition. In this article, we examine how some states have adopted procedures which are fundamentally inconsistent with the clinical consensus understanding of the disability and how one state, …