Digital Commons Network^™

Race And Prison Discipline: A Study Of North Carolina Prisons, Katie Michaela Becker

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federal (De)Funding Of Local Police, Roger Michalski, Stephen Rushin

Faculty Articles

Across the political spectrum, politicians, commentators, and activists frequently invoke federal funding as a lever to induce changes in local police behavior. But can federal funding function as an effective policy lever at the local level? Is federal funding or the threat of defunding a sufficiently strong tool to effectuate deeply contentious policy goals over local opposition? This Essay conducts an empirical examination of federal funding for local and state police agencies in the United States. It finds that the federal government remains a relatively minor contributor to local police budgets. We find that federal funding only reaches a minority …

Do The Police Protect And Serve All People In The United States?: A Survey Of The Problems Within Modern Policing And Solutions To Ensure The Police Protect And Serve Us All, Bianca Velez

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

That Is Enough Punishment: Situating Defunding The Police Within Antiracist Sentencing Reform, Jalila S. Jefferson-Bullock, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

During the summer of 2020, the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others created a movement that unearthed a reality that Black people in the United States have always been aware of: systemic racism, in the form of police brutality, is alive and well. While the blatant brutality of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police is the flame, the spark was ignited long ago. One need only review the record of recent years — the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Antwon Rose, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, and countless other souls …

Do Independent External Decision Makers Ensure That “An Inmate’S Confinement In A Structured Intervention Unit Is To End As Soon As Possible”? [Corrections And Conditional Release Act, Section 33], Jane B. Sprott, Anthony N. Doob, Adelina Iftene

Reports & Public Policy Documents

The Government of Canada established Correctional Service Canada’s (CSC) Structured Intervention Units (SIUs) to be a substitute for “Administrative Segregation” as it officially was known, or Solitary Confinement as it is more commonly known. The goals – explicit in the legislation governing federal penitentiaries (the Corrections and Conditional Release Act) – included provisions that SIUs were to be used as little as possible and that prisoners would be transferred from them as soon as possible.

This report examines some aspects of the operation of the IEDMs – the only SIU oversight mechanism that is currently active – using administrative data …

The Effects Of Police Officer Ideology On Opinions Of Marijuana Legalization, Decriminalization, And Medical Marijuana, Erin Alpandinar

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Police As Community Caretakers: Caniglia V. Strom, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

What is the proper role of the police? That question has been at the forefront of debates about policing for quite some time, but especially in the past year. One answer, spurred by countless news stories about black people killed by law enforcement officers, is that the power of the police should be reduced to the bare minimum, with some in the Defund the Police movement calling for outright abolition of local police departments. Toward the other end of the spectrum is the notion that the role of the police in modern society is and must be capacious. Police should …

Citizens, Suspects, And Enemies: Examining Police Militarization, Milton C. Regan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Concern about the increasing militarization of police has grown in recent years. Much of this concern focuses on the material aspects of militarization: the greater use of military equipment and tactics by police officers. While this development deserves attention, a subtler form of militarization operates on the cultural level. Here, police adopt an adversarial stance toward minority communities, whose members are regarded as presumptive objects of suspicion. The combination of material and cultural militarization in turn has a potential symbolic dimension. It can communicate that members of minority communities are threats to society, just as military enemies are threats to …

Sanctuary Cities And The Power Of The Purse: An Executive Dole Test, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

A constitutional clash is brewing. Cities and counties are flexing their muscles to frustrate national immigration policy while the federal Executive is threatening to interfere with local law enforcement decision making and funding. Although the federal government generally has plenary authority over immigration law, the Constitution forbids the commandeering of state and local officials to enforce federal law against their will. One exception to this anti-commandeering principle is the Spending Clause of Article I that permits Congress to condition the receipt of federal funds on compliance with federal law. These conditions, according to more than 30 years of Supreme Court …

When We Breathe: Re-Envisioning Safety And Justice In A Post-Floyd Era, Aya Gruber

Publications

10th Annual David H. Bodiker Lecture on Criminal Justice delivered on Wed., Oct. 21, 2020 at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

A Model For Defunding: An Evidence-Based Statute For Behavioral Health Crisis Response, Taleed El-Sabawi, Jennifer J. Carroll

Faculty Publications

Too many Black persons and other persons of color are dying at the hands of law enforcement, leading many to call for the defunding of police. These deaths were directly caused by excessive use of force by police officers, but were also driven by upstream and institutional factors that include structural racism, institutional bias, and a historic culture of racialized violence. Public outcry against racial inequities has increased as the authority of police departments has expanded to include not only the authority to respond to and investigate criminal activity, but also to respond to calls regarding behavioral health issues and …

A History Of Distrust: How Knowing The Law Impacts African American Males' Perceptions Of Police Encounters, Glynell R. Horn Jr.

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

From its inception American Law Enforcement was built from a racially motivated system in which African Americans were subject to discriminatory treatment. Unfortunately, that treatment still persists in modern day policing, which is highlighted by the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd to name a few. There is no surprise that law enforcement needs to improve trust with the African American community; however there is a dire need for a new approach. This study is unique because unlike previous research this study focuses solely on African American males that reside in disenfranchised communities that are most at risk for …

"Slack" In The Data Age, Shu-Yi Oei, Diane M. Ring

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines how increasingly ubiquitous data and information affect the role of “slack” in the law. Slack is the informal latitude to break the law without sanction. Pockets of slack exist for various reasons, including information imperfections, enforcement resource constraints, deliberate nonenforcement of problematic laws, politics, biases, and luck. Slack is important in allowing flexibility and forbearance in the legal system, but it also risks enabling selective and uneven enforcement. Increasingly available data is now upending slack, causing it to contract and exacerbating the risks of unfair enforcement.

This Article delineates the various contexts in which slack arises and …

The Perils Of "Old" And "New" In Sentencing Reform, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay turns attention from actuarial risk assessment tools as a reform to the inclination for a technical sentencing reform more broadly. When situated in the context of technical guidelines created to structure and regulate judicial discretion in the 1980s and beyond, the institutionalization of an actuarial risk assessment at sentencing is both an old and new idea. Both sentencing guidelines and actuarial risk assessments raise conceptual and empirical questions about sentencing law and policy. This Essay drills down on two conceptual issues—equality and selective incapacitation—to highlight that actuarial risk assessments as a reform raise recurring questions about sentencing, even …

How Can We Achieve Accountability In Policing? The (Not-So-Secret) Ingredients To Effective Police Reform, Michael D. White, Henry F. Fradella, Michaela Flippin

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The summer of 2020 was marked by a series of high-profile police killings of citizens, highlighting excessive force as the most pernicious form of racial injustice in American policing. The persistence of the excessive use of force problem over decades raises serious questions regarding what we know about police accountability, and has led some to argue for defunding or even abolishing the police. However, the roadmap to effective police accountability is tangible and known. In this Article, we delineate eight guiding principles and eight strate-

The Biopolitics Of Maskless Police, India Thusi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Despite the recent movement against police violence, police officers have been endangering their communities by engaging in a new form of violence— policing while refusing to wear facial coverings to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Many states advise people to wear masks and to socially distance when in public spaces. However, police officers have frequently failed to comply with these guidelines as they interact with the public to enforce these COVID-19 laws. Police enforcement of COVID-19 laws is problematic for two reasons: (1) it provides a method for pathologizing marginalized communities as biological threats; (2) it creates a racialized pathway …

Just A Girl In A Man’S World: Factors Affecting Women In Leadership In Law Enforcement, Gina Barras Holland

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics from 2013 revealed that of about 477,000 sworn law enforcement officers at the local level in the United States, only 12% are women; and only 6.2% of those who hold intermediate-level rank are women (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Local Police Department, 2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices, 2015). Although legal mandates have afforded women career opportunities in law enforcement, those mandates have not provided protection within the structures of law enforcement agencies regarding achieving high ranking positions. Women are more likely than men to remain in lower-ranking positions throughout their entire …

Police Body Cameras: Go Big Or Go Home?, Ronald J. Coleman

Buffalo Law Review

Police body-worn cameras have proliferated since the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the recent George Floyd-related protests seem set to continue or even accelerate that trend. Indeed, in her recent Nieves v. Bartlett dissent, Justice Sotomayor took time to note that many departments equip their police officers with body cameras. Body camera advocates have touted the cameras’ benefits, such as decreasing misconduct, reducing complaints, and improving accountability. At the same time, serious concerns have been raised regarding the impact of these cameras on privacy, public resources, and fairness. Despite the increased interest in body cameras, important empirical …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Katherine Mims Crocker And Brandon Hasbrouck In Support Of Neither Party With Respect To Defendant's Motion To Dismiss: Dyer V. Smith, Brandon Hasbrouck, Katherine Mims Crocker

Scholarly Articles

This case illustrates how the First Amendment functions as an essential backstop to Fourth Amendment freedoms—and vice versa. As revealed by the national response to the killing of George Floyd and so many similar injustices, the ability to record encounters with government representatives is critical to preserving civil rights, and especially the right to avoid excessive force. The public only “became aware of the circumstances surrounding George Floyd’s death because citizens standing on a sidewalk exercised their First Amendment rights and filmed a police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck until he died.” Index Newspapers LLC v. U.S. Marshals Serv., …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Katherine Mims Crocker And Brandon Hasbrouck In Support Of Neither Party With Respect To Defendant's Motion To Dismiss, Katherine Mims Crocker, Brandon Hasbrouk

Briefs

No abstract provided.

Safety, Crisis, And Criminal Law, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

Concepts of safety and prevention of danger pervade the criminal law canon. Arizona is no exception. The state’s criminal systems pivot around central and entwined goals of protecting public safety and preventing danger. The state constitution permits pretrial detention both for the most serious offenses and when no other condition of release will adequately protect the community from the danger the accused’s freedom might pose. The rules of criminal procedure and the criminal code designate some offenses and actors “dangerous” and urge judges to weigh not only the accused’s risk of flight, but also his future dangerousness in making decisions …

The Law On Police Use Of Force In The United States, Christopher Slobogin, Brandon Garrett

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Recent events in the United States have highlighted the fact that American police resort to force, including deadly force, much more often than in many other Western countries. This Article describes how the current regulatory regime may ignore or even facilitate these aggressive police actions. The law governing police use of force in the United States derives in large part from the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. As construed by the United States Supreme Court, the Fourth Amendment provides police wide leeway in using deadly force, making custodial arrests, and stopping and …

The American Law Of Overruling Necessity: The Exceptional Origins Of State Police Power, William J. Novak

Book Chapters

One of the most significant legal-constitutional moments in the history of the American republic occurred in the Confederation Congress on September 26 and 27, 1787. On those dates, the handiwork of the historic Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was now "laid before the United States in Congress assembled." And the momentous question for the extant official lawmaking body of the US government was what to do next. Under Article 1 3 of the Articles of Confederation, any alteration of the articles had to be agreed to by Congress and confirmed by the legislatures of every state. Notably, the Philadelphia convention had …

2020 Annual Campus Security And Fire Safety Report, Otterbein Police Department

Otterbein Police Department

2020 Annual Campus Security and Fire Safety Report from the Otterbein Police Department. The crime and arrest statistics compiled by OPD are from calendar years 2017, 2018, and 2019.

The Weaponization Of The “Alien Harboring” Statute In A New-Era Of Racial Animus Towards Immigrants, Hannah Hamley

Seattle University Law Review

Federal law 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii), commonly referred to as the “Alien Harboring” statute, was passed sixty-eight years ago and has been used as a weapon against immigrants and their allies. Spanning back decades, numerous scholars, alarmed by the dangerous use of the statute, have written about its muddled congressional intent and the unclear definition of “harboring.” These issues continue to be relevant and are foundational concerns with the enforcement of the harboring statute. However, in the era of President Donald J. Trump, we are faced with a new danger. We are confronted with an Administration that is ferociously anti-immigrant …

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’S Recidivism Studies: Myopic, Misleading, And Doubling Down On Imprisonment, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Recidivism has now replaced rehabilitation as the guiding principle of punishment. It is increasingly used to steer criminal justice policy despite research limitations. It serves as a stand-in for public safety, even though lengthy incarceration may have criminogenic and other negative ramifications for family members and communities. Yet the U.S. Sentencing Commission emphasizes recidivism. It emphasizes what amounts to preemptive imprisonment for those with long criminal records to prevent future offending.

The Commission’s work should come with a warning label. First, its recidivism studies should not be consumed on their own. Instead they must be read in conjunction with U.S. …

Habeas Corpus, Conditions Of Confinement, And Covid-19, Allison Wexler Weiss

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Incarcerated individuals, worried about contracting the disease in prison without adequate healthcare and often serious health risks, have filed lawsuits challenging their incarceration in the age of COVID-19. Overall, very few have been successful. This virus has changed our world and the reality for those in prison. The traditional legal avenues available to incarcerated individuals to challenge their continued confinement are often ill-equipped to allow for comprehensive and expedited review. The author argues that during these unprecedented times, courts should recognize that the “duty to defend the Constitution” requires them to grant motions for habeas corpus by the most vulnerable …

Arizona's Sex Offender Laws: Recommendations For Reform, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles

No abstract provided.

Reversing The Decriminalization Of Sexual Violence, Lisa Avalos

Journal Articles

Sexual violence has largely been decriminalized in the United States through disbelief of victims, apathy on the part of law enforcement officers, and inaction on the part of institutions. Indeed, these mechanisms are so effective at burying the problem that most people are not aware of the extent of unprosecuted sexual violence, the woefully deficient law enforcement response, and the need for sweeping reform. The Article proceeds in two parts. Part I maps the extent of this problem and argues that the weakest link in the societal response to sexual assault lies at the juncture between victim and law enforcement. …

No Path To Redemption: Evaluating Texas’S Practice Of Sentencing Kids To De Facto Life Without Parole In Adult Prison, Lindsey Linder, Justin Martinez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.