Digital Commons Network^™

Lost In Translation: How The Criminal Justice System Fails Individuals With Autism, J.Mckenna Harris

Master of Arts in Human Services

Adults with autism spectrum disorder face significant challenges throughout the criminal justice system, from initial police contact through incarceration. This capstone examined how the core features of autism, literal language processing, difficulty reading social cues, sensory sensitivities, and executive function deficits, create vulnerabilities that legal professionals frequently misunderstand. The literature review revealed a consistent pattern: behaviors rooted in autism are routinely misinterpreted as signs of guilt, defiance, or lack of remorse. During interrogations, individuals with autism are highly susceptible to false confessions because they struggle with abstract legal language, tend to comply with authority figures, and cannot predict the consequences …

Criminalizing Difference: An Intersectional Analysis Of Disability In The Criminal Justice System, Rowan Eisleman

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research addresses the central question: How do individuals with disabilities intersect with the criminal justice system, and what systemic factors contribute to their overrepresentation and victimization? Despite over 61 million Americans having disabilities, there exists a significant gap in comprehensive scholarship examining disability-criminal justice intersections, particularly regarding how people with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience unique vulnerabilities as both offenders and victims. This study contributes to disability studies and criminology by providing a comprehensive intersectional analysis examining how disability compounds with race and gender to create compounded marginalization. This study conducted a comprehensive literature review, analyzing government statistics from …

Equality In Sentencing Mitigation, John B. Meixner Jr.

Fordham Law Review

As guilty-plea rates have skyrocketed, sentencing has become an increasingly important part of criminal procedure. With judges often wielding significant discretion at sentencing, a key question is how judges interpret mitigation: evidence about the defendant’s background or the case that supports a reduced sentence. Past empirical research—both experimental and in real-world cases—indicates that mitigation plays an important role in determining sentences. But does mitigation help everyone, or does it reinforce inequalities that frequently infect other areas of criminal procedure? Do low-income Black defendants with appointed counsel benefit from sentencing mitigation as much as wealthier White defendants with private attorneys? Do …

An Analysis Of Policies Impacting Ex-Offenders And The Barriers Created In Their Transition Into Society: A Qualitative Metasynthesis, Thomas A. Ayala

Theses & Dissertations

In 2018, more than six million people in the United States were under correctional supervision, including incarceration, probation, or parole, equivalent to 1 in 40 adults (Maruschak & Minton, 2020). While this reflects a decline from previous years, prison populations reversed course in 2022, increasing by 2% nationwide, with 36 states and federal facilities reporting higher inmate counts (Nellis, 2024). Since 1973, policy shifts have fueled the rise of mass incarceration (Nellis, 2021; O’Brien, 2020). According to the Pew Center, the United States remains a global outlier, holding 5% of the world’s population, but incarcerates 25% of the 9 million …

Public Defender Discretion, Alma Magaña

Articles

A focus of criminal legal system reform efforts has been the curtailment of police, prosecutorial, and judicial discretion, which has been criticized for its arbitrariness and its contribution to racial, class, and gender disparities. However, one system actor has largely escaped similar scrutiny: public defenders, who, by grant of authority from ethical rules of practice and Supreme Court jurisprudence, have significant decision-making authority in the cases of indigent persons charged with crimes.

This Article will, for the first time, explore the historical rationale for giving public defenders the power to make life-altering decisions for their clients. Specifically, it dissects the …

Red, White-, And Blue-Collar Crime: Federal Sentencing Practices Among White-Collar And Blue-Collar Offenders, Henna Judge

Fordham Law Review

Under the current federal sentencing regime, district courts exercise immense amounts of discretion when sentencing. Though strict adherence to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) was once mandatory, courts must now use these Guidelines as an advisory starting point and make a series of fact-specific determinations when sentencing a defendant. Though judicial discretion in this realm aids in preventing undue reliance on Guidelines-range recommendations that can lack nuance, it also invites bias.

In recent years, scholars and courts alike have called attention to a potential disparity in the way blue-collar and white-collar offenders are sentenced. This Note examines relevant …

Missing Children Discrimination, Itay Ravid, Tanisha Brown

Faculty Publications

The problem of missing children in America—many of whom are victims of crime—has haunted society for decades. In response, a range of laws and policies have emerged, culminating in the nationwide adoption of the AMBER Alert system in the early 2000s. While often hailed as a success, this Article reveals a sad truth: Not all children benefit equally from AMBER. In particular, missing Black children are systematically underserved by the system, which ultimately contributes to the disproportionate impact of the missing children crisis on Black communities. While this issue received limited scholarly attention, states have recently started recognizing it. In …

Deterring Prison Versus Police Civil Rights Violations: Legal Challenges, Public Policy, And Institutional Failures, Natalie Kemper

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

The status of incarcerated individuals falls categorically below that of non-incarcerated individuals in our society, yet most would agree they deserve protection from governmental abuses of power. This Note evaluates the current legal, institutional, political, and societal circumstances that contribute to the immense difficulties faced by individuals alleging civil rights violations under the Eighth Amendment, primarily through the avenue of U.S.C. § 1983. Due to similarities in civil rights claims, this Note compares the barriers faced by incarcerated plaintiffs to those encountered in police misconduct claims, highlighting key discrepancies that undermine accountability and deterrence.

A primary barrier is the significantly …

White Supremacy And The Legitimation Of Violence Against Women: Analyzing The History And Impact Of Vawa, Ember Jahn

Et Cetera

This article confronts the mainstream feminist narrative that white women first addressed patriarchal violence en mass in the 1970s. Instead, this article traces back to Black women who advocated against lynching and sexual violence in the late 1800s as the first attempt to address systemic violence against women. They engaged in womanism, or the fight for Black people’s right to experience safety and discover a sense of wholeness. Their efforts led to the proliferation of numerous movements in the 1900s. Despite how crucial their efforts were to the formation of the feminist movement; many white feminists remained hostile and engaged …

Disproportionate School Brutality Upon Black Children, Nicole Tuchinda

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Interest Convergence And The Racial Wealth Gap: Defusing Racism's Divide-And-Conquer Via Universal Basic Income, Palma Joy Strand, Nicholas A. Mirkay

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Inequality By Unnatural Selection: The Impact Of Tax Code Bias On The Racial Wealth Gap, Phyllis C. Tate

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

“A Plain Denial”: Reclaiming Equal Protection In American Juvenile Law, Addie C. Rolnick, David S. Tanenhaus, Justin Iverson, Danielle L. Silvestri

Seattle University Law Review

Juvenile courts are based on the premise that children are different from adults and should therefore be treated differently. Children may be treated more informally by courts, punished for different purposes, and brought before the court for different behaviors. Since In re Gault, the Supreme Court has been clear that there are limits to how different juvenile courts can be. Juveniles are entitled to many of the same procedural protections as adult criminal defendants, although the Court has preserved some procedural differences where it has determined that their benefit is outweighed by the need to preserve the informality, flexibility, …

Overcrowding The System: Rethinking Juvenile Justice In Washington State, Mckenna White

Seattle University Law Review

The recent crisis at Green Hill School highlights the detrimental consequences of severe overcrowding in Washington State’s Juvenile Rehabilitation system—a problem exacerbated by the implementation of the JR to 25 legislation. This Note argues that the juvenile rehabilitation system, which is currently struggling to manage a wide age range of offenders, necessitates a fundamental rethinking of juvenile justice practices. By examining neurological research indicating continued brain development into the mid-twenties, along with the high prevalence of trauma among justice-involved youth, this Note proposes the creation of a dedicated third system of care within the Department of Children, Youth, and Families …

Neurodiversity In The Courtroom: Expanding Jury Service Accessibility Beyond Physical Disability, Samantha L. Mabe

Seattle University Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act has required equal access to jury service for decades; however, efforts to accommodate jurors with disabilities have been slow to develop beyond some minor accommodations for physical disabilities. While neurodivergent people frequently struggle to navigate a world catered toward neurotypical people, jury service remains inaccessible for many neurodivergent people who need accommodations to attend trial and engage in jury deliberations. If courts and advocates do not consider how to develop accommodations to secure the service of neurodivergent jurors, they will miss out on the unique skillsets that neurodivergent people can bring to resolving disputes.

Disabled …

Adjudicating Atrocity: Reading Hitesh Verma V State Of Uttarakhand As A "Landmark" Case In The Judicial Discourse On Caste Violence, Tejaswi Chhatwal

Socio-Legal Review

This article critically examines the Supreme Court’s judgment in Hitesh Verma v State of Uttarakhand (2020) and argues for reading it as a “landmark trial” in the judicial undoing of reform—namely, the statutory changes introduced by the 2016 Amendment to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989. Existing socio-legal scholarship on atrocity jurisprudence has shown that the judicial understanding of caste violence and doctrinally instituted evidentiary standards have historically operated to invisibilise caste from crime’s framework. As a result, most instances of caste-based discrimination and violence have not been named as offences of “atrocity” under the …

Whose Right(S)?: Civil Rights Impact Of Cultural Conflicts In The Curriculum, S. David Mitchell

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Opponents of anti-woke legislation have challenged the presumption that the topics being taught are divisive or designed to indoctrinate students with a liberal or Left leaning ideology. Instead, they argue that these topics tell the unvarnished history of the United States. Furthermore, opponents have also challenged the asserted legality and validity of anti-woke legislation, arguing that the legislation infringes upon the First Amendment, specifically students’ and teachers’ academic freedom, students’ right to learn, and parents’ right to direct and control the education of their children. Unlike other controversial topics such as sexual education, which are taught in courses that …

Generative Suspicion And The Risks Of Ai-Assisted Police Reports, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Northwestern University Law Review

Police reports play a central role in the criminal justice system. Many times, police reports exist as the only official memorialization of what happened during an incident, shaping probable cause determinations, pretrial detention decisions, motions to suppress, plea bargains, and trial strategy. For over a century, human police officers wrote the factual narratives that shaped the trajectory of individual cases and organized the entire legal system.

This practice is about to change with the creation of AI-assisted police reports. Today, with the click of a button, large language models (LLMs), a type of generative AI using predictive text capabilities, can …

Making Youth Matter, Kimberly Ambrose

Washington Law Review

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States. The harm caused by this public health crisis falls disproportionately on Black and Brown youth. While it is broadly accepted that children are less blameworthy than adults for their criminal behavior, what does this mean when they have access to and use guns? The Supreme Court held that youth matters when juveniles face life without parole sentences because children are different from adults—they fail to appreciate risks and consequences; are more impulsive; more susceptible to peer and family influence; less able to remove themselves …

Another Broken Promise: The Mmiwg2s Crisis And The Violation Of The Federal Indian Trust Obligation, Marley Forest

Washington Law Review

Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people go missing and are murdered at rates nearly ten times the national average in the United States. This disproportionate epidemic of violence has been labeled the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S) crisis. Several factors exacerbate this crisis. First, European colonizers used violence against Native people, especially women and Two-Spirit people, as a tactic of control and domination since first contact in the 1600s. Second, nearly two hundred years of legislative actions and case law have effectively stripped Native Nations of all criminal jurisdictional power over crimes committed on their land …

Prosecutor Transparency Project: Racial Disparities Study (Washtenaw County, Michigan), Grady Bridges, J. J. Prescott

Law & Economics Working Papers

This report investigates and estimates racial disparities in prosecutorial decision-making in the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office (WCPO) from 2017 to 2022. The analysis relies on currently available data resources at the WCPO and examines decision-making at four different junctures in the prosecutorial process: 1) case approval (i.e., warrant authorization) and charge selection, 2) habitual-offender designation (under Michigan law), 3) plea bargaining, and 4) diversion and deferral opportunities. Racial disparities appear most visibly at the earliest stages of the criminal justice process, with People of Color substantially overrepresented in the warrant requests the WCPO receives from law enforcement. The data further …

Reasoning From Injustice, Robert L. Tsai

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In a series of lectures at Yale Law School, the Harvard political theorist Judith Shklar critiqued leading models of justice as overly abstract and lacking a realistic account of the social dynamics that perpetuate injustice. In this essay, Professor Tsai builds on Shklar’s account of injustice as a social phenomenon by offering a structural reading of key literary texts that explore the nature of legal injustice—from the Book of Job to Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave. A close reading of these texts permits us to flesh out Shklar’s observations and “give injustice …

(Re)Birth Of A Nation: Reconstruction’S Unfinished Business, Zanita E. Fenton

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The irony, alluding to the title of the 1915 silent movie Birth of a Nation, seeks to make conspicuous the counter-stories that more authentically account for the “birth” and development of American society. Ku Klux Klan-sponsored propaganda designed to evoke hyper-racist fearmongering and perpetuate sexual paternalism over White women, the plot from Birth of a Nation reflects the paradigmatic race-bait: relentless pursuit of a White woman by a Black man. This storyline was fictionalized, culturally unrealistic and deliberately omitted the very real sexual exploitation of Black women and girls. Birth of a Nation parallels Constitutional history that marginalizes supplemental …

The Role Of Implicit Bias In Police Citizen Interactions - A Historical Review And Policy Recommendations, Catherine Anne Liedman, Ziwei Qi

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of implicit bias on police-citizen interactions, contributing to racial disparities in stops, arrests, and the use of force. While explicit racism has declined since the Civil Rights Era, unconscious stereotypes continue to influence law enforcement decisions. Research highlights that Black individuals experience higher rates of police encounters and fatal force compared to White individuals, a pattern not fully explained by crime rates but rather by systemic and historical biases within policing institutions. Efforts to address implicit bias, such as diversity training, have shown limited long-term effectiveness. Instead, meaningful reform requires structural changes, including improved …

The “Founder’S Gaze”: How The Fourth Amendment Is A Surveillance Technology That Enables Ai To Scale Control Over The Subaltern, Diego H. Alcalá Laboy

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Much has been written about the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications and how the current Fourth Amendment law has been unable to mitigate the privacy harm that these tools produce. This article explores how the development and usage of AI and machine learning models is dependent on the originalism principles of Fourth Amendment Law. Utilizing Critical Surveillance Studies and Anticolonial Theory, I posit that the Fourth Amendment is a surveillance technology that categorizes conduct, persons, and places to impose the material conditions for the subjugation of historically minoritized communities within the United States. Furthermore, this article explores …

Organizing For Abolition In Ice Custody, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

The final Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) detainees were released from the Irwin County Detention Center in early September 2021.² A court did not order the end of ICE detention at Irwin. A social movement, led by people detained at Irwin, had a pronounced impact on the epistemological landscape and changed both normative principles and public opinion.³ Those detained at Irwin organized and acted to create new understanding of law and protect their rights in ways that courts and legislatures could not. This Essay tells the story of that demosprudential project; a dialectic between legal elites and people …

The U.S. Drug Policy Hamster Wheel: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Seattle’S New Drug Ordinance, Hallie Conyers-Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

The author critically examines Seattle’s new drug ordinance using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to reveal how legislative language influences the policy's actual effect. Although the ordinance claims to prioritize diversion and community health, the use of permissive language such as “may” and “shall” grants broad discretionary power to law enforcement and undermines the stated intent. The author situates the ordinance within a broader historical context, highlighting how drug policy in the United States has consistently been shaped by racialized and stigmatizing narratives. Additionally, the author argues that meaningful reform requires reframing the discourse around substance use to support public health …

A New Exclusionary Rule To Protect Bodily Integrity And Discourage Pretext Stops, Josephine Ross

Seattle University Law Review

The author proposes a novel state-level exclusionary rule to reduce racial profiling and protect bodily autonomy during police encounters. The current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence fails to deter pretextual stops and frisks because the exclusionary rule often turns on officer fault and "good faith," allowing racially motivated practices to go unchecked. As federal rollbacks on diversity and data collection hinder efforts to track racial bias, the author argues for a statutory evidentiary rule that automatically excludes drug evidence found during (1) traffic stops, (2) pat-downs for weapons, and (3) consent searches, regardless of an officer’s intent or the legality of the …

Navahine V. HawaiʻI Dept. Of Transportation: The Keiki Will Lead Us, Catherine Smith

Seattle University Law Review

The author analyzes the landmark case Navahine v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, which culminated in the world’s first constitutional climate settlement. Catherine Smith, serving as an expert for the youth plaintiffs, situates the case within Hawaiʻi’s legal tradition of prioritizing children’s rights and intergenerational equity. She explores the evolution of children’s constitutional protections, contrasting Hawaiʻi’s progressive jurisprudence with the dominant adult-centric legal framework on the mainland. She critiques four recurring analytical missteps in U.S. courts that marginalize children’s interests and highlights Hawaiʻi’s public trust doctrine and cultural values, such as the Aloha Spirit, as models for addressing climate-related harms. …

Tribal Sovereignty And The Limits Of Federal Evidence: Authenticating Indian Status In United States V. Harper, Anthony J. Shirey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In United States v. Harper, the Tenth Circuit reversed a conviction for violent crimes committed in Indian Country because the government failed to provide admissible evidence proving that the defendant was an “Indian” under federal law. At first glance, the ruling appears to turn on a technical evidentiary issue concerning the exclusion of a tribal membership verification letter under the business records exception. Yet the case reveals something deeper: a jurisdictional framework that conditions the recognition of tribal identity on federal evidentiary norms, and in doing so, limits the functional sovereignty of tribal governments in federal courts. This Note seeks …