Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Perceptions Of Citizens Of The Impact Of Community Policing In Two Ethnically Diverse, Low-Income Communities That Have National Safety Ratings Between 0% And 25% In San Diego County: A Phenomenological Study, Eric O'Neal

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to describe citizen perceptions of the impact of community policing in 2 selected, ethnically diverse, low-income communities that have national safety ratings between 0% and 25%. The study explored the 8 pillars of community policing: partnerships, problem solving, procedural fairness, proscribed scope, protection, professionalism, purpose, and principles and their impact on citizens’ perception of their local law enforcement agencies.

Methodology: The study was qualitative with a phenomenological approach to research.

Findings: Findings from this study revealed that examination of study participant interviews, observations, and artifacts resulted in 22 themes and 689 …

Criminalizing The Other: Exploring The Impact Of The Netherlands' Adaptation Of Prosecutorial Guidelines On Sentencing Disparities, Alia Nahra

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research explores the impact of the 2015 institution of prosecution guidelines in the Netherlands. Prior to this switch, the Openbaar Ministerie operated using a punishment point system, which provided a mathematical formula with which to decide sanctions. Though the motivation of this change was to make the overall system more efficient and enable individual prosecutors to consider each case in a customizable and more equitable form, this research demonstrates that the change has served instead as a perpetuator (and in some cases, facilitator) of the persistent ethnic and gender biases already at work in the Netherlands. The social and …

Opioid Policing, Barbara Fedders

Indiana Law Journal

This Article identifies and explores a new, local law enforcement approach to alleged drug offenders. Initially limited to a few police departments, but now expanding rapidly across the country, this innovation takes one of two primary forms. The first is a diversion program through which officers refer alleged offenders to community-based social services rather than initiate criminal proceedings. The second form offers legal amnesty as well as priority access to drug detoxification programs to users who voluntarily relinquish illicit drugs. Because the upsurge in addiction to —and death from—opioids has spurred this innovation, I refer to it as “opioid policing.” …

Are Police Obsolete? Breaking Cycles Of Violence Through Abolition Democracy, V. Noah Gimbel, Craig Muhammad

Cardozo Law Review

On February 5, 2018, Baltimore activists organized a successful "cease-fire weekend," during which no one was killed-and the cops were not to thank. Indeed, as community anti-violence organizers worked to cool hot feuds in order to prove that endless violence was not their destiny, the Baltimore Police Department was sinking ever-deeper into perhaps the most shocking police corruption scandal of the twenty-first century.

The stark contrast between ordinary city residents risking their safety to fight against violence in their community and a corrupt police force committing and propagating acts of violence in the microcosmic streets of Baltimore raises what may …

Prosecutorial Misconduct: Mass Gang Indictments And Inflammatory Statements, K. Babe Howell

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This Article examines inflammatory statements by prosecutors in the context of mass gang indictments. I contend that inflammatory remarks not only harm the justice system and defendants, particularly minorities, but also that, when prosecutors craft and repeat hyperbolic narratives about vicious gang wars, prosecutors may come to believe the narratives and become effectively blinded to the fact that these narratives are improper, unfair, and untrue. First, I review the professional rules, standards, and case law that prohibit. Then, drawing on press releases and trial transcripts from two mass gang indictments in New York City, I demonstrate how prosecution statements exaggerate …

Down To The Last Strike: The Effect Of The Jury Lottery On Criminal Convictions, Scott Kostyshak, Neel U. Sukhatme

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

How much does luck matter to a criminal defendant in a jury trial? We use rich data on jury selection to causally estimate how parties who are randomly assigned a less favorable jury (as proxied by whether their attorneys exhaust their peremptory strikes) fare at trial. Our novel identification strategy uniquely captures variation in juror predisposition using data unobserved by the econometrician but observed by attorneys. Criminal defendants who lose the “jury lottery” are more likely to be convicted than similarly-situated counterparts, with a significant increase (18-20 percentage points) for Black defendants. Our results are robust to alternate specifications and …

Pretext And Justification: Republicanism, Policing, And Race, Ekow N. Yankah

Cardozo Law Review

On April 4, 2015, Police Officer Michael Slager gunned down Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina with a cool that resembled target practice. Scott's name joined a heartbreaking list of men of color killed by unjustified police violence. The video of the incident also broadcast to the world the spectacular violence always lurking beneath the surface of daily interactions between police and men of color.

The "Black Lives Matter" movement has fiercely insisted Scott's death not be viewed as an isolated incident but understood as woven into the fabric of American policing. American policing harms individual people of color, …

Afrofuturism, Critical Race Theory, And Policing In The Year 2044, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"I Assumed Chicago Would Be In The Forefront": Comments On The Movement To End Prostitution With Survivor-Leader Brenda Myers-Powell, Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

For many years in the 2000’s, researcher Jody Raphael, teamed with prostitution-survivor Brenda Myers-Powell, undertook a myriad of speaking engagements in the Chicago metropolitan area, intended to raise awareness of the violence and coercion in the sex trade industry. Ten years ago, they were asked to make a video of their presentation. Recently, Dignity editors came across the video and asked for an update on the conversation. This piece is the result.

Reconceptualizing The Harms Of Discrimination: How Brown V. Board Of Education Helped To Further White Supremacy, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, literature has played a vital role in revealing weaknesses in law. The classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is no different. The long-revered work of fiction contains several key scenes that illuminate significant gaps in the analysis of one of our most celebrated decisions: Brown v. Board of Education, the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that state-mandated racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. In particular, the novel opens a pathway that enables its readers to visualize the full harms of white supremacy, which include …

The Intersection Of Race, Bond, And "Crimmigration" In The United States Immigration Detention System, Tremaine Hemans

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

The United States ("U.S.") Supreme Court's recent decision in Jennings v. Rodriguez' has potentially opened another avenue for people of color to become entangled in the U.S.' predatory immigration system, through the denial of bail hearings. Denial of periodic bond hearings ensures that many detainees in immigration facilities will be held indefinitely until these detainees' cases are adjudicated. In Jennings, the Court held that detained aliens do not have a right to periodic bond hearings even if they are detained for prolonged periods of time, due to the language of the mandatory and discretionary detention statutes at §§ 1225(b)(1)-(2) and …

Banning Solitary For Prisoners With Mental Illness: The Blurred Line Between Physical And Psychological Harm, Rosalind Dillon

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

More Color More Pride: Addressing Structural Barriers To Interracial Lgbtq Loving, Praatika Prasad

Fordham Law Review Online

Through an examination of State-supported racial structures, this Essay illustrates that even after the legalization of interracial and same-sex marriages, the State’s control over housing, education, and employment prospects impedes the formation of interracial LGBTQ relationships. This Essay suggests that reducing residential segregation can be a first step in dismantling structural barriers to interracial LGBTQ loving, as truly integrated housing would increase cross-racial contact, lead to better educational and employment outcomes, and give LGBTQ people of color a chance to improve their social capital. This, together with altering how issues of race are framed within the LGBTQ community, will help …

Disturbing Disparities: Black Girls And The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Leah A. Hill

Fordham Law Review Online

Recent scholarship on the school-to-prison pipeline has zeroed in on the disturbing trajectory of black girls. School officials impose harsh punishments on black girls, including suspension and expulsion from school, at alarming rates. The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reveals that one of the harshest forms of discipline—out of school suspension—is imposed on black girls at seven times the rate of their white peers. In the juvenile justice system, black girls are the fastest growing demographic when it comes to arrest and incarceration. Explanations for the disproportionate disciplinary, arrest, and incarceration rates …

Dying Constitutionalism And The Fourteenth Amendment, Ernest A. Young

Marquette Law Review

None

Eddie Murphy And The Dangers Of Counterfactual Causal Thinking About Detecting Racial Discrimination, Issa Kohler-Hausmann

Northwestern University Law Review

The model of discrimination animating some of the most common approaches to detecting discrimination in both law and social science—the counterfactual causal model—is wrong. In that model, racial discrimination is detected by measuring the “treatment effect of race,” where the treatment is conceptualized as manipulating the raced status of otherwise identical units (e.g., a person, a neighborhood, a school). Most objections to talking about race as a cause in the counterfactual model have been raised in terms of manipulability. If we cannot manipulate a person’s race at the moment of a police stop, traffic encounter, or prosecutorial charging decision, then …

The Resistance & The Stubborn But Unsurprising Persistence Of Hate And Extremism In The United States, Jeannine Bell

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Though the far right has a long history in the United States, the presidential campaign and then election of Donald Trump brought the movement out of the shadows. This article will analyze the rise in White supremacist activity in the United States-from well-publicized mass actions like the White supremacist march in Charlottesville in August 2017 to individual acts of violence happening since November 2016. This article focuses on contextualizing such incidents within this contemporary period and argues that overt expressions of racism and racist violence are nothing new. The article closes with a call to strengthen the current legal remedies …

Rigor And Relationships: The Positive Case For Integration In Schools And Neighborhoods, Rachel D. Godsil

Cardozo Law Review

This Essay first explores the current conditions of schools and neighborhoods and the impediments to achieving successful integration in schools- implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat. Second, the Essay then identifies the strategies that are being employed in some schools to overcome these impediments and create quality schools that educate all students in a just and effective manner. Finally, the Essay explains how integrated neighborhoods would be the most effective long-term solution to the stereotyping and biases that underlie racial injustices across the board.

Shared Deliberations: Learning From The Voices Of Social Justice Lawyers On Their Aspirations, Challenges And Roles, Ian Head

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lawyers in the U.S. who attempt to advocate for social justice issues, often on behalf of those communities most targeted by government institutions and oppressive legal systems, have unique perspectives into the challenges of using the law to create transformative change. This thesis examines the voices of over a dozen attorneys fighting not only on behalf of their clients, but also wrestling with how to best use a set of legal tools not meant for dismantling systems of power. Listening to how these legal advocates navigate their roles inside a system of laws created to consolidate rather than distribute power …

A Study Of Factors Influencing Hiring Decisions In The Context Of Ban The Box Policies, Ronald F. Day

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates whether NYC employers adhered to Ban the Box by removing the question about criminal history from employment forms, by refraining from inquiring about an applicant’s criminal record during the interview process, and by complying with other aspects of the policy. The study also documents employer perspectives on Ban the Box and on the hiring of individuals with criminal convictions, and examines whether more individuals with a criminal record were hired after the policy was implemented.

Using a mixed-methods approach, surveys were administered to companies in the nonprofit and private sectors, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with a …

Law School News: A Mandate For Change 01-24-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Boston's New Da Will Deliver Mlk Address 01-10-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Teaching Justice-Connectivity, Michael Pinard

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay conveys the importance of building in law students the foundation to recognize the various systems, institutions, and conditions that often crash into the lives of their clients, as well as the residents of the communities that are just outside law schools’ doors. It does so through proposing a teaching model that I call Justice-Connectivity. This model aims for students to understand and be humbled by the ways in which different institutions, systems, and strands of law converge upon, oppress, isolate, and shun individuals, families, and communities. The ultimate teaching lesson is that individuals, families, and communities are often …

Senate Bill 4: Police Officer's Opinions On Texas's Ban Of Sanctuary Cities, Megan E. Reed

Student Scholarship

For this Article, the Author interviewed six local law enforcement agencies in Texas regarding SB4. Based on those interviews and other research, this Article concludes that SB4 likely does not uproot and change Texas policing practices and asserts that SB4 may in fact be highly ineffective at improving resident safety, which was Texas lawmakers’ stated purpose for SB4. SB4 continues to have far reaching impacts, including concerns of racial profiling, victims and witnesses refusing to come forward due to fears of deportation, and damage to police officers’ reputations. Further, while some local law enforcement agencies claim they will not have …

The School Of Hard Knocks: Examining How Pennsylvania School Disciplinary Policies Push Black Girls Into The Criminal Justice System, Brazitte A. Poole

Duquesne Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Justice System Is Criminal, Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony

2020 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Racial Bias In Post-Arrest And Pretrial Decision Making: The Problem And A Solution, Joseph J. Avery, Joel Cooper

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

There is significant racial disparity in U.S. incarceration rates, with African Americans vastly overrepresented. Given that almost all criminal cases resolve through plea bargaining, a process that takes place between the poles of arrest and trial, if progress concerning racial disparity in incarceration rates is to be made, greater understanding of the post-arrest and pretrial (PAPT) period is necessary. What do we know about racial bias in PAPT decision making, and what can the psychology of prejudice teach us about it?

In this Article, we map the factors that are liable to lead individuals to disparate treatment decisions, and we …

A Review Of The Wrongful Convictions Reader: A Comprehensive Resource For Students, Faculty, And Practitioners, Stephanie Roberts Hartung

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

Professor Stephanie Roberts Hartung reviews The Wrongful Convictions Reader, a 2019 book by Russell D. Covey and Valena E. Beety.

The Structural Dimensions Of Race: Lock Ups, Systemic Chokeholds, And Binary Disruptions, Cedric Merlin Powell

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Disrupting traditional conceptions of structural inequality, state decision making power, and the presumption of Black criminality, this Essay explores the doctrinal and policy implications of James Forman, Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Locking Up Our Own, and Paul Butler’s evocative and transformative book, Chokehold. While both books grapple with how to dismantle the structural components of mass incarceration, state legitimized police violence against Black bodies, and how policy functions to reify oppressive state power, the approaches espoused by Forman and Butler are analytically distinct. Forman locates his analysis in the dynamics of decision-making power when African American officials wield power …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Innes, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Articles

No abstract provided.