Digital Commons Network^™

Abolition Of What?, Christopher Lewis, Adaner Usmani

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

This Article defends a structural theory of the brutality of the carceral state. We argue that American penal systems are destined to be inhumane, barring sweeping changes to the social and economic order of the United States; and that prison and police abolition are neither sufficient nor necessary to bring these kinds of changes about.

This theory stands on two premises. First, we defend The Principle of Less Eligibility, which holds that it is politically infeasible for capitalist democracies to permit the incentives to defy the law to exceed those to obey it. As we show, the Principle of Less …

Excessive Force In Prison, Sharon Dolovich

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Any time a correctional officer (CO) physically assaults someone in prison, their conduct demands an especially compelling justification and robust ex post scrutiny. Instead, governing Eighth Amendment doctrine almost entirely defers to COs’ own judgments as to the need for force. This highly deferential approach is especially ill advised given the institutional culture of the modern American prison, which systematically demonizes and dehumanizes people in custody and thus primes COs to use violence unnecessarily. Even a standard of “objective unreasonableness” would not suffice to prevent case outcomes from reflecting a callous indifference to the safety of people in prison. What …

Law In Inaction: The Origins And Implications Of Chronic Drug Law Underenforcement In One Southern County, Kay L. Levine, Elizabeth Griffiths, Joshua M. Hinkle, Volkan Topalli

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Common accounts of police and prosecutorial nonenforcement discretion tend to valorize individual declination choices as demonstrations of mercy and resource constraint. Simultaneously, these accounts critique blanket nonenforcement policies as being outside the bounds of executive authority. Both accounts fail to consider the origins and implications of nonenforcement decisions made by police officers and prosecutors in individual cases that, when taken together, amount to significant underenforcement of an otherwise valid law.

This Article fills the gap between these differing perspectives by empirically examining the hidden and habitual underenforcement of technically valid drug-free-zone (DFZ) laws in one Southern county. Data matching the …

Beyond Bars: Exploring Alternative Possibilities To Address Sexual And Gender Based Violence, Rachel Ensign Habliston

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Many people agree that the United States carceral system is flawed. However, it can be difficult to discuss alternative ways to address violence that do not involve incarceration. Aside from the carceral system, there are other pathways to accountability and healing. Exploring these pathways for perpetrators of heinous crimes, such as sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), is an overwhelming and under-reviewed endeavor. This Comment seeks to broaden perspectives about how society can hold people accountable for committing acts of SGBV by surveying progressive prosecution, restorative justice, and transformative justice as potential alternatives to the current carceral system. Part I provides …

Categorical Declinations & Democracy, Brenner M. Fissell

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The most contentious action taken by reform prosecutors has been the issuance of categorical declination policies. Opponents decry this as bureaucratic nullification of democratically enacted offenses, while the prosecutors themselves counter that they are responding to the will of their local electorate. Democracy claims, it appears, have taken center stage in this debate, and they are deployed by both sides. How should we think about democracy and categorical declinations? The most comprehensive scholarly work on this subject is a 2021 article by Professor Kerrel Murray. In this essay, I hope to continue the work begun by Murray, offering additional insights …

Evidence Of Unfairness: New York's 2020 Discovery Statute Reduced Fairness For Defendants, Victims, And Society, Hannah E. Meyers

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

To ensure fairness and safety for all citizens, it is crucial to evaluate the impact of criminal justice reforms. In this article, I argue that some recent statewide criminal justice reforms legislated with the avowed goal of making the criminal justice system fairer have had the opposite result. As a case study of this phenomenon, I focus on New York State’s discovery statute, which went into effect in January 2020. I detail specifically what the law changed and explain the profound impact of those changes on the functioning of local district attorneys’ offices.

I then analyze data showing a substantial …

Legislatures And Localized Resentencing, Ronald F. Wright, Kay L. Levine

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Recent legislation, exemplified in statutes from California and Washington, creates new methods for resentencing defendants in old cases. These laws place controlling authority for resentencing in the hands of local officials, especially local prosecutors, and invite variation at the county level.

While some new procedural channels for reducing the sentences of people convicted of past crimes are mandatory, in that they entitle certain defendants to resentencing if they were convicted of certain crimes or were subject to certain penalty enhancements that are no longer valid, other statutes create discretionary resentencing channels. In the discretionary channels, the chief local prosecutor has …

Second Look Myopia: State Sentencing Reform And The Local Prosecutorial Response, Alexandra Harrington

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

This Article advises caution against over-reliance on local prosecutors’ offices to effect second-look reforms and to filter cases worthy of review. Using the lens of New York’s recent second-look law, the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), I analyze the ways in which the local prosecutor can serve as a functional barrier to statewide implementation of sentencing reform. The New York State Legislature enacted the DVSJA—after advocacy from hundreds of directly impacted individuals, stakeholders, and organizations and after significant opposition from only the District Attorneys’ Association—to change the way the State sentences survivors of domestic violence. The DVSJA also allows …

County Prosecution And State Preemption: The Confusing Politics Of Criminal Legal Reform And Backlash, John Pfaff

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Urban reform prosecutors, who are generally elected at the county level, find themselves in a tricky political spot. On the one hand. most urban counties are in many ways “too big” for reformers: they include large numbers of suburban voters who generally dislike reform, in no small part because they are relatively unaffected by the decisions prosecutors make. On the other hand, these counties are also often “too small”: they lack the political power to resist efforts by conservative state legislatures and governors to rein in, if not outright remove, reformers. This Article examines both vulnerabilities. It first maps out …

Trauma-Informed Digital Health Interventions: A Scoping Review, Amelea Lowery

Public Health Theses

Background: Trauma exposure is a pervasive issue around the world and the impacts of trauma can be long lasting and detrimental to individual and population health outcomes. Trauma responses can influence and determine an individual or community’s approach in seeking supportive resources. Given the critical role of supportive resources and the prevalent use of technology and internet use, it is essential to understand how digital health interventions contribute to addressing trauma explicitly. This scoping review aims to explore the landscape of trauma-informed digital health interventions for adults, assess their outcomes, and identify their measurable impacts across various settings.Methods: A scoping …

Amending New Jersey’S Expungement Law To Reflect The Historical Treatment Of Juveniles: Juveniles Deserve A Second Chance, Jair D. Bodnar

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Trafficking In Persons And The International Criminal Court: Amending The Rome Statute To Include A Fifth Core Crime, Amber Joy Wiens

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Raising The Bar In Child Welfare Law, Diane M. Sumoski

SMU Law Review

This article explores the unique opportunities arising from child welfare law practice in clinical legal education. While training law students for lawyering in all practice areas, the clinic can also inspire experienced child welfare practitioners to raise the level of their practice. The article provides an overview of the child welfare practice in Texas, the various roles of lawyers in the system, the special training required for these lawyers, and how the lawyers are employed and paid. The article proposes that the clear impact of child welfare legal practice on clients, combined with its interdisciplinary complexity, creates an ideal combination …

Health Consequences Of Racial Disparity In Access To Abortion: A Systematic Review, Lacy M. Frye, Calvin Odhiambo

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Prior to the 2022 Dobbs decision, Black women already experienced negative maternal health outcomes at an alarmingly disparate rate in comparison to White women. Given that the Dobbs decision emboldens state power to enforce abortion restrictions or protections, there has been significant strides made in both directions. Nonetheless, within states where reproductive rights have been significantly eroded, the heightened abortion restrictions may compound the limited access that Black women previously had before Dobbs. This, in turn will exacerbate the already disparate negative maternal outcomes that Black women experience. However, research on the relationship between the lack of access to abortion …

Crm 3069 : Queer Criminology, Sociology, Anthropology, & Criminology

Approved Course Proposals

No abstract provided.

Crm 3049 : Victimology, Sociology, Anthropology, & Criminology

Approved Course Proposals

No abstract provided.

The Private Law Of Self-Help, João Marinotti

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Individuals regularly take steps to protect themselves, their property, and their broader legal interests. They carry pepper spray, have guard dogs, and install fences. Such measures are colloquially deemed methods of self-help. Yet, despite its ubiquity, self-help as a legal concept has been chronically understudied. Consequently, American private law is missing a doctrinally coherent and prescriptively useful framework for self-help. As a matter of legal theory, this conceptual void is problematic in and of itself; the doctrinal incoherence stemming from this analytical gap decreases the law’s stability and undermines its predictability.

But the concern is not merely theoretical. The magnitude …

เสรีภาพจากการกดขี่: การเสริมพลังคนพิการผู้ก้าวข้ามความรุนแรง, ณัฐกานต์ โนรี

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

การวิจัยเรื่อง “เสรีภาพจากการกดขี่: การเสริมพลังคนพิการผู้ก้าวข้ามความรุนแรง” มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อ (1) ศึกษาสถานการณ์ความรุนแรงต่อคนพิการในประเทศไทย (2) ศึกษาปัจจัยที่มีผลต่อการเสริมพลังคนพิการที่ประสบความรุนแรงในประเทศไทย และ (3) เสนอมาตรการในการป้องกันและแก้ไขปัญหาการเสริมพลังคนพิการที่ประสบความรุนแรงในประเทศไทย ใช้ระเบียบวิธีวิจัยแบบผสมผสาน โดยการวิจัยเชิงปริมาณเก็บข้อมูลด้วยแบบสอบถามจากเจ้าหน้าที่ในศูนย์บริการคนพิการของภาครัฐและองค์กรคนพิการ จำนวน 559 คน ด้วยการสุ่มตัวอย่างแบบง่าย เครื่องมือวิจัยเป็นแบบสอบถามที่ผู้วิจัยสร้างขึ้น (IOC = 0.802, Reliability = 0.958) วิเคราะห์ข้อมูลด้วยสถิติเชิงพรรณนาและการวิเคราะห์การถดถอยพหุคูณ โดยใช้ตัวแปรปัจจัยด้านการเสริมพลังคนพิการ ปัจจัยด้านนโยบาย ปัจจัยด้านการดำเนินคดี ปัจจัยด้านการคุ้มครอง ปัจจัยด้านการป้องกัน และปัจจัยด้านความเป็นหุ้นส่วน ในส่วนของการวิจัยเชิงคุณภาพ ดำเนินการสัมภาษณ์เชิงลึกโดยใช้แบบสัมภาษณ์กึ่งโครงสร้างกับผู้ให้ข้อมูลสำคัญซึ่งเป็นผู้เชี่ยวชาญ จำนวน 25 คน และกรณีศึกษาคนพิการหรือผู้ดูแลที่ก้าวข้ามความรุนแรง จำนวน 10 คน ข้อเสนอแนะจากงานวิจัย ได้แก่ ควรปรับปรุงกฎหมายให้ครอบคลุมการคุ้มครองคนพิการจากความรุนแรงทุกรูปแบบ แต่งตั้งผู้สนับสนุนสิทธิคนพิการ พัฒนามาตรฐานสถานดูแลภาคเอกชน จัดทำฐานข้อมูลกลาง ส่งเสริมการสร้างพื้นที่ปลอดภัย พัฒนาระบบเฝ้าระวังความรุนแรงในชุมชน สร้างความตระหนักรู้แก่สังคม จัดอบรมเสริมพลังให้คนพิการและครอบครัว พัฒนาคู่มือการปฏิบัติงาน และส่งเสริมงานวิจัยที่ใช้กรอบแนวคิดการผนวกรวมประเด็นคนพิการ

A Primer To Combat Sex Trafficking, Blanche Bong Cook

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Passing The Buck: The Perils Of Oklahoma V. Castro-Huerta, Adam Crepelle, Timothy Purdon, Brendan Johnson

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta upended federal Indian law by allowing states to prosecute crimes involving Indians committed in Indian country. Castro-Huerta created a concurrent jurisdiction over Indian country crimes involving non-Indians. While concurrent jurisdiction increases the number of law enforcement agents with jurisdiction, it also creates opportunities for those law enforcement agents to shirk responsibility. Neither state nor federal law enforcement is accountable to tribes, so Castro-Huerta is likely to create a pass the buck mentality among non-Indian law enforcement. Moreover, there is little to indicate expanding state authority over tribes will benefit Indians. In …

Tribes And Ai: Possibilities For Tribal Sovereignty, Adam Crepelle

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has permeated every facet of modern existence. Governments across the globe are exploring its applications and attempting to establish regulatory frameworks. Numerous scholars have proffered recommendations for governing AI at the local, national, and international levels. However, as is often the case, Indian tribes have been neglected in AI policy discussions. This oversight is significant because the 574federally recognized tribes are sovereigns with their own judicial, education, and healthcare systems. Due to their relatively small populations and geographic isolation, tribes stand to benefit significantly from the services AI can perform. Moreover, tribes are uniquely well suited to …

Tribal Law: It's Not That Scary, Adam Crepelle

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Tribal law is often presented in a negative light. Indeed, the Supreme Court's skepticism about tribal law has resulted in severe limitations on tribal jurisdiction. This Article challenges perceptions of tribal law by surveying tribal law. While tribal law does rely on tribal customs, tribal law is largely consistent with mainstream American law. Tribal laws are often modeled on state codes or the Restatement.

This Article contends tribal law mirrors western law for two primary reasons-efficiency and legitimacy. Regarding efficiency, borrowing a western law is easier than creating a law from scratch; plus, many laws are common across cultures. A …

The Effect Of Police Quota Laws, Stephen Rushin, Griffin Sims Edwards

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article examines the effect of state laws restricting the use of police quotas. Police quotas describe the establishment of a predetermined number of traffic stops, citations, or arrests that officers must make within a particular time period. Some police supervisors have historically used quotas to ensure adequate productivity by officers. However, critics argue that quotas incentivize officers to engage in unnecessary, and in some cases, unconstitutional, coercive behavior. Numerous states across the country have enacted laws banning or limiting the use of police quotas.

This Article analyzes a dataset of traffic and pedestrian stops from eleven law enforcement agencies …

The Importance Of Policing, Stephen Rushin

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article argues that, if effectively regulated, policing represents a fundamentally important social institution that advances the community interest in public safety, justice, equality, and the rule of law.

In recent years, a significant and growing body of legal scholarship has called for the shrinking of police responsibilities, the defunding of police budgets, or the complete abolition of local police departments. A countervailing body of scholarly literature has questioned the wisdom of some of these proposals, arguing that they could unintentionally make policing worse or have unintended public safety effects.

This Article enters this debate by affirmatively defending the importance …

The Criminalization Of Mental Illness And Substance Use Disorder: Addressing The Void Between The Healthcare And Criminal Justice Systems, Emily B. Egart

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

When We Need Someone To Blame: Officer Suicide, Justice, And The Felony Murder Rule In The Casey White Case, Mallory Sadler

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reprieves Return: Minnesota's Decision To Awaken The Reprieve, Mary Fee, Monica Shaffer

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of The Guilty Suspect: Confession, Narrative, And Political Assent, Susan L. Tanner

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Frsc 307-004: Crime Scene Investigation & Lab, Parmelee Kevin

Chemistry, Environmental and Forensic Science Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Scales For Participant Alliance With Recovery Coach (Sparc): Initial Development And Pilot Test, Amanda Fallin-Bennett, Martha Tillson, J. Matthew Webster, Carrie B. Oser, Jennifer Edwards Becan, Kevin Knight, Jeremy Byard, Michele Staton

Center on Drug and Alcohol Research Faculty Publications

Recovery coaches are individuals with lived experience with recovery from substance use disorder who typically engender a greater sense of trust than found with other types of healthcare providers. However, there currently are no validated tools that measure the connection between recovery coaches and their participants. The purpose of this study was to describe the initial development of the Scales for Participant Alliance with Recovery Coach (SPARC) to measure recovery coach connection or alliance, including initial psychometric analyses. Measurement development began with five scales of the Client Evaluation of Self Treatment (treatment participation, treatment satisfaction, rapport, peer support, and social …