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Police Ignorance And Mistake Of Law Under The Fourth Amendment, Eang Ngov

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Collateral Consequences For Justice-Involved Youth: A Model Approach To Reducing The Number Of Collateral Consequences, Jennica Janssen

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

Collateral consequences—stigma and disadvantages individuals face after becoming entangled in the legal system—for justice­involved youth differ by jurisdiction and number in the thousands. Although the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) advocated for the reduction of juvenile collateral consequences over five years ago, after an initial surge in activism, the movement lost momentum. The Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice and several non-profit, public interest law firms, continue to advocate for the clarification of juvenile collateral consequences and the elimination of specific sanctions. This Note recognizes the importance of gathering juvenile collateral …

How Can I Reconcile With You When Your Foot Is On My Neck: The Role Of Justice In The Pursuit Of Truth And Reconciliation, Olwyn Conway

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In Ferguson, a wound bleeds. For 108 days, we have been in a state of prolonged and protracted grief.... We have had no choice but to cling together in hope, faith, love and indomitable determination to capture that ever-escaping reality of justice ... we find ourselves reinjured, continually heartbroken, and robbed of even the remote possibility of judicial resolution. For 108 days, we have continuously been admonished that we should "let the system work," and wait to see what the results are. The results are in. And we still don'thavejustice. . . . We, altogether, bound up in a system …

The Habitual Offenders, Beth Shelburne Storr

All ETDs from UAB

The Habitual Offenders is a work of literary journalism, written as a piece of first-person creative nonfiction. The collection of chapters explores a specific class of prison inmates in Alabama, sentenced to life without parole under a three strikes law. Major themes include fairness and disparity in the criminal justice system, politics, race and the community fallout from mass incarceration. This work reflects writing traditions from both investigative/narrative journalism and personal memoir.

How And Why Is The American Punishment System "Exceptional"?, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Anyone interested in American criminal justice has to wonder why we have so many more people in prison—in absolute as well as relative terms—than the western half of the European continent, the part of the world most readily comparable to us. This book, consisting of eleven chapters by eminent criminal law scholars, criminologists and political scientists, provides both a detailed look at how U.S. punishment is different and an insightful analysis of why that might be so. While many chapters in the book describe previously declared positions of the authors, there is also much that is new in the book, …

The Consensus Myth In Criminal Justice Reform, Benjamin Levin

Publications

It has become popular to identify a “consensus” on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This Article argues that the purported consensus is much more limited than it initially appears. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society.

The Article maps two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of criminal law: (1) the quantitative approach (what I call the “over” frame); and …

Cyber Security And Criminal Justice Programs In The United States: Exploring The Intersections, Brian K. Payne, Lora Hadzhidimova

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The study of cyber security is an interdisciplinary pursuit that includes STEM disciplines as well as the social sciences. While research on cyber security appears to be central in STEM disciplines, it is not yet clear how central cyber security and cyber crime is to criminal justice scholarship. In order to examine the connections between cyber security and criminal justice, in this study attention is given to the way that criminal justice scholars have embraced cyber crime research and coursework. Results show that while there are a number of cyber crime courses included in criminal justice majors there are not …

Dangerous Defendants, Sandra G. Mayson

Scholarly Works

Bail reform is gaining momentum nationwide. Reformers aspire to untether pretrial detention from wealth (the ability to post money bail) and condition it instead on statistical risk, particularly the risk that a defendant will commit crime if he remains at liberty pending trial. The bail reform movement holds tremendous promise, but also forces the criminal justice system to confront a difficult question: What statistical risk that a person will commit future crime justifies short-term detention? What about lesser restraints, like GPS monitoring? Although the turn to actuarial risk assessment in the pretrial context has engendered both excitement and concern, the …

The Scale Of Misdemeanor Justice, Megan T. Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson

Scholarly Works

This Article seeks to provide the most comprehensive national-level empirical analysis of misdemeanor criminal justice that is currently feasible given the state of data collection in the United States. First, we estimate that there are 13.2 million misdemeanor cases filed in the United States each year. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, this number is not rising. Both the number of misdemeanor arrests and cases filed have declined markedly in recent years. In fact, national arrest rates for almost every misdemeanor offense category have been declining for at least two decades, and the misdemeanor arrest rate was lower in 2014 than …

Racial Character Evidence In Police Killing Cases, Jasmine Gonzales Rose

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is facing a twofold crisis: police killings of people of color and unaccountability for these killings in the criminal justice system. In many instances, the officers’ use of deadly force is captured on video and often appears clearly unjustified, but grand and petit juries still fail to indict and convict, leaving many baffled. This Article provides an explanation for these failures: juror reliance on “racial character evidence.” Too often, jurors consider race as evidence in criminal trials, particularly in police killing cases where the victim was a person of color. Instead of focusing on admissible evidence, jurors …

Reading Between The Crimes: Online Media’S Representation Of Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander People’S Interaction With The Criminal Justice System In Post-Apology Australia, Jonathan Cannon

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Australian research confirms that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience high levels of social inequality, racism and injustice. Evidence of discrimination and inequality is most obvious within the criminal justice system where they are seriously over-represented. The Australian news media plays a large part in reinforcing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inequality, stereotypes and racist ideology within specific situations such as the Northern Territory Emergency Response and the Redfern riots. This study widens the scope from how the media reports a single criminal justice event to how the media reports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s interaction with the …

The Culture Of Misdemeanor Courts, Jessica A. Roth

Articles

The misdemeanor courts that preside over the majority of criminal cases in the United States represent the “front porch” of our criminal justice system. These courts vary in myriad ways, including size, structure, and method of judicial appointment. Each also has its own culture – i.e., a settled way of doing things that reflects deeper assumptions about the court’s mission and its role in the community – which can assist or impede desired policy reforms. This Article, written for a Symposium issue of the Hofstra Law Review, draws upon the insights of organizational culture theory to explore how leaders can …

Why Not Believe Women In Sexual Assault Cases?: An Engagement With Professors Tuerkheimer, Colb, And Many Others, Dan Subotnik

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Race, Drugs, And Sentencing: A Quantitative Analysis Of Sentencing Outcomes For Federal Cocaine And Methamphetamine Drug Offenses, Makeela Johari Wells

Theses and Dissertations

For decades, the United States has fought a “War on Drugs” with no success. This war has led to substantial increases in the number of individuals incarcerated in the United States prison system. The following dissertation investigates the impact of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (FSA 2010) on sentencing decisions for crack and powder cocaine offenders sentenced in the federal system. The FSA 2010 is a federal policy that reduced the crack-to-powder cocaine quantity from 100-to1 to 18-to-1 in an effort to reduce racial/ethnic disparity in sentencing associated with harsh penalties. Specifically, I examined federal crack cocaine and powder …

The Perceptions And Attitudes Of Hispanics Toward Law Enforcement Officers, Brittany N. Pugh

Honors Theses

Relationships between racial / ethnic minorities and law enforcement officers in the United States have long been a topic of concern. Given that Hispanics represent the largest racial / ethnic minority population in the United States, the nature of their collective and individual relationships with law enforcement is a topic worthy of empirical examination. Surprisingly, however, there is limited research specifically focusing upon the beliefs, perceptions and attitudes of Hispanics regarding law enforcement officers. This exploratory study examines the beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes of 101 Hispanics in South central Mississippi toward local law enforcement agencies and officers. Furthermore, the study …

Does A Criminal Justice Degree Produce Law Enforcement Officers?, Bryan Keith Murray

Theses and Dissertations

Police departments are being asked to diversify their ranks in a job field dominated by White males. Hispanics are predicted to be the majority-minority by 2043, few studies were conducted to explore whether Hispanic students majoring in criminal justice will pursue a career in law enforcement agencies upon graduation. Therefore, it is necessary and important to investigate the willingness of Hispanic students perusing a career in law enforcement agencies and what kind of factors behind this pursuit. This research anonymously surveyed 203 students currently enrolled in a four-year Hispanic university. Gender and the liberalizing effect served as the independent variables. …

Learning Behind Bars, Anneke Wind

The Voice

No abstract provided.

Judges, Racism, And The Problem Of Actual Innocence, Stephen J. Fortunato Jr.

Maine Law Review

The facts and data are in and the conclusion they compel is bleak: the American criminal justice system and its showpiece, the criminal trial, harbor at their core a systemic racism. For decades, criminologists, law professors, sociologists, government statisticians, and others have been collecting and collating data on crime, punishment, and incarceration in the United States. These intrepid scholars have looked at crime, criminals, and the justice system from all angles—the race of defendants and victims; the relationship of poverty to criminality; severity of crime; severity of punishment; incarceration rates for different racial groups; sentencing and sentence disparities; and so …

Crisp-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Csqca) And Criminology, Belinda L. Parker

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This article presents Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA; Ragin, 1987, 2000) as a useful methodological approach for criminological research. The aim is to introduce QCA’s logic and assumptions and a step-by-step guide to its application of crisp-set QCA using an illustrative hypothetical example. While QCA is a relatively new method and not widely used within criminological research thus far, it offers a unique approach that is particularly well suited to the field. This article is intended to serve as an introduction to those researchers interested in QCA and to demonstrate how they may incorporate it into their research."

Employment Pathways: How Former Offenders Navigate To Employment, Breanne Pleggenkuhle, Alaina Bearsby Steele, Elle Gray Teshima

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Employment is one of the most critical dimensions of reintegration, and much research documents the barriers formerly incarcerated persons experience in seeking out steady work. However, most offenders are ultimately successful in obtaining some form of employment. Less research discusses how offenders manage these barriers or examines the practice by which offenders navigate employment pathways, and even less examines whether particular offense categories further challenge the process. The current research utilizes qualitative data to examine the methods by which ex-offenders seek out and obtain employment, with an emphasis on the function of self-motivating practices, access to services, and the utilization …

“Losing The Humanity Of The Street”: Retired Police Officer Narratives Of The Evolution Of Low-Level Enforcement In New York City, Megan Welsh

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Low-level enforcement activities such as pedestrian and traffic stops, the issuance of criminal court summonses (tickets or citations), and misdemeanor arrests comprise the vast majority of police-citizen encounters relative to the policing of more serious, felony-level offenses. The complexities of these activities – particularly from the perspectives of the police officers who carry them out – have received relatively little scholarly attention. In an effort to more fully understand the nuances of low-level enforcement, in particular how such activities have changed over time and how police officers have experienced such changes, in-depth interviews were conducted with a small sample of …

Forrest Stuart, Down, Out, And Under Arrest: Policing And Everyday Life In Skid Row, Jordan Denton

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Aggressive crime control strategies such as stop-and-frisk and poverty governance bring forth contentious debates on their impact. Proponents argue the policies are needed to combat crime, while opponents contend they are oppressive, harmful, and discriminatory. It is rare in these discussions that the perspectives of the control agents and the public impacted by the policies are simultaneously engaged. Forrest Stuart in his book Down, Out, and Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row fills this gap using ethnographic and historical data to depict how poverty governance impacts the everyday interactions of Skid Row residents, police, and community organizations. …

‘It Just Be Like That’:Young Men’S And Women’S Attributions Of Negative Sexual Behavior, Christopher W. Mullins, Daniel R. Kavish

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This paper provides an examination of the role that male peer support plays in negative sexual attitudes and behaviors vis-àvis women. Drawing on semi-structured interview data collected from at risk high school students in an urban Midwestern town, we are able to qualitatively explore attitudes, behaviors, and experiences within this group of young men and women as they relate to negative sexual behaviors. We integrate routine activites theory with a male peer support theory of violence to to obtain a more holistic view of negative sexual behaviors. Male peer support models provide us with a theoretical explanation of the variation …

Out Of The Prison And Onto The Streets: The Trafficking Of Incarcerated Women (A Trans-Disciplinary Media Research Project), Mei-Ling Mcnamara

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Women are being actively targeted for the sex trafficking trade within US prisons and are recruited by a network of fellow inmates who are given "finders fees" for supplying victims. In prisons from Florida to North Carolina, Ohio to Massachusetts, women are promised housing and food in exchange for work upon release but instead are deceived and prostituted for the human trafficking trade. Some traffickers stalk their victims through public-access profiles from statewide prison websites, then groom them over months through correspondence and phone calls.

Inside the largest women’s prison in the United States, the Florida Lowell Correctional Institution, officers …

Social Class And The Establishment Of The London Metropolitan Police Force, Michelle C. Zachary

University Honors Theses

This research compiles information pertaining to the discourse surrounding the study of class-based systems as it relates to the establishment of our modern policing systems. Focus is on the London Metropolitan Police Force, est. 1829. Analysis of a collection of information from the fields of sociology, history, criminology, and anthropology revealed that there is an undeniable relationship between class structures in society and systems of social control. From there, two main sociological theories; conflict and consensus, are used to examine the relationship between the London Metropolitan Police and the class systems of England in the early-mid 1800's.

Defense Counsel And Public Defence, Eve Brensike Primus

Book Chapters

Public-defense delivery systems nationwide are grossly inadequate. Public defenders are forced to handle caseloads that no one could effectively manage. They often have no funding for investigation or expert assistance. They aren’t adequately trained, and there is little to no oversight of their work. In many jurisdictions, the public-defense function is not sufficiently independent of the judiciary or the elected branches to allow for zealous representation. The result is an assembly line into prison, mostly for poor people of color, with little check on the reliability or fairness of the process. Innocent people are convicted, precious resources are wasted, and …

Rationing Criminal Justice, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

Michigan Law Review

Of the many diagnoses of American criminal justice’s ills, few focus on externalities. Yet American criminal justice systematically overpunishes in large part because few mechanisms exist to force consideration of the full social costs of criminal justice interventions. Actors often lack good information or incentives to minimize the harms they impose. Part of the problem is structural: criminal justice is fragmented vertically among governments, horizontally among agencies, and individually among self-interested actors. Part is a matter of focus: doctrinally and pragmatically, actors overwhelmingly view each case as an isolated, short-term transaction to the exclusion of broader, long-term, and aggregate effects. …

Judicial Politics And Decisionmaking: A New Approach, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie

Vanderbilt Law Review

In twenty-five different experiments conducted on over 2,200 judges, we assessed whether judges' political ideology influences their resolution of hypothetical cases. Generally, we found that the political ideology of the judge matters, but only very little. Across a range of bankruptcy, criminal, and civil cases, we found that the aggregate effect of political ideology is either nonexistent or amounts to roughly one quarter of a standard deviation. Overall, the results of our experiments suggest that judges are not "politicians in robes."

Book Review: James Duane, You Have The Right To Remain Innocent: What Police Officers Tell Their Children About The Fifth Amendment, Cecily J. Mullins

ConLawNOW

In this essay, the student author reviews the book You Have the Right to Remain Innocent by James Duane, which emphasizes the inherent risks of speaking to the police, regardless of whether or not you have something to hide.

When An Appeal Goes Wrong: A “Criminal Justice Nightmare”, David R. Dow, Jeffrey R. Newberry

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.