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Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin

Fordham Law Review

This Article argues that the increasingly prevalent critiques of the War on Drugs apply to other areas of criminal law. To highlight the broader relevance of these critiques, this Article uses as its test case the criminal regulation of gun possession. This Article identifies and distills three lines of drug war criticism and argues that they apply to possessory gun crimes in much the same way that they apply to drug crimes. Specifically, this Article focuses on: (1) race- and class-based critiques; (2) concerns about police and prosecutorial power; and (3) worries about the social and economic costs of mass …

Equity In American Education: The Intersection Of Race, Class, And Education, Pamela J. Meanes

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Public Space, Public Policy, And Public Understanding Of Race And Ethnicity In America: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Teresa A. Booker

University of Akron Press Publications

This interdisciplinary anthology contains a collection of materials, including personal accounts, analyses of historical and/or current events, and legal rulings told through the lens of various racial or ethnic groups living in the United States. Included are discussions of housing and neighborhoods, recreation and work, crime, education, and politics.

On Legal Scholarship: Questions For Judge Harry T. Edwards, Ronald K.L. Collins

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Ideal Objects: The Dehumanization And Consumption Of Racial Minorities In Joyce Carol Oates's Zombie, April D. Pitts

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This essay explores the relationship between race and ideal democratic citizenship in Joyce Carol Oates's novel, Zombie (1995). It argues that in Zombie, white social status is depicted as dependent upon the dehumanization and consumption of racial minorities.

Newsroom: Reeves Urges: 'Be Citizen Soldiers', Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Black, White, & Blue: An Analysis Of Implicit Racial Bias & The Fourth Amendment In The Criminal Justice System, Michael A. Baugh

Political Science: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Just two score and seven years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to leadership in a fight for racial justice and civil rights in America. As Dr. King famously remarked from the confines of a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Dr. King’s powerful words hold true today. Controversies, such as the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Eric Garner at the hands of officers tasked to protect them, seems to indicate that while progress has been made since the days of Dr. King, racial prejudice and discrimination remain …

Did The Curtailing Of The "Stop, Question, And Frisk" Policy Lead To An Increase In New York City's Homicide Rate In 2015?: An Examination Of The Relationship Between Stop-And-Frisk And Violent Crime Rates, Isabel P. Smith

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is an examination of the relationship between the New York Police Department's "Stop, Question, and Frisk" policy and the city's homicide rates. Using a historical analysis of NYC crime data as well as a cross-city comparison of homicide rates across the United States, I determine whether or not there is a consistent, causal relationship between the policy and the city's violent crime rates.

Probable Cause Revisited, William Ortman

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Cross-Sectional Challenges: Gender, Race, And Six-Person Juries, Jeannine Bell, Mona Lynch

Articles by Maurer Faculty

After two grand juries failed to indict the police officers that killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014, our nation has engaged in polarizing discussions about how juries reach their decision. The very legitimacy of our justice system has come into question. Increasingly, deep concerns have been raised concerning the role of race and gender in jury decision-making in such controversial cases. Tracing the roots of juror decision-making is especially complicated when jurors’ race and gender are factored in as considerations. This Article relies on social science research to explore the many cross-sectional challenges involved in the jurors’ decision …

Group Threat, Police Officer Diversity And The Deadly Use Of Police Force, Joscha Legewie, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Officer-involved killings and racial bias in policing are controversial political issues. Prior research indicates that (perceived) group threat related to political mobilization, economic competition, and the threat of black crime are is an important explanations for variations in police killings across cities in the United States. We argue that a diverse police force that proportionally represents the population it serves mitigates group threat and thereby reduces the number of officer-involved killings. Count models support our argument. They show that group threat is largely driven by the threat of black crime. Black-on-white homicides increase officer-involved killings of African Americans but black-on-black …

Thugs, Crooks, And Rebellious Negroes: Racist And Racialized Media Coverage Of Michael Brown And The Ferguson Demonstrations, Bryan Adamson

Faculty Articles

The article explores how the media constructs news, and offers extensive history on the adverse narrative media tropes about Black men since colonial newspapers. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis of news narratives and images, this article demonstrates how Ferguson accounts emphasized Brown’s deviance and chaos and disorder. After offering comparative analysis of White criminality and protest news narratives, the article presses upon the social effects of racist and racialized media narratives. The article examines the controversy through First Amendment free speech, hate crimes, and true threat principles as well as FCC regulation of broadcasting, and media ownership. While explicating the …

Further Thoughts On Race, American Law, And The State Of Nature: Advancing The Multiracial Paradigm Shift And Seeking Patterns In The Area Of Race And Law, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In his article, the author seeks to use philosophical theory - state of nature theory - as a way to understand American law and issues of race. This project, consistent with a recent trend in legal scholarship, seeks to uncover hidden meanings in law through historical analysis, cultural critique, or philosophical contemplation.

The author argues that there is a tendency for the dominant group to relate to racial minorities as if they were in the state of nature - i.e., a tendency to act as if they were in a situation without legal or moral constraints. The article examines this …

Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article argues that the increasingly prevalent critiques of the War on Drugs apply to other areas of criminal law. To highlight the broader relevance of these critiques, this Article uses as its test case the criminal regulation of gun possession. This Article identifies and distills three lines of drug war criticism and argues that they apply to possessory gun crimes in much the same way that they apply to drug crimes. Specifically, this Article focuses on: (1) race- and class-based critiques; (2) concerns about police and prosecutorial power; and (3) worries about the social and economic costs of mass …

Response To Keeping Cases From Black Juries: An Empirical Analysis Of How Race, Income Inequality, And Regional History Affect Tort Law, Jennifer Wriggins

Faculty Publications

Issues of race and racism in the U.S. torts system continue to deserve much more attention from legal scholarship than they receive, and Keeping Cases from Black Juries is a valuable contribution. Studying racism as it infects the torts system is difficult because explicit de jure exclusions of black jurors are in the past; race is no longer on the surface of tort opinions; and court records do not reveal the race of tort plaintiffs, defendants, or jurors. Yet it is essential to try and understand the workings of race and racism in the torts system. The authors pose a …

Values And Assumptions In Criminal Adjudication, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Response to Andrew Manuel Crespo's Systemic Facts: Toward Institutional Awareness in Criminal Courts proceeds in two Parts. In Part I, I argue that Crespo presents a compelling case for the importance of systemic factfinding to the task of criminal court judges. If, as a range of scholars has argued, criminal courts are increasingly serving a quasi-administrative function, then shouldn’t they at least be administrating accurately? Systemic Facts provides a novel account of how — with comparatively little institutional reform — courts might begin to serve as more effective administrators. However, in Part II, I also argue that Crespo’s account …

"Cerd-Ain" Reform: Dismantling The School-To-Prison Pipeline Through More Thorough Coordination Of The Departments Of Justice And Education, Lisa A. Rich

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In the last year of his presidency, President Barack Obama and his administration have undertaken many initiatives to ensure that formerly incarcerated individuals have more opportunities to successfully reenter society. At the same time, the administration has been working on education policy that closes the achievement gap and slows the endless flow of juveniles into the school-to-prison pipeline. While certainly laudable, there is much more that can be undertaken collaboratively among executive branch agencies to end the school-to-prison pipeline and the endless cycle of people re-entering the criminal justice system.

This paper examines the rise of the school-to-prison pipeline through …

Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article argues that the increasingly prevalent critiques of the War on Drugs apply to other areas of criminal law. To highlight the broader relevance of these critiques, the Article uses as its test case the criminal regulation of gun possession. The Article identifies and distills three lines of drug-war criticism, and argues that they apply to possessory gun crimes in much the same way that they apply to drug crimes. Specifically, the Article focuses on: (1) race- and class-based critiques; (2) concerns about police and prosecutorial power; and (3) worries about the social costs of mass incarceration. Scholars have …

Stops And Stares: Street Stops, Surveillance, And Race In The New Policing, Jeffrey Fagan, Anthony A. Braga, Rod K. Brunson, April Pattavina

Faculty Scholarship

The use of proactive tactics to disrupt criminal activities, such as Terry street stops and concentrated misdemeanor arrests, are essential to the "new policing." This model applies complex metrics, strong management, and aggressive enforcement and surveillance to focus policing on high crime risk persons and places. The tactics endemic to the "newpolicing"gave rise in the 1990s to popular, legal, political, and social science concerns about disparate treatment of minority groups in their everyday encounters with law enforcement. Empirical evidence showed that minorities were indeed stopped and arrested more frequently than similarly situated Whites, even when controlling for local social and …

A Conceptual Content Analysis Of 75 Years Of Diversity Research In Public Administration, Meghna Sabharwal, Helisse Levine, Maria J. D’Agostino

Publications and Research

Diversity is an important facet of public administration, thus it is important to take stock and examine how the discipline has evolved in response to questions of representative democracy, social equity, and diversity. This article assesses the state-of-the-field by addressing the following question: How has research on diversity in the field of public administration progressed over time? Specifically, we seek to examine how the focus of diversity has transformed over time and the way the field has responded to half a century of legislation and policies aimed at both promoting equality and embracing difference. We utilize a conceptual content analysis …

Place Matters: Contextualizing The Roles Of Religion And Race For Understanding Americans’ Attitudes About Homosexuality, Amy Adamczyk, Katherine A. Boyd, Brittany E. Hayes

Publications and Research

As laws and policies related to homosexuality have evolved, Americans' attitudes have also changed. Race and religion have been established as important indicators of feelings about homosexuality. However, researchers have given almost no attention to how county characteristics shape Americans' attitudes. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling techniques, we examine how personal characteristics and the religious and racial context of a county shape feelings about homosexuality drawing on data from the American National Election Survey and information about where respondents reside. We find that African Americans initially appear less tolerant than other racial groups, until we account for the geographical distribution of …

Renaissance Fair, Richey Piiparinen

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

As Cleveland moves forward as a city on the rise, we risk leaving too many behind. Creating solutions for greater equity may be our best chance at a sustainable future.

Blinding Prosecutors To Defendants’ Race: A Policy Proposal To Reduce Unconscious Bias In The Criminal Justice System, Sunita Sah, Christopher Robertson, Shima Baughman

Faculty Scholarship

Racial minorities are disproportionately imprisoned in the United States. This disparity is unlikely to be due solely to differences in criminal behavior. Behavioral science research has documented that prosecutors harbor unconscious racial biases. These unconscious biases play a role whenever prosecutors exercise their broad discretion, such as in choosing what crimes to charge and when negotiating plea bargains. To reduce this risk of unconscious racial bias, we propose a policy change: Prosecutors should be blinded to the race of criminal defendants wherever feasible. This could be accomplished by removing information identifying or suggesting the defendant’s race from police dossiers shared …

Stories Of The Trenton Six: Race And The Early Cold War In America, 1948 - 1953, Harry Roger Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This dissertation reveals the complex post war world, in the emerging Cold War era, with the intersecting disputed worlds of race and ideology through the lens of the Trenton Six case. It provides the reader with a glimpse of one city's story, but it enveloped the entire nation; as Americans attempted to make sense of their chaotic and complicated world, prior to the 1960s civil rights movement. This study explores the problem of race in the criminal justice system. Even as racial attitudes were liberalizing in the post war world, race still pervaded criminal justice proceedings in subtle and unsubtle …

Race, Gender, And Program Type As Predictive Risk Factors Of Recidivism For Juvenile Offenders In Georgia, Matheson Sanchez, Gang Lee

The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology

Race, gender and program type have shown to be effective predictors of future recidivism for juveniles. Previous research shows that minority juveniles offend and recidivate at a higher rate than white juveniles do. Previous research also shows that male juveniles offend and recidivate at a higher rate than female juveniles do. Past literature shows that juveniles who receive rehabilitative sanctions are less likely to recidivate that juveniles who receive punitive punishment. The current study aims to test these relationships for juveniles in Georgia, USA, utilizing a department of juvenile justice archival dataset (N = 12,030). Bivariate and multivariate analyses are …

Perspectives On The Evolution Of Hip-Hop Music Through Themes Of Race, Crime, And Violence, Kelsey B. Basham

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the role or race, crime, and violence as major themes in hip-hop music through existing academic literature. Utilizing the three major themes, this paper discusses the inherent ties of race, crime, and violence to the production of hip-hop music which can reflect broader social issues existing in American society over the time period from 1970-present day. Furthermore, these themes will be assessed for their activist oriented ability to suggest change in society for the primary groups affected by the issues contained in hip-hop lyrics. Over time, hip-hop, much like any artistic form, has undergone an evolution, producing …

Justice For The 1 Percent: A Corrupt Governor Stays Free, Those Who Should Have Never Been Jailed Die There, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Race And The Death Penalty: An Empirical Assessment Of First Degree Murder Convictions In Tennessee After Gregg V. Georgia, Hemant Sharma, John M. Scheb Ii, David J. Houston, Kristin Wagers

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Essays On The Economics Of Police Officer Discretionary Decisions, Huong Nguyen

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters studying police officer discretionary decisions on traffic stops and traffic violations. The decisions include whether to stop and search a vehicle, whether to write a ticket or a warning, the duration of stop, and the fine amount. The purpose of this research is to determine whether police officer discretion is affected by various factors other than the violation itself

The Effects Of Gender, Race, And Age On Judicial Sentencing Decisions, April Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has found significant effects of gender, race, and age on sentencing decisions made by state and local court judges (e.g. Johnson, 2003; Mustard, 2001; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998). The current study used criminal district court data from two counties in western North Carolina to further research of the effects of the aforementioned variables on sentencing. Using knowledge acquired from past studies, the hypotheses for the current study asserted that younger offenders, male offenders, and nonwhite offenders would be more likely to be found guilty of their offense and receive fines than their respective offender counterparts. The results …