Law Commons^™

The Chow: Depictions Of The Criminal Justice System As A Character In Crime Fiction, Marianne Wesson

Publications

Having been honored by a request to contribute to a Symposium honoring my talented friend Alafair Burke, I composed this essay describing the various ways the criminal justice system has been depicted in English-language crime fiction. This survey, necessarily highly selective, considers portrayals penned by writers from Dickens to Tana French. Various dimensions of comparison include the authors’ apparent beliefs about the rule of law (from ridiculously idealistic to uncompromisingly cynical), the characters’ professional perspectives (private detective, police officer, prosecutor, defense lawyer, judge, victim, accused), and the protagonists’ status as institutional insiders or outsiders or occupants of the uncomfortable middle. …

Fighting Fines & Fees: Borrowing From Consumer Law To Combat Criminal Justice Debt Abuses, Neil L. Sobol

University of Colorado Law Review

Although media and academic sources often describe mass incarceration as the primary challenge facing the American criminal justice system, the imposition of criminal justice debt may be a more pervasive problem. On March 14, 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) requested that state chief justices forward a letter to all judges in their jurisdictions describing the constitutional violations associated with the illegal assessment and enforcement of fines and fees. The DOJ's concerns include the incarceration of indigent individuals without determining whether the failure to pay is willful and the use of bail practices that result in impoverished defendants remaining in …

Bail Reform In Colorado: A Presumption Of Release, Joshua J. Luna

University of Colorado Law Review

Interest in bail reform has ebbed and flowed in the United States since the 1960s. Recently, a condemning look at bail administration and pretrial detention across various jurisdictions has pushed bail reform to the policy forefront at both the national and state levels. In 2013, Colorado's General Assembly reformed its bail statute to decrease reliance on monetary bail and promote pretrial services programs in an attempt to prevent unnecessary pretrial detention of low-income defendants who present low risks for flight and threat to community safety. This reform was a much-needed step in the right direction. But the new bail statute …

Colorado's About Face: Mechanics, Progress, And Challenges Facing Veterans Trauma Courts In Colorado, Karthik A. Venkatraj

University of Colorado Law Review

The nature of asymmetrical warfare-defined by improvised explosive devices, indirect fire attacks, and suicide attackshas significantly altered the patterns of post-service challenges faced by veterans. Dealing with the unseen wounds of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) that result from this type of combat has been one of the most difficult leadership challenges of my career as a young officer.

Although our nation's medical response to PTSD and TBI is well documented, the judicial challenges are not as apparent. Most recently, our nation has responded to this challenge with an alternative court, the Veterans Trauma Court (VTC), …

The Wages Of Genetic Entitlement: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly In The Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

This Essay analyzes flaws and assumptions in the recently enacted Rape Survivor Child Custody Act. The RSCCA offers a window into the problems with defining parenthood in terms of genes instead of caretaking relationships, which is what led to the problem of rapists being able to claim parental rights in the first place. Rather than address that underlying defect in family law, the statute attempts a solution that might work if all rapists were strangers, all rapists were men, and all rape victims were women, but glosses over complicated problems of violence and coercion in relationships. Despite this failure to …

Firearms In The Family, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article considers firearms prohibitions for domestic violence offenders, in light of recent Supreme Court decisions and the larger, national debate about gun control. Unlike other scholarship in the area, it confronts the costs of ratcheting up the scope and enforcement of such firearms bans and argues that the politicization of safety has come at the expense of a sound approach to gun control in the context of intimate-partner abuse. In doing so, it expands scholarly arguments against mandatory, one-size-fits-all criminal justice responses to domestic violence in a direction that other critics have been reluctant to go, perhaps because of …

Responsible Resource Development And Prevention Of Sex Trafficking: Safeguarding Native Women And Children On The Fort Berthold Reservation, Kathleen Finn, Erica Gajda, Thomas Perin, Carla Fredericks

Publications

In 2010, large deposits of oil and natural gas were found in the Bakken shale formation, much of which is encompassed by the Fort Berthold Indian reservation, home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation (“MHA Nation” or “Three Affiliated Tribes” or “the Tribe”). However, rapid oil and gas development has brought an unprecedented rise of violent crime on and near the Fort Berthold reservation. Specifically, the influx of well-paid male oil and gas workers, living in temporary housing often referred to as “man camps,” has coincided with a disturbing increase in sex trafficking of Native women. The social risks …