Law Commons^™

Reforming Recidivism: Making Prison Practical Through Help, Katelyn Copperud

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

While Texas has long been recognized as “Tough Texas” when it comes to crime, recent efforts have been made to combat that reputation. Efforts such as offering “good time” credit and more liberal parole standards are used to reduce the Texas prison populations. Although effective in reducing prison populations, do these incentives truly reduce a larger issue of prison overpopulation: recidivism?

In both state and federal prison systems, inmate education is proven to reduce recidivism. Texas’s own, Windham School District, provides a broad spectrum of education to Texas Department of Criminal Justice inmates; from General Education Development (GED) classes to …

Lessons From Batson In A Comparative Criminal Context: How Implicit Racial Biases Remain Unaddressed In Canadian Jury Section, Brittney Adams

American Indian Law Journal

This Article highlights how Batson challenges may be instructive for addressing racial biases in jury selection in Canada and draws on the murder of Colten Boushie as an illustration of how the current system has failed to hold white defendants accountable in criminal cases involving Aboriginal victims. While far from perfect, peremptory Batson challenges in the United States serve as a nod to the ongoing issue of racial bias in jury selection in the United States. Canadian jury selection contains no similar challenges, which has too often resulted in all-white or mostly-white juries failing to hold white defendants accountable for …

Empiricism And The Misdemeanor Courts: Promoting Wider, Deeper, And Interdisciplinary Study, Alisa Smith

Pace Law Review

Since 1956, there have been three waves of scholarly attention on the misdemeanor courts. Despite this attention, misdemeanor courts remain understudied and overlooked. The object of this paper is to summarize the empirical research conducted over the last sixty years and identify the scholarly work that should be undertaken on the processing of misdemeanor offenders in our courts. Buoyed by the current interest in studying the misdemeanor courts, scholars should widen and deepen their study by replicating the work of others in a variety of jurisdictions, observing court proceedings, interviewing defendants and the courtroom workgroup, and assessing whether constitutional ideals …

Honoring Innocent Until Proven Guilty: Switching The Default Rule From Pretrial Detention To Pretrial Release In Texas's Bail System, Stephen Rispoli

Texas A&M Law Review

Texas’s current prison population consists of far more pretrial detainees than convicted criminals. Despite United States and Texas constitutional protections, the default rule in many jurisdictions, including Texas, detains misdemeanor and non-violent felony defendants unless they can post a monetary bond or get a surety to post the bond for them (“bail bond”) to obtain their release. Most pretrial detainees remain detained due not to their alleged dangerousness, but rather because they simply cannot afford to post bail (or get someone to post it for them). As a result, many pretrial detainees find themselves choosing between hamstringing their financial future …

Prioritizing The Welfare Of Youth: Design Failure In Juvenile Justice And Building The Restorative Alternative, Michael Friedman

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Disclosing Prosecutorial Misconduct, Jason Kreag

Vanderbilt Law Review

Prosecutorial misconduct in the form of Brady violations continues to plague the criminal justice system. Brady misconduct represents a fundamental breakdown in the adversarial process, denying defendants a fair trial and undermining the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Commentators have responded by proposing a range of reforms to increase Brady compliance. Yet these reforms largely ignore the need to remedy the harms from past Brady violations. Furthermore, these proposals focus almost entirely on the harms defendants face from prosecutors'Brady misconduct, ignoring the harms victims, jurors, witnesses, and others endure because of Brady misconduct. This Article proposes a new remedy …