Law Commons^™

The Minimalist Alternative To Abolitionism: Focusing On The Non-Dangerous Many, Christopher Slobogin Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

In "The Dangerous Few: Taking Seriously Prison Abolition and Its Skeptics," published in the Harvard Law Review, Thomas Frampton proffers four reasons why those who want to abolish prisons should not budge from their position even for offenders who are considered dangerous. This Essay demonstrates why a criminal law minimalist approach to prisons and police is preferable to abolition, not just when dealing with the dangerous few but also as a means of protecting the non-dangerous many. A minimalist regime can radically reduce reliance on both prisons and police, without the loss in crime prevention capacity and legitimacy that is …

Social Ecology, Preventive Intervention, And The Administrative Transformation Of The Criminal Legal System, Mark R. Fondacaro

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article outlines an administrative model of criminal justice that provides a conceptual framework and empirical justification for transforming our criminal legal system from a backward-looking, adjudicative model grounded in principles of retribution toward a forward-looking model grounded in consequentialist principles of justice aimed at crime prevention and recidivism reduction. The Article reviews the historical roots and justifications for our current system, along with recent advances in the behavioral, social, and biological sciences that inform why and how the system fuels injustice. The concept of social ecology is introduced as an organizing framework for: (1) understanding why individuals do or …

Homicide And Drug Trafficking In Impoverished Communities In Brazil, Elenice De Souza De Souza Oliveira, Braulio Figueiredo Alves Da Silva, Flavio Luiz Sapori, Gabriela Gomes Cardoso

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Many studies demonstrate that homicides are heavily concentrated in impoverished neighborhoods, but not all socially disadvantaged neighborhoods are hotbeds of violence. Conducted in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, this study hypothesizes that the association between high rates of homicide and impoverished areas is influenced by the emergence of a specific type of street drug-dealing common to favelas (slums). The study applies econometric techniques to police data on homicides and drug arrests from 2008 to 2011, as well as 2010 Census data, to test its hypothesis. The findings provide insight into the development of crime prevention policies in areas of high social vulnerability.

Before The Cell Door Shuts: Justice Reform Efforts Should Focus On Steps Besides Sentencing, Barbara L. Mcquade

Articles

Mark Osler writes that criminal justice reform efforts have been hampered by what he calls “the slows.” He explains that despite bipartisan support, which resulted in the First Step Act of 2018,2 criminal justice reform remains elusive. He then offers some insightful suggestions for how to increase the pace.

Measures Of Preventing Crime Of Non-Performance Of Ones Duties In Their Profession, Sh. Khaydarov

Review of law sciences

The article defines the factors that determine the development of criminal legislation governing liability for crimes against life and health committed by the medical staff of Uzbekistan and foreign countries because of their inadequate responsibility. Taking into account the experience of foreign countries (USA, Australia, Canada), there are measures aimed at preventing the crime of medical personnel, unable to professionally perform their duties.

Evidence-Informed Criminal Justice, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

The American criminal justice system is at a turning point. For decades, as the rate of incarceration exploded, observers of the American criminal justice system criticized the enormous discretion wielded by key actors, particularly police and prosecutors, and the lack of empirical evidence that has informed that discretion. Since the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, there has been broad awareness that the criminal system lacks empirically informed approaches. That report unsuccessfully called for a national research strategy, with an independent national criminal justice research institute, along …

Project Safe Neighborhoods In Chicago: Looking Back A Decade Later, Ben Grunwald, Andrew V. Papachristos

Faculty Scholarship

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is a federally funded initiative that brings together federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce gun violence in urban centers. In Chicago, PSN implemented supply-side gun policing tactics, enhanced federal prosecution of gun crimes, and notification forums warning offenders of PSN’s heightened criminal sanctions. Prior evaluations provide evidence that PSN initiatives have reduced crime in the first few years of their operation. But over a decade after the program was established, we still know little about whether these effects are sustained over an extended period of time. This Article examines PSN Chicago, an anti-violence program …

The Challenges Of Preventing And Prosecuting Social Media Crimes, Thaddeus Hoffmeister

Pace Law Review

The adoption and use of social media by a broad spectrum of criminal defendants has raised some significant challenges for those tasked with crime prevention. This article will look at those challenges through the lens of three cases involving social media: United States v. Drew, United States v. Sayer, and United States v. Cassidy. However, prior to beginning that examination, this article will briefly discuss and categorize the various ways criminal defendants employ social media.

Leveraging Predictive Policing Algorithms To Restore Fourth Amendment Protections In High-Crime Areas In A Post-Wardlow World, Kelly K. Koss

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Rapid technological changes have led to an explosion in Big Data collection and analysis through complex computerized algorithms. Law enforcement has not been immune to these technological developments. Many local police departments are now using highly advanced predictive policing technologies to predict when and where crime will occur in their communities, and to allocate crime-fighting resources based on these predictions.

Although predictive policing technology has an array of the potential uses, the scope of this Note is limited to addressing how the statistical outputs from these technologies can be used to restore eroded Fourth Amendment rights in alleged high-crime areas. …

Prison Abolition And Grounded Justice, Allegra M. Mcleod

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article introduces to legal scholarship the first sustained discussion of prison abolition and what I will call a “prison abolitionist ethic.” Prisons and punitive policing produce tremendous brutality, violence, racial stratification, ideological rigidity, despair, and waste. Meanwhile, incarceration and prison-backed policing neither redress nor repair the very sorts of harms they are supposed to address—interpersonal violence, addiction, mental illness, and sexual abuse, among others. Yet despite persistent and increasing recognition of the deep problems that attend U.S. incarceration and prison-backed policing, criminal law scholarship has largely failed to consider how the goals of criminal law—principally deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and …

Limits On The Perfect Preventive State, Michael L. Rich

Michael L Rich

Traditional methods of crime prevention—the punishment of the culpable and the preventive restraint of the dangerous—are slowly being supplemented and supplanted by technologies that seek to perfectly prevent crime by making criminal conduct practically impossible. For instance, the federal government is developing in-car technology that would prevent vehicle operation when a driver has a blood alcohol level in excess of the legal limit. Less directly, the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 2000 try to prevent copyright infringement by eliminating technologies that enable such infringement. Such structural regulation of private conduct is not new, but few scholars …

Punitive Preventive Justice: A Critique, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter identifies the origins of contemporary preventive endeavour in the work of the RAND Corporation in America, which developed highly technical studies of crime prevention based upon systems analysis. It suggests that RAND promoted a decidedly punitive style of prevention based upon policing and punishment that is replicated in modern ‘punitive preventive measures’. It criticizes these measures, emphasizing the perils they pose and the weakness of their empirical foundations. Most worryingly, these measures typically claim an apolitical, neutral emphasis on efficiency that fails to engage with the political values underlying them. In so doing, it tends to displace much …

Stopping The Chronic Batterer Through Legislation: Will It Work This Time?, Prentice L. White

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The "Spirit" Of The Three Strikes Law: From The Romero Myth To The Hopeful Implications Of Andrade, Rebecca Gross

Golden Gate University Law Review

We watch enthralled as television news programs sensationalize some of the saddest moments of our reality. We are shocked by the violence and brutality of those who prey on the innocent and vulnerable. We become both enraged and frightened as we realize that there are people among us who have no regard for human life. In the wake of tragedy, we furiously search for answers, we seek ways to avoid suffering the same pain in the future and, often, we sacrifice the rights of many, believing that such a sacrifice is necessary and justified. A prime example of this reaction …

Securing The Global City: Crime, Consulting, Risk, And Ratings In The Production Of Urban Space, Katharyne Mitchell, Katherine Beckett

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The last decade has witnessed the rise of private transnational institutions that increasingly influence the organization and management of urban space. Two institutions are especially powerful in this regard: bond-rating agencies and global security firms. Bolstered by a discourse of risk and the need to securitize cities, these institutions have garnered enormous amounts of power with respect to urban social and spatial control. They are implicated in the imprisonment and displacement of marginalized populations, the intensification of gentrification, and general shifts in municipal funding priorities. The authors illustrate these themes through a case study of New York City, followed by …

"Eggshell" Victims, Private Precautions, And The Societal Benefits Of Shifting Crime, Robert A. Mikos

Michigan Law Review

Individuals spend billions of dollars every year on precautions to protect themselves from crime. Yet the legal academy has criticized many private precautions because they merely shift crime onto other, less guarded citizens, rather than reduce crime. The conventional wisdom likens such precaution-taking to rent-seeking: citizens spend resources to shift crime losses onto other victims, without reducing the size of those losses to society. The result is an unambiguous reduction in social welfare. This Article argues that the conventional wisdom is flawed because it overlooks how the law systematically understates the harms suffered by some victims of crime, first, by …

The Market For Criminal Justice: Federalism, Crime Control, And Jurisdictional Competition, Doron Teichman

Michigan Law Review

Part I introduces the concepts of jurisdictional competition and crime displacement and argues that, as a positive matter, a decentralized criminal justice system may create a competitive process among the different units composing it, in which each such unit attempts to divert crime to neighboring communities. Part II then turns to evaluate the normative aspects of jurisdictional competition in the area of criminal justice. In this context I will show that competition can have both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, the forces of competition might drive jurisdictions to fight crime efficiently, since any jurisdiction that functions inefficiently will suffer …

Community Self Help, Neal K. Katyal

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper advocates controlling crime through a greater emphasis on precautions taken not by individuals, but by communities. The dominant battles in the literature today posit two central competing models of crime control. In one, the standard policing model, the government is responsible for the variety of acts that are necessary to deter and prosecute criminal acts. In the other, private self-help, public law enforcement is largely supplanted by providing incentives to individuals to self-protect against crime. There are any number of nuances and complications in each of these competing stories, but the literature buys into this binary matrix.

Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising, Us Department Of Justice

National Institute of Justice Research in Brief

No abstract provided.

Deterrence And Response To Neighborhood Violence, Senate Research Committee On Neighborhood Violence, Assembly Select Committee On Neighborhood Violence & Mediation

California Joint Committees

No abstract provided.

The Risks And Rewards Of Criminal Activity: A Comprehensive Test Of Criminal Deterrence, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Whereas previous analyses of criminal deterrence have focused on the effect of criminal enforcement on crime rates, this study analyzes the existence of compensating differentials for criminal pursuits. By analyzing the risk-rewards trade-off, this approach represents a more comprehensive test of the criminal deterrence hypothesis. The sample consisted of black inner-city youths who reported their crime participation, crime income, and self-assessed risks from crime. The risk premiums for the three principal adverse outcomes (arrest, conviction, and prison) constituted between one-half and two-thirds of all crime income on the average, providing strong support for the criminal deterrence hypothesis

A Suggested Legislative Approach To The Problem Of Computer Crime

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Hearings On Community Crime Prevention, Joint Committee For Revision Of The Penal Code

California Joint Committees

Hearings held on Nov. 17, 1981 and Dec. 17, 1981.

Short-Term Rehabilitation And Crim Prevention, Jon C. Mackay

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Any program designed to reduce the rate of recidivism in the United States must be viewed as a valuable tool of crime prevention. It can be safely said that at least two-thirds of the crimes committed every year are committed by recidivists, for over the past decade approximately fifty to sixty per cent of all offenders have become repeaters. Thus the elimination of the recidivist in our society would result in a minimum reduction of thirty-three per cent in the number of crimes committed over a given period of time. The task of eliminating recidivism has been left to the …

Theory And Application Of Roscoe Pound's Sociological Jurisprudence: Crime Prevention Or Control?, Louis H. Masotti, Michael A. Weinstein

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The current interest in reforming the administration of justice has been triggered by a number of factors including the 1967 report of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice and the treatment afforded arrestees during the civil disorders of the past few years. The nation is alarmed at the reported annual increases in crime, and this alarm was manifested in the 1968 presidential election when "law and order" became a major issue. Superficially the answer may seem clear: more effective enforcement of the law and, when necessary, more stringent laws. The critical issue, however, is a …

The Prevention Of Repeated Crime, John B. Waite

Michigan Legal Studies Series

Though this study is concerned fundamentally with the prevention of crime, it deals only with that part of the field wherein prevention of further crime is sought through treatment of known criminals. The whole field of crime prevention is, of course, much wider than that particular part. With a reasonable degree of logical distinction, it represents five major divisions of particularized interest. The first involves the question of what activities are to be considered as crimes and ought, as such; to be prevented. The second division assumes that a crime has been committed and covers the various activities by which …

Review: Criminology. By Fred E. Haynes, Arthur Evans Wood

Michigan Law Review

A Review of CRIMINOLOGY. By Fred E. Haynes