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Full-Text Articles in Law
Young And Dangerous: The Role Of Youth In Risk Assessment Instruments, Ingrid Yin
Young And Dangerous: The Role Of Youth In Risk Assessment Instruments, Ingrid Yin
Michigan Law Review
States are increasingly adopting risk assessment instruments (RAIs) to help judges determine the appropriate type and length of punishment for an offender. Although this sentencing practice has been met with a wide variety of scholarly criticism, there has been virtually no discussion of how RAIs treat youth as a strong factor contributing to a high risk score. This silence is puzzling. Not only is youth undoubtedly the most powerful risk factor in most RAIs, but youth also holds a special place in the criminal justice system as a “mitigating factor of great weight.” This Comment presents the first in-depth critique …
Just Another Fast Girl: Exploring Slavery's Continued Impact On The Loss Of Black Girlhood, Mikah K. Thompson
Just Another Fast Girl: Exploring Slavery's Continued Impact On The Loss Of Black Girlhood, Mikah K. Thompson
Faculty Works
A troubling legacy of American chattel slavery is the justice system’s continued failure to provide adequate protection to African-American crime victims. This piece focuses on the law’s historic unwillingness to shield Black girls from acts of sexual violence. During slavery, lawmakers refused to criminalize rape committed against Black girls and women based not only on the fact that they were considered property but also on stereotypes about their sexuality. Even though the law now criminalizes the rape of Black girls, African-American rape survivors encounter more skepticism and hostility when they come forward with their stories compared to their White counterparts. …
Assessing Dangerousness Amidst Racial Stereotypes: An Analysis Of The Role Of Racial Bias In Bond Decisions And Ideas For Reform, Lydette S. Assefa
Assessing Dangerousness Amidst Racial Stereotypes: An Analysis Of The Role Of Racial Bias In Bond Decisions And Ideas For Reform, Lydette S. Assefa
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
The problems of mass incarceration in the United States and its burdens on the economic and social well-being of local communities, counties, and states have received increased attention and have spurred conversations on prison and jail reform. More recently, reform efforts have appropriately focused on the bond system and the role of pretrial detention in fueling jail and prison overcrowding. The bond process presents a unique opportunity for reform because defendants at this stage are presumed innocent and, as the Supreme Court has affirmed, these defendants possess fundamental rights to liberty and a presumption towards pretrial release. Yet jurisdictions, such …
Equality, Objectivity, And Neutrality, Alafair S. Burke
Equality, Objectivity, And Neutrality, Alafair S. Burke
Michigan Law Review
When is homicide reasonable? That familiar, yet unanswered question continues to intrigue both courts and criminal law scholars, in large part because any response must first address the question, "reasonable to whom?" The standard story about why that threshold question is both difficult and interesting usually involves a juxtaposition of "objective" and "subjective" standards for judging claims of reasonableness. On the one hand, the story goes, is a "subjective" standard of reasonableness under which jurors evaluate the reasonableness of a criminal defendant's beliefs and actions by comparing them to those of a hypothetical reasonable person sharing all of the individual …