Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Policing (4)
- 14141 (2)
- 1983 (2)
- Civil rights (2)
- Police departments (2)
-
- Police misconduct (2)
- Arrests (1)
- Asset forfeiture (1)
- Bureau of Justice Statistics (1)
- COPS grants (1)
- Civil Rights and Discrimination (1)
- Criminal Law and Procedure (1)
- Criminal procedure (1)
- Exclusionary rule (1)
- Federal grants (1)
- Federal remedies (1)
- Fourth amendment (1)
- JAG grants (1)
- Justice Department (1)
- LEMAS (1)
- Militarism (1)
- Office of Justice Programs (1)
- Police (1)
- Police accountability (1)
- Police data (1)
- Police reform (1)
- Policing reform (1)
- Privacy (1)
- Regulation (1)
- Remedies (1)
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Law
Federal Programs And The Real Costs Of Policing, Rachel A. Harmon
Federal Programs And The Real Costs Of Policing, Rachel A. Harmon
Rachel A. Harmon
Dozens of federal statutes authorize federal agencies to give money and power to local police departments and municipalities in order to improve public safety. While these federal programs encourage better coordination of police efforts and make pursuing public safety less financially costly for local communities, they also encourage harmful policing. Of course, policing often interferes with our interests in autonomy, privacy, and property, and those harms are often worthwhile in exchange for security and order. Federal public safety programs, however, are designed, implemented, and evaluated without reference to the nonbudgetary costs of policing. When those costs are high, federal programs …
Limited Leverage: Federal Remedies And Policing Reform, Rachel A. Harmon
Limited Leverage: Federal Remedies And Policing Reform, Rachel A. Harmon
Rachel A. Harmon
With respect to deterring police misconduct, federal remedies are almost as good as they are ever going to get. Federal remedies for police misconduct, and most other remedies for misconduct, promote change by making misconduct costly for police departments and municipalities. Improving federal remedies would encourage some additional departments to seek the positive expected return on reform measures likely to reduce misconduct. But existing federal remedies all focus on either increasing the cost of misconduct or reducing its benefits. The problem is that even if existing federal remedies are altered to maximize deterrence, they cannot be employed to impose a …
The Problem Of Policing, Rachel A. Harmon
The Problem Of Policing, Rachel A. Harmon
Rachel A. Harmon
The legal problem of policing is how to regulate police authority to permit officers to enforce law while also protecting individual liberty and minimizing the social costs the police impose. Courts and commentators have largely treated the problem of policing as limited to preventing violations of constitutional rights and its solution as the judicial definition and enforcement of those rights. But constitutional law and courts alone are necessarily inadequate to regulate the police. Constitutional law does not protect important interests below the constitutional threshold or effectively address the distributional impacts of law enforcement activities. Nor can the judiciary adequately assess …
Why Do We (Still) Lack Data On Policing?, Rachel A. Harmon
Why Do We (Still) Lack Data On Policing?, Rachel A. Harmon
Rachel A. Harmon
The Wickersham Commission report on The Third Degree, found in the Commission’s famous Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement ended with the argument that the “real remedy” for police misconduct “lies in the will of the community,” which in turn depends on evidence about the nature and extent of police abuse. In this brief essay, I argue that the report’s call for information about policing has gone largely unanswered. Eighty years later, we still lack enough data about what the police do to shape their conduct effectively. Public policy and legal decisions about policing depend heavily on empirical judgments, but …
Promoting Civil Rights Through Proactive Policing Reform, Rachel A. Harmon
Promoting Civil Rights Through Proactive Policing Reform, Rachel A. Harmon
Rachel A. Harmon
Reducing police misconduct requires substantial institutional reform in our nation’s police departments. Yet traditional legal means for deterring misconduct, such as civil suits under § 1983 and the exclusionary rule, have proved inadequate to force departmental change. 42 U.S.C. § 14141 was passed in 1994 to allow the Justice Department to sue police departments to force institutional reform. Scholars initially hailed § 14141 as a powerful tool for reducing unconstitutional police abuse. The Justice Department, however, has sued few police departments. This Article contends that § 14141’s greatest potential has been overlooked. Limited resources will always mean that § 14141 …