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Full-Text Articles in Law
Cruelty, Prison Conditions, And The Eighth Amendment, Sharon Dolovich
Cruelty, Prison Conditions, And The Eighth Amendment, Sharon Dolovich
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, but its normative force derives chiefly from its use of the word cruel. For this prohibition to be meaningful in a society where incarceration is the primary mode of criminal punishment, it is necessary to determine when prison conditions are cruel. Yet the Supreme Court has thus far avoided this question, instead holding in Farmer v. Brennan that unless some prison official actually knew of and disregarded a substantial risk of serious harm to prisoners, prison conditions are not “punishment” within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. Farmer’s reasoning, however, does not …
Incarceration American-Style, Sharon Dolovich
Incarceration American-Style, Sharon Dolovich
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In the United States today, incarceration is more than just a mode of criminal punishment. It is a distinct cultural practice with its own aesthetic and technique, a practice that has emerged in recent decades as a catch-all mechanism for managing social ills. In this essay, I argue that this emergent carceral system has become self-generating—that American-style incarceration, through the conditions it inflicts, produces the very conduct society claims to abhor and thereby guarantees a steady supply of offenders whose incarceration the public will continue to demand. I argue, moreover, that this reproductive process works to create a class of …
Jail Visitation: An Assessment Of Organizational Policy And Information Availability, Alicia H. Sitren, Hayden P. Smith, Brandon K. Applegate, Laurie A. Gould
Jail Visitation: An Assessment Of Organizational Policy And Information Availability, Alicia H. Sitren, Hayden P. Smith, Brandon K. Applegate, Laurie A. Gould
Faculty Publications
Jail inmates face substantial emotional, economic, legal, and other challenges when they are incarcerated. The extent to which they are able to maintain contacts with individuals on the outside can substantially determine how well they cope with these concerns, and visitation is the primary way that such links may be maintained. To date, no systematic assessment of jail visitation policies has been conducted. The current study examined the availability of visitation policy information and the content of policies for national samples of large and small jails. The results suggest that large jails provide more opportunities for visitation and that they …
It’S Doom Alone That Counts: Can International Human Rights Law Be An Effective Source Of Rights In Correctional Conditions Litigation?, Michael L. Perlin, Henry A. Dlugacz
It’S Doom Alone That Counts: Can International Human Rights Law Be An Effective Source Of Rights In Correctional Conditions Litigation?, Michael L. Perlin, Henry A. Dlugacz
Articles & Chapters
Over the past three decades, the US judiciary has grown increasingly less receptive to claims by convicted felons about the conditions of their confinement while in prison. Although courts have not articulated a return to the 'hands off' policy of the 1950s, it is clear that it has become significantly more difficult for prisoners to prevail in constitutional correctional litigation. The passage and aggressive implementation ofthe Prison Litigation Reform Act has been a powerful disincentive to such litigation in many areas ofprisoners' rights law.
From the perspective of the prisoner, the legal landscape is more hopeful in matters that relate …