Law Commons^™

Judicious Imprisonment, Gregory Jay Hall

All Faculty Scholarship

Starting August 21, 2018, Americans incarcerated across the United States have been striking back — non-violently. Inmates with jobs are protesting slave-like wages through worker strikes and sit-ins. Inmates also call for an end to racial disparities and an increase in rehabilitation programs. Even more surprisingly, many inmates have begun hunger strikes. Inmates are protesting the numerous ills of prisons: overcrowding, inadequate health care, abysmal mental health care contributing to inmate suicide, violence, disenfranchisement of inmates, and more. While recent reforms have slightly decreased mass incarceration, the current White House administration could likely reverse this trend. President Donald Trump’s and …

Environmental Crimes And Imprisonment: Does Prison Work To Prevent And Punish Environmental Criminals?, Rafael Wolff

Dissertations & Theses

Environmental degradation is a global problem. Humans need natural resources to survive and, as those resources are limited, humans’ use of these resources should respect a sustainable pace established by law. There are many approaches to addressing environmental degradation that do not honor the legal limitations and one of them is through criminal law. The question that is posed in this thesis is whether imprisonment, one of the most severe methods of punishment, is a suitable option to repress and prevent environmental crimes.

This thesis is divided in three chapters. The first chapter discusses why environmental crimes are relevant. It …

Risk As A Proxy For Race: The Dangers Of Risk Assessment, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Actuarial risk assessment in the implementation and administration of criminal sentencing has a long history in this country – a long and fraught history. Today, many progressive advocates promote the use of actuarial risk assessment instruments as part of a strategy to reduce the problem of "mass incarceration." Former Attorney General Eric Holder has called on the U.S. Sentencing Commission to hold hearings to further consider the matter of risk assessment and prediction tools in sentencing and parole.

The objective – to reduce our massive over-incarceration in this country – is critical and noble. But risk assessment tools are simply …

Naturalizing Immigration Imprisonment, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Only recently has imprisonment become a central feature of both t across every level of government and involving civil and criminal law enforcement tools.

Examining the population as a whole provides crucial insights as to how we arrived at this state of mass immigration imprisonment. While political motivations — parallel to those that fueled the rapid expansion of criminal mass incarceration — may have started the trend, this Article demonstrates that key legal and policy choices explain how imprisonment has become an entrenched feature of immigration law enforcement. In fact, legislators and immigration officials have locked themselves into this choice, …

How (Not) To Implement Cost As A Sentencing Factor, Ryan W. Scott

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

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 …

Thug Life: Hip Hop’S Curious Relationship With Criminal Justice, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

I argue that hip hop music and culture profoundly influences attitudes toward and perceptions about criminal justice in the United States. At base, hip hop lyrics and their cultural accoutrements turns U.S. punishment philosophy upon its head, effectively defeating the foundational purposes of American crime and punishment. Prison and punishment philosophy in the U.S. is based on clear principles of retribution and incapacitation, where prison time for crime should serve to deter individuals from engaging in criminal behavior. In addition, the stigma that attaches to imprisonment should dissuade criminals from recidivism. Hip hop culture denounces crime and punishment in the …

Reforming, Reclaiming Or Reframing Womanhood: Reflections On Advocacy For Women In Custody, Brenda V. Smith

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

I was asked to present one of the keynote addresses for this important symposium, Behind Bars: The Impact of Incarceration on Women and Their Families, sponsored by the Women's Rights Law Reporter at Rutgers University School of Law in Newark. I am happy to write the introductory essay for this meaningful publication which arose from that symposium. This is a particularly hospitable and appropriate environment for this publication given Rutgers University's important place in feminist scholarship and discourse - both in its graduate and undergraduate programs and in its publication arm - Rutgers University Press. Historically,the Women's Rights Law Reporter …

Sexual Abuse Of Women In Prison: A Modern Corollary Of Slavery, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This paper addresses the sexual abuse of women in custody as a more contemporary manifestation of slavery and discusses the congruencies and the differences that exist between the sexual abuse of women in custody and slavery. The paper charts the history of the parallel abolition and prison reform movements and examines their divergent paths arguing that the women's movement abandonment of prison advocacy has harmed the women in prison movement. The article concludes that the embrace of human rights norms has assisted in providing new avenues for redressing the sexual abuse of women in custody.

Analyzing Prison Sex: Reconciling Self Expression With Safety, Brenda V. Smith

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article examines the complexity of prison sex and the challenges that it raises in the context of recently enacted United States legislation, specifically the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). It begins by identifying a range of prisoner interests in enhanced sexual expression. These interests are described below in an attempt to disentangle prisoners' rights in sexual expression from states' legitimate interests in regulating that expression. This article also directs policymakers and decision makers to mine international documents and human rights norms that recognize the necessity of punishment and at the same time outline a standard for the safety of …

As Freedom Advances: The Paradox Of Severity In American Criminal Justice, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

According to the Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu, "as freedom advances, the severity of the penal law decreases."' Montesquieu's notion is in the United States Constitution's Eighth Amendment, a provision that reflects a Montesquieuan faith that punishments acceptable today will become cruel and unusual tomorrow. Yet the United States in the year 2000 presents a serious challenge to Montesquieu's notion of the progress of freedom. The United States is simultaneously a leader of the "free world" and of the incarcerated world. We celebrate and export our commitment to free markets, civil rights, and civil liberties, yet we are also a world leader …

Social Enquiry Reports And Sentencing, Jenny M. Roberts, Colin Roberts

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Prisoner's Dilemma And Mutual Trust: Comment, Robert L. Birmingam

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. M. H. Smith, Prisons And A Changing Civilisation, Jerome Hall

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.