Law Commons^™

Carceral Progressivism And Animal Victims, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

This chapter places the criminalization of harm to non-human animals within a larger context of left and progressive efforts to use criminal law to address social problems. This chapter treats the animal welfare movement’s turn to criminal legal solutions as a case study of the broader phenomenon of “carceral progressivism.” Specifically, the chapter identifies this case study as reflecting two particularly common features of left or progressive criminalization projects: (1) the presence of a particularly vulnerable class of victims; and (2) the claim that criminal law can send a message about society’s respect for that class of victims and condemnation …

Decarceration's Inside Partners, Seema Saifee

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines a hidden phenomenon in criminal punishment. People in prison, during their incarceration, have made important—and sometimes extraordinary—strides toward reducing prison populations. In fact, stakeholders in many corners, from policy makers to researchers to abolitionists, have harnessed legal and conceptual strategies generated inside the walls to pursue decarceral strategies outside the walls. Despite this outside use of inside moves, legal scholarship has directed little attention to theorizing the potential of looking to people on the inside as partners in the long-term project of meaningfully reducing prison populations, or “decarceration.”

Building on the change-making agency and revolutionary ideation inside …