Law Commons^™

Aggressive Policing And The Educational Performance Of Minority Youth, Joscha Legewie, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

An increasing number of minority youth are confronted with the criminal justice system. But how does the expansion of police presence in poor urban communities affect educational outcomes? Previous research points at multiple mechanisms with opposing effects. This article presents the first causal evidence of the impact of aggressive policing on the educational performance of minority youth. Under Operation Impact, the New York Police Department (NYPD) saturated high crime areas with additional police officers with the mission to engage in aggressive, order maintenance policing. To estimate the effect, we use administrative data from about 250,000 adolescents aged 9 to 15 …

#Sayhername Captured: Using Video To Challenge Law Enforcement Violence Against Women, Amber Baylor

Faculty Scholarship

Recorded encounters between women of color and police officers have been invaluable in bringing the reality of these interactions into the living rooms of otherwise unknowing Americans. The recordings are instrumental pieces of documentation and evidence, with the power to impact verdicts and galvanize the domestic struggle for human rights outside of the courtroom. They also are fraught with ethical issues that must be addressed by attorneys and activists hoping they effect change. Complexities such as implicit biases, editing and sourcing of videos, anonymity for those attacked and bystanders, and vicarious trauma on affected communities complicate use of violent police …

Henry Louis Gates And Racial Profiling: What's The Problem?, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

A string of recent studies has documented significant racial disparities in police stops, searches, and arrests across the country. The issue of racial profiling, however, did not receive national attention until the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at his home in Cambridge. This raises three questions: First, did Sergeant Crowley engage in racial profiling when he arrested Professor Gates? Second, why does it take the wrongful arrest of a respected member of an elite community to focus the attention of the country? Third, why is racial profiling so pervasive in American policing?

The answers to these questions are …

Punishment, Deterrence And Social Control: The Paradox Of Punishment In Minority Communities, Jeffery Fagan, Tracey L. Meares

Faculty Scholarship

Since the early 1970s, the number of individuals in jails and state and federal prisons has grown exponentially. Today, nearly two million people are currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails. The growth of imprisonment has been borne disproportionately by. African-American and Hispanic men from poor communities in urban areas. Rising.incarceration should have greatly reduced the crime rate. After all, incapacitated offenders were no longer free to rob, assault, steal, or commit other crimes. However, no large-scale reduction in crime was detected until the mid-1990s. The failure of crime rates to decline commensurately with increases in the …

New Frameworks For Racial Equality In The Criminal Law, Jeffery Fagan, Mukul Bakhshi

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium, " Pursuing Racial Fairness in the Administration of Justice: Twenty Years After McClesky v. Kemp," was conceived and inspired by Theodore Shaw, Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Ted Shaw and his staff worked with Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Fagan to recruit an outstanding group of scholars and activists who met on March 2-3, 2007 to hear and comment on the articles appearing in this Symposium. In addition to the authors whose work appears in this issue, many others made important contributions to the Symposium through their commentaries and presentations. These …

A Reader's Companion To Against Prediction: A Reply To Ariela Gross, Yoram Margalioth, And Yoav Sapir On Economic Modeling, Selective Incapacitation, Governmentality, And Race, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

From parole prediction instruments and violent sexual predator scores to racial profiling on the highways, instruments to predict future dangerousness, drug-courier profiles, and IRS computer algorithms to detect tax evaders, the rise of actuarial methods in the field of crime and punishment presents a number of challenging issues at the intersection of economic theory, sociology, history, race studies, criminology, social theory, and law. The three review essays of "Against Prediction" by Ariela Gross, Yoram Margalioth, and Yoav Sapir, raise these challenges in their very best light. Ranging from the heights of poststructuralist and critical race theory to the intricate details …

Against Prediction: Sentencing, Policing, And Punishing In An Actuarial Age, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Actuarial methods – i.e., the use of statistical rather than clinical methods on large datasets of criminal offending rates to determine different levels of offending associated with one or more group traits, in order to (1) predict past, present or future criminal behavior and (2) administer a criminal justice outcome – now permeates the criminal law and its enforcement. With the single exception of racial profiling against African-Americans and Hispanics, most people view the turn to the actuarial as efficient, rational, and wealth-maximizing. The fact is, law enforcement agencies can detect more crime with the same resources if they investigate …

Street Stops And Broken Windows: Terry, Race And Disorder In New York City, Jeffery Fagan, Garth Davies

Faculty Scholarship

Patterns of "stop and frisk" activity by police across New York City neighborhoods reflect competing theories of aggressive policing. "Broken Windows" theory suggest that neighborhoods with greater concentration of physical and social disorder should evidence higher stop and frisk activity, especially for "quality of life" crimes. However, although disorder theory informs quality of life policing strategies, patterns of stop and frisk activity suggest that neighborhood characteristics such as racial composition, poverty levels, and extent of social disorganization are stronger predictors of race- and crime-specific stops. Accordingly, neighborhood "street stop" activity reflects competing assumptions and meanings of policing strategy. Furthermore, looking …