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Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in Law
Girls, Assaulted, I. India Thusi
Girls, Assaulted, I. India Thusi
Northwestern University Law Review
Girls who are incarcerated share a common trait: They have often experienced multiple forms of sexual assault, at the hands of those close to them and at the hands of the state. The #MeToo movement has exposed how powerful people and institutions have facilitated pervasive sexual violence. However, there has been little attention paid to the ways that incarceration perpetuates sexual exploitation. This Article focuses on incarcerated girls and argues that the state routinely sexually assaults girls by mandating invasive, nonconsensual searches. Unwanted touching and display of private parts are common features of life before and after incarceration—from the sexual …
Identifying The Most Democratic Institution To Lead Criminal Justice Reform, Harry B. Dodsworth
Identifying The Most Democratic Institution To Lead Criminal Justice Reform, Harry B. Dodsworth
Northwestern University Law Review
American criminal justice is in crisis, and most scholars agree why: unduly severe laws, mass incarceration, and disproportionate effects on minority groups. But they don’t agree on a solution. One group of scholars—known as the “democratizers”—thinks the answer is to make the criminal justice system more democratic. According to democratizers, layperson participation and local democratic control will impart sensibility into criminal justice reform. In short, a transfer of power away from distant lawmakers and toward local communities, which would craft their own criminal codes and elect their own prosecutors. This argument assumes that more local means more democratic—but what if …
Foreword, David M. Shapiro, Emily Mccormick, Annie Prossnitz
Foreword, David M. Shapiro, Emily Mccormick, Annie Prossnitz
Northwestern University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Is Solitary Confinement A Punishment?, John F. Stinneford
Is Solitary Confinement A Punishment?, John F. Stinneford
Northwestern University Law Review
The United States Constitution imposes a variety of constraints on the imposition of punishment, including the requirements that the punishment be authorized by a preexisting penal statute and ordered by a lawful judicial sentence. Today, prison administrators impose solitary confinement on thousands of prisoners despite the fact that neither of these requirements has been met. Is this imposition a “punishment without law,” or is it a mere exercise of administrative discretion? In an 1890 case called In re Medley, the Supreme Court held that solitary confinement is a separate punishment subject to constitutional restraints, but it has ignored this …
Mass Solitary And Mass Incarceration: Explaining The Dramatic Rise In Prolonged Solitary In America's Prisons, Jules Lobel
Mass Solitary And Mass Incarceration: Explaining The Dramatic Rise In Prolonged Solitary In America's Prisons, Jules Lobel
Northwestern University Law Review
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, prisons throughout the United States witnessed a dramatic rise in the use of solitary confinement, and the practice continues to be widespread. From the latter part of the nineteenth century until the 1970s and ’80s, prolonged solitary confinement in the United States had fallen into disuse, as numerous observers and the United States Supreme Court recognized that the practice caused profound mental harm to prisoners. The reasons for this dramatic rise in the nationwide use of solitary confinement and the development of new supermax prisons have not been explored in depth. …
Punishment In Prison: Constituting The "Normal" And The "Atypical" In Solitary And Other Forms Of Confinement, Judith Resnik, Hirsa Amin, Sophie Angelis, Megan Hauptman, Laura Kokotailo, Aseem Mehta, Madeline Silva, Tor Tarantola, Meredith Wheeler
Punishment In Prison: Constituting The "Normal" And The "Atypical" In Solitary And Other Forms Of Confinement, Judith Resnik, Hirsa Amin, Sophie Angelis, Megan Hauptman, Laura Kokotailo, Aseem Mehta, Madeline Silva, Tor Tarantola, Meredith Wheeler
Northwestern University Law Review
What aspects of human liberty does incarceration impinge? A remarkable group of Black and white prisoners, most of whom had little formal education and no resources, raised that question in the 1960s and 1970s. Incarcerated individuals asked judges for relief from corporal punishment; radical food deprivations; strip cells; solitary confinement in dark cells; prohibitions on bringing these claims to courts, on religious observance, and on receiving reading materials; and from transfers to long- term isolation and to higher security levels.
Judges concluded that some facets of prison that were once ordinary features of incarceration, such as racial segregation, rampant violence, …
The Science Of Solitary: Expanding The Harmfulness Narrative, Craig Haney
The Science Of Solitary: Expanding The Harmfulness Narrative, Craig Haney
Northwestern University Law Review
The harmful effects of solitary confinement have been established in a variety of direct observations and empirical studies that date back to the nineteenth century, conducted in many different countries by researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds. This Essay argues that these effects should be situated and understood in the context of a much larger scientific literature that documents the adverse and sometimes life- threatening psychological and physical consequences of social isolation, social exclusion, loneliness, and the deprivation of caring human touch as they occur in free society. These dangerous conditions are the hallmarks of solitary confinement. Yet they are imposed …
A Wrong Without A Right? Overcoming The Prison Litigation Reform Act's Physical Injury Requirement In Solitary Confinement Cases, Maggie Filler, Daniel Greenfield
A Wrong Without A Right? Overcoming The Prison Litigation Reform Act's Physical Injury Requirement In Solitary Confinement Cases, Maggie Filler, Daniel Greenfield
Northwestern University Law Review
This Essay argues against applying the so-called “physical injury” requirement of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) to deny monetary compensation to solitary confinement survivors. The Essay identifies three ways in which misapplication of the PLRA’s physical injury requirement limits the ability of solitary confinement survivors to receive monetary compensation for psychological harm suffered. First, some courts applying the PLRA wrongly dismiss damages claims for alleging “de minimis” physical injury. Second, some courts have been reluctant to find that physical injury caused by psychological trauma satisfies the PLRA’s physical injury requirement. Third, courts do not distinguish between “garden …
Incrementalist Vs. Maximalist Reform: Solitary Confinement Case Studies, Margo Schlanger
Incrementalist Vs. Maximalist Reform: Solitary Confinement Case Studies, Margo Schlanger
Northwestern University Law Review
Among criminal justice reformers, it has long been hotly contested whether moderate reform helps or harms more efforts to achieve more thoroughgoing change. With respect to solitary confinement, do partial and ameliorative measures undermine the goal of solitary confinement abolition? Or do reformist campaigns advance—albeit incrementally—that ultimate goal? Call this a debate between “incrementalists” and “maximalists.” I offer this Essay as an appeal for empirical rather than aesthetic inquiry into the question. After summarizing nationwide reform litigation efforts that began in the 1970s, I try to shed some factual light by examining solitary reform efforts in two states, Massachusetts and …
How Do We Reach A National Tipping Point In The Campaign To Stop Solitary?, Amy Fettig
How Do We Reach A National Tipping Point In The Campaign To Stop Solitary?, Amy Fettig
Northwestern University Law Review
The use and abuse of solitary confinement in American prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers is at epidemic levels. On any given day 80,000 to 100,000 people in prisons are subjected to a practice considered inhumane and degrading treatment—even torture under international human rights standards. Despite widespread international condemnation, decades of research demonstrating the harm it inflicts on human beings, and a growing chorus from the medical community raising alarms about its impact on the brain, solitary confinement remains a routine prison-management strategy in correctional institutions nationwide. In the past decade, however, a growing movement has emerged to challenge the …
Consensus Statement From The Santa Cruz Summit On Solitary Confinement And Health
Consensus Statement From The Santa Cruz Summit On Solitary Confinement And Health
Northwestern University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao
Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
On the basis of fifty-four elite interviews[1] with legislators, judges, attorneys, and civil society advocates as well as a state-by-state data survey, this Article examines the complex linkage between the two major penal trends in American society during the past decades: a declining use of capital punishment across the United States and a growing population of prisoners serving “life without the possibility of parole” or “LWOP” sentences. The main contribution of the research is threefold. First, the research proposes to redefine the boundary between life and death in relation to penal discourses regarding the death penalty and LWOP. LWOP …
Stepping Into The Shoes Of The Department Of Justice: The Unusual, Necessary, And Hopeful Path The Illinois Attorney General Took To Require Police Reform In Chicago, Lisa Madigan, Cara Hendrickson, Karyn L. Bass Ehler
Stepping Into The Shoes Of The Department Of Justice: The Unusual, Necessary, And Hopeful Path The Illinois Attorney General Took To Require Police Reform In Chicago, Lisa Madigan, Cara Hendrickson, Karyn L. Bass Ehler
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
No abstract provided.
From Harm Reduction To Community Engagement: Redefining The Goals Of American Policing In The Twenty-First Century, Tom R. Tyler
From Harm Reduction To Community Engagement: Redefining The Goals Of American Policing In The Twenty-First Century, Tom R. Tyler
Northwestern University Law Review
Society would gain if the police moved away from the goal of harm reduction via crime reduction and toward promoting the economic, social, and political vitality of American communities. Research suggests that the police can contribute to this goal if they design and implement their policies and practices in ways that promote public trust. Such trust develops when the police exercise their authority in ways that people evaluate as being procedurally just.
Democratizing Criminal Law As An Abolitionist Project, Dorothy E. Roberts
Democratizing Criminal Law As An Abolitionist Project, Dorothy E. Roberts
Northwestern University Law Review
The criminal justice system currently functions to exclude black people from full political participation. Myriad institutions, laws, and definitions within the criminal justice system subordinate and criminalize black people, thereby excluding them from electoral politics, and depriving them of material resources, social networks, family relationships, and legitimacy necessary for full political citizenship. Making criminal law democratic requires more than reform efforts to improve currently existing procedures and systems. Rather, it requires an abolitionist approach that will dismantle the criminal law’s anti-democratic aspects entirely and reconstitute the criminal justice system without them.
Democratizing Criminal Justice Through Contestation And Resistance, Jocelyn Simonson
Democratizing Criminal Justice Through Contestation And Resistance, Jocelyn Simonson
Northwestern University Law Review
Collective forms of participation in criminal justice from members of marginalized groups—for example, when people gather together to engage in participatory defense, organized copwatching, community bail funds, or prison labor strikes—have a profound effect on everyday criminal justice. In this Essay I argue that these bottom-up forms of participation are not only powerful and important, but also crucial for democratic criminal justice. Collective mechanisms of resistance and contestation build agency, remedy power imbalances, bring aggregate structural harms into view, and shift deeply entrenched legal and constitutional meanings. Many of these forms of contestation display a faith in local democracy as …
Racing Abnormality, Normalizing Race: The Origins Of America's Peculiar Carceral State And Its Prospects For Democratic Transformation Today, Jonathan Simon
Racing Abnormality, Normalizing Race: The Origins Of America's Peculiar Carceral State And Its Prospects For Democratic Transformation Today, Jonathan Simon
Northwestern University Law Review
For those struggling with criminal justice reform today, the long history of failed efforts to close the gap between the promise of legal equality and the practice of our police forces and prison systems can seem mysterious and frustrating. Progress has been made in establishing stronger rights for individuals in the investigatory and sanctioning stages of the criminal process; yet, the patterns of over-incarceration and police violence, which are especially concentrated on people of color, have actually gotten worse during the same period. Seen in terms of its deeper history however, the carceral state is no longer puzzling: it has …
Upside-Down Juries, Josh Bowers
Upside-Down Juries, Josh Bowers
Northwestern University Law Review
The practical disappearance of the jury trial ranks among the most widely examined topics in American criminal justice. But, by focusing on trial scarcity, scholars have managed to tell only part of the story. The unexplored first-order question is whether juries even do their work well. And the answer to that question turns on the kinds of work jury members are typically required to do. Once upon a time, trials turned upon practical reasoning and general moral blameworthiness. Modern trials have come to focus upon legal reasoning and technical guilt accuracy. In turn, the jury has evolved from a flexible …
Restoring Democratic Moral Judgment Within Bureaucratic Criminal Justice, Stephanos Bibas
Restoring Democratic Moral Judgment Within Bureaucratic Criminal Justice, Stephanos Bibas
Northwestern University Law Review
While America's criminal justice system is deeply rooted in the ideal of a popular morality play, it has long since drifted into becoming a bureaucratic plea bargaining machine. We cannot (and would not want to) return to the Colonial Era. Even so, there is much more we can do to reclaim our heritage and incorporate popular participation within our lawyer-run system. That requires pushing back against the relentless pressures toward efficiency and maximizing quantity, to ensure that criminal justice treats each criminal with justice, as a human and not just a number. The criminal justice system must narrow its ambitions …