Law Commons^™

The Effect Of Private Police On Crime: Evidence From A Geographic Regression Discontinuity Design, John M. Macdonald, Jonathan Klick, Ben Grunwald

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Research demonstrates that police reduce crime. The implication of this research for investment in a particular form of extra police services, those provided by private institutions, has not been rigorously examined. We capitalize on the discontinuity in police force size at the geographic boundary of a private university police department to estimate the effect of the extra police services on crime. Extra police provided by the university generate approximately 45-60 percent fewer crimes in the surrounding neighborhood. These effects appear to be similar to other estimates in the literature.

Life Without Parole Under Modern Theories Of Punishment, Paul H. Robinson

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Life without parole seems an attractive and logical punishment under the modern coercive crime-control principles of general deterrence and incapacitation, a point reinforced by its common use under habitual offender statutes like "three strikes." Yet, there is increasing evidence to doubt the efficacy of using such principles to distributive punishment. The prerequisite conditions for effective general deterrence are the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, effective and fair preventive detention is difficult when attempted through the criminal justice system. If we really are committed to preventive detention, it is better for both society and potential detainees that it be done …

Extralegal Punishment Factors: A Study Of Forgiveness, Hardship, Good-Deeds, Apology, Remorse, And Other Such Discretionary Factors In Assessing Criminal Punishment, Paul H. Robinson, Sean Jackowitz, Daniel M. Bartels

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The criminal law's formal criteria for assessing punishment are typically contained in criminal codes, the rules of which fix an offender's liability and the grade of the offense. A look at how the punishment decision-making process actually works, however, suggests that courts and other decisionmakers frequently go beyond the formal legal factors and take account of what might be called "extralegal punishment factors" (XPFs).

XPFs, the subject of this Article, include matters as diverse as an offender's apology, remorse, history of good or bad deeds, public acknowledgment of guilt, special talents, old age, extralegal suffering from the offense, as well …

Notice-And-Comment Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Richard A. Bierschbach

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No abstract provided.

Triaging Appointed-Counsel Funding And Pro Se Access To Justice, Benjamin H. Barton, Stephanos Bibas

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For decades, scholars and advocates have lauded Gideon’s guarantee of appointed counsel in criminal cases and sought to extend it into a civil-Gideon right in a range of civil cases. This past Term, the Supreme Court disappointed the civil-Gideon movement in Turner v. Rogers, unanimously rejecting an across-the-board right to counsel while encouraging reforms to make courts more accessible to pro se litigants. Turner is mostly right, we argue, because funding limitations require reserving counsel mostly for criminal cases, where they are needed most. For the first time, the Court recognized that lawyers can make cases not only slower and …

The Machinery Of Criminal Justice, Stephanos Bibas

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Two centuries ago, the American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But over the last two centuries, lawyers have taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting a plea-bargaining system for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a result, victims rarely hear defendants express remorse and apologize, and defendants rarely receive forgiveness. This lawyerized machinery has purchased …

Mobile Phones And Crime Deterrence: An Underappreciated Link, Jonathan Klick, John Macdonald, Thomas Stratmann

All Faculty Scholarship

Between 1991 and 2001, crime rates dropped by about a third across all crime categories. We suggest that the introduction and growth of mobile phone technology may have contributed to the crime decline in the 1990s, specifically in the areas of rape and assault. Given that mobile phones increase surveillance and the risks of apprehension when committing crimes against strangers, an expansion of this technology would increase the costs of crime as perceived by forward-looking criminals. We use the available mobile phone data to show that there is a strongly negative association between mobile phones and violent crimes, although data …