Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
Prisons Of The Mind: Social Value And Economic Inefficiency In The Criminal Justice Response To Mental Illness, Amanda C. Pustilnik
Prisons Of The Mind: Social Value And Economic Inefficiency In The Criminal Justice Response To Mental Illness, Amanda C. Pustilnik
Faculty Scholarship
Can constructs of social meaning lead to actual criminal confinement? Can the intangible value ascribed to the maintenance of certain social norms lead to radically inefficient choices about resource allocation? The disproportionate criminal confinement of people with severe mental illnesses relative to non-mentally ill individuals suggests that social meanings related to mental illness can create legal and physical walls around this disfavored group. Responding to the non-violent mentally ill principally through the criminal system imposes at least 6 billion dollars in costs annually on the public, above any offsetting public safety and deterrence benefits, and imposes terrible human costs on …
The News Media’S Influence On Criminal Justice Policy: How Market Driven News Promotes Punitiveness, Sara Sun Beale
The News Media’S Influence On Criminal Justice Policy: How Market Driven News Promotes Punitiveness, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
This Article argues that commercial pressures are determining the news media's contemporary treatment of crime and violence, and that the resulting coverage has played a major role in reshaping public opinion, and ultimately, criminal justice policy. The news media are not mirrors, simply reflecting events in society. Rather, media content is shaped by economic and marketing considerations that frequently override traditional journalistic criteria for newsworthiness. This Article explores local and national television's treatment of crime, where the extent and style of news stories about crime are being adjusted to meet perceived viewer demand and advertising strategies, which frequently emphasize particular …
Less Is Better: Justice Stevens And The Narrowed Death Penalty, James S. Liebman, Lawrence C. Marshall
Less Is Better: Justice Stevens And The Narrowed Death Penalty, James S. Liebman, Lawrence C. Marshall
Faculty Scholarship
In a recent speech to the American Bar Association, Justice John Paul Stevens "issued an unusually stinging criticism of capital punishment." Although he "stopped short of calling for an end to the death penalty," Justice Stevens catalogued a number of its "'serious flaws,'" including several procedures that the full Court has reviewed and upheld over his dissent – selecting capital jurors in a manner that excludes those with qualms about the death penalty, permitting elected state judges to second-guess jurors when they decline to impose the death penalty, permitting states to premise death verdicts on "victim impact statements," tolerating sub-par …
Embracing Chance: Post-Modern Meditations On Punishment, Bernard E. Harcourt
Embracing Chance: Post-Modern Meditations On Punishment, Bernard E. Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
Since the modern era, the discourse of punishment has cycled through three sets of questions. The first, born of the Enlightenment itself, asked: On what ground does the sovereign have the right to punish? Nietzsche most forcefully, but others as well, argued that the question itself begged its own answer. The right to punish, they suggested, is what defines sovereignty, and as such, can never serve to limit sovereign power. With the birth of the social sciences, this skepticism gave rise to a second set of questions: What then is the true function of punishment? What is it that we …