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Full-Text Articles in Law

2017 Youth Recidivism: Diversion To Discharge In Maine's Juvenile Justice System, Robyn Dumont, Erica King Msw Nov 2017

2017 Youth Recidivism: Diversion To Discharge In Maine's Juvenile Justice System, Robyn Dumont, Erica King Msw

Justice Policy

This report summarizes research that examined data for youth involved with the Maine Juvenile Justice System who were diverted, supervised, or released from commitment for the first time from 2010 to 2014. The report describes the cohorts of youth demographically, reviews trends, explores risk levels and length of stay, and examines recidivism and returns to a facility. This research shows that fewer youth are entering the system and that more of those who do are quickly and successfully diverted. It shows that youth supervised in the community are decreasing in risk level and offense severity and that the majority do …


Breaking The Cycle: An Exploratory Study Of Alternative Solutions For Mentally Ill Adults In The Criminal Justice System, Lindsey Whitley Jul 2017

Breaking The Cycle: An Exploratory Study Of Alternative Solutions For Mentally Ill Adults In The Criminal Justice System, Lindsey Whitley

Masters Theses

Mental illness is a prevalent issue and many times individuals diagnosed with a mental illness are repeat offenders within the criminal justice system; therefore, it is important to understand the problems at hand and find ways to handle the problems, or best yet take preventative measures to stop the problems from ever occurring. The literature review and interviews show that the criminal justice system seems to be handling mental illness in the best way possible with the current resources that are available to them. However, the literature review and interviews also show that an increase in resources and training on …


The Effects Of Mental Health Treatment In Correctional Facilities, Victoria Ziemek Apr 2017

The Effects Of Mental Health Treatment In Correctional Facilities, Victoria Ziemek

Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of mental healthcare in the criminal justice system on post-release recidivism of people with serious mental illness (PSMI). It can be noted that mental illness is not the cause of criminal behavior, but there is a significant negative relationship between mental health services available while incarcerated and successful community reentry. A review of previous research on this topic was used to develop the hypotheses and questions tested in this study. The review provides evidence that PSMI who have been involved with more community based outpatient services have been more susceptible …


Gateway Crimes, Murat C. Mungan Apr 2017

Gateway Crimes, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Many who argue against the legalization of marijuana suggest that while its consumption may not be very harmful, marijuana indirectly causes significant social harm by acting as a “gateway drug,” a drug whose consumption facilitates the use of other, more harmful drugs. This Article presents a theory of “gateway crimes,” which, perhaps counterintuitively, implies that there are social gains to decriminalizing offenses that cause minor harms, including marijuana-related offenses. A typical gateway crime is an act which is punished lightly, but because it is designated as a crime, being convicted for committing it leads one to be severely stigmatized. People …


Pretrial Detention And Bail, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson Mar 2017

Pretrial Detention And Bail, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson

All Faculty Scholarship

Our current pretrial system imposes high costs on both the people who are detained pretrial and the taxpayers who foot the bill. These costs have prompted a surge of bail reform around the country. Reformers seek to reduce pretrial detention rates, as well as racial and socioeconomic disparities in the pretrial system, while simultaneously improving appearance rates and reducing pretrial crime. The current state of pretrial practice suggests that there is ample room for improvement. Bail hearings are often cursory, with no defense counsel present. Money-bail practices lead to high rates of detention even among misdemeanor defendants and those who …


Firearms In The Family, Carolyn B. Ramsey Jan 2017

Firearms In The Family, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article considers firearms prohibitions for domestic violence offenders, in light of recent Supreme Court decisions and the larger, national debate about gun control. Unlike other scholarship in the area, it confronts the costs of ratcheting up the scope and enforcement of such firearms bans and argues that the politicization of safety has come at the expense of a sound approach to gun control in the context of intimate-partner abuse. In doing so, it expands scholarly arguments against mandatory, one-size-fits-all criminal justice responses to domestic violence in a direction that other critics have been reluctant to go, perhaps because of …


The Downstream Consequences Of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention, Paul Heaton, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan Stevenson Jan 2017

The Downstream Consequences Of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention, Paul Heaton, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan Stevenson

Scholarly Works

In misdemeanor cases, pretrial detention poses a particular problem because it may induce innocent defendants to plead guilty in order to exit jail, potentially creating widespread error in case adjudication. While practitioners have long recognized this possibility, empirical evidence on the downstream impacts of pretrial detention on misdemeanor defendants and their cases remains limited. This Article uses detailed data on hundreds of thousands of misdemeanor cases resolved in Harris County, Texas—the thirdlargest county in the United States—to measure the effects of pretrial detention on case outcomes and future crime. We find that detained defendants are 25% more likely than similarly …


Can The Government Deport Immigrants Using Information It Encouraged Them To Provide?, Amanda Frost Jan 2017

Can The Government Deport Immigrants Using Information It Encouraged Them To Provide?, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Essay describes the legal and policy issues raised by any systematic effort to deport unauthorized immigrants based on information the government invited them to provide. Part I briefly surveys some of the major laws, regulations, and programs that encourage unauthorized immigrants to identify themselves. Part II analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the statutory and constitutional arguments that immigrants could raise as a defense against deportations based on self-reported data. Part III explains that even if the government’s systematic use of such data to deport unauthorized immigrants is legal, doing so would be a poor policy choice for any …


The Downstream Consequences Of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention, Paul Heaton, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan Stevenson Jan 2017

The Downstream Consequences Of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention, Paul Heaton, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan Stevenson

All Faculty Scholarship

In misdemeanor cases, pretrial detention poses a particular problem because it may induce otherwise innocent defendants to plead guilty in order to exit jail, potentially creating widespread error in case adjudication. While practitioners have long recognized this possibility, empirical evidence on the downstream impacts of pretrial detention on misdemeanor defendants and their cases remains limited. This Article uses detailed data on hundreds of thousands of misdemeanor cases resolved in Harris County, Texas — the third largest county in the U.S. — to measure the effects of pretrial detention on case outcomes and future crime. We find that detained defendants are …


Coordinating Compliance Incentives, Veronica Root Jan 2017

Coordinating Compliance Incentives, Veronica Root

Journal Articles

In today’s regulatory environment, a corporation engaged in wrongdoing can be sure of one thing: regulators will point to an ineffective compliance program as a key cause of institutional misconduct. The explosion in the importance of compliance is unsurprising given the emphasis that governmental actors — from the Department of Justice, to the Securities and Exchange Commission, to even the Commerce Department — place on the need for institutions to adopt “effective compliance programs.” The governmental actors that demand effective compliance programs, however, have narrow scopes of authority. DOJ Fraud handles violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, while the …


Constructing Recidivism Risk, Jessica M. Eaglin Jan 2017

Constructing Recidivism Risk, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Courts increasingly use actuarial meaning statistically derived information about a defendant's likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior in the future at sentencing. This Article examines how developers construct the tools that predict recidivism risk. It exposes the numerous choices that developers make during tool construction with serious consequences to sentencing law and policy. These design decisions require normative judgments concerning accuracy, equality, and the purpose of punishment. Whether and how to address these concerns reflects societal values about the administration of criminal justice more broadly. Currently, developers make these choices in the absence of law, even as they face distinct …