Law Commons^™

Mothers In Chains: How National And State Legislation Have Been Enacted To Stop The Practice Of Shackling Incarcerated Pregnant Women, Emily Olson

PPPA Paper Prize

In recent decades, the treatment of pregnant prisoners has generated much public debate, in particular the issue of shackling pregnant inmates during labor, delivery, and postpartum recovery. This paper presents several shackling cases that have resulted in lawsuits and policy changes and discusses the growing effort to ban the use of restraints on pregnant prisoners, a practice many medical and human rights organizations deem unnecessary, degrading, and unsafe. The author also analyzes the Anti-Shackling Bills introduced in the 2010 Washington State Legislative Session, documenting the bills’ amendments and passage into law.

Sentencing Paris, Jodie O'Leary

Jodie O'Leary

Extract: For a number of years now punishing Paris Hilton may have been on the mind of many a person for different reasons. She is guilty of crimes against fashion some would say. Cries of cruelty to animals could also be heard for, among other things, dressing her Chihuahua Tinkerbell in pink Chanel. Parents scorned her as a bad role model for their children.

Curtis Fogel On Dying Inside: The Hiv/Aids Ward At Limestone Prison. By Benjamin Fleury-Steiner & Carla Crowder. Ann Arbor, Mi: University Of Michigan Press, 2008. 238pp., Curtis Fogel

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Dying Inside: The HIV/AIDS Ward at Limestone Prison. By Benjamin Fleury-Steiner & Carla Crowder. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008. 238pp.

Retribution And The Experience Of Punishment, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur

Articles

In a prior article, we argued that punishment theorists need to take into account the counterintuitive findings from hedonic psychology about how offenders typically experience punishment. Punishment generally involves the imposition of negative experience. The reason that greater fines and prison sentences constitute more severe punishments than lesser ones is, in large part, that they are assumed to impose greater negative experience. Hedonic adaptation reduces that difference in negative experience, thereby undermining efforts to achieve proportionality in punishment. Anyone who values punishing more serious crimes more severely than less serious crimes by an appropriate amount - as virtually everyone does …