Law Commons^™

How Much Punishment Is Enough?: Embracing Uncertainty In Modern Sentencing Reform, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock

Jalila Jefferson-Bullock

Legal Complexity And The Transformation Of The Criminal Process: The Origins Of Plea Bargaining, Malcolm M. Feeley

Malcolm Feeley

No abstract provided.

Criminal Justice In The Supreme Court: A Review Of United States Supreme Court Criminal And Habeas Corpus Decisions (October 2, 2000 - September 30, 2001), Andrea Lyon

Andrea D. Lyon

No abstract provided.

Race, Crime And The Pool Of Surplus Criminality: Or Why The "War On Drugs" Was A "War On Blacks", Kenneth B. Nunn

Kenneth B. Nunn

The War on Drugs has had a devastating effect on African American communities nationwide. The concept of the pool of surplus criminality may explain the drug war's focus on African Americans. Faced with a perceived drug problem, White Americans naturally identified African American people as the source of that threat and targeted them for police harassment and penal control. There are ways in which the drug war may be construed as a race war. The disproportionate impact on the African American community, evidence that policy makers anticipated the drug war would disproportionately harm the African American community, and the historic …

New Explorations In Culture And Crime: Definitions, Theory, Method, Kenneth B. Nunn

Kenneth B. Nunn

Culture affects criminal law in at least two key ways. First, culture and crime symbiotically define each other. Second, culture helps explain which courtroom narratives will be successful, and which will not. Culture influences who will be arrested, charged, convicted, and what sentence they will receive. Indeed, the invisible hand of culture drives the process of criminalization and helps to determine which acts we will sanction through criminal statutes.

Decriminalization, Police Authority, And Routine Traffic Stops, Jordan Woods

Jordan Blair Woods

Criminal Justice In The Supreme Court: A Review Of United States Supreme Court Criminal And Habeas Corpus Decisions (October 4, 1999 - October 1, 2000), Andrea Lyon

Andrea D. Lyon

No abstract provided.

Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry And The Potential For Abuse, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Last Words: A Survey And Analysis Of Federal Judges' Views On Allocution In Sentencing, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Factors Influencing Racial Disparities In Traffic Enforcement In Massachusetts, Jack Mcdevitt

Jack McDevitt

This dissertation seeks to understand the extent to which community-level or organizational-level factors are related to the level of racial disparity in traffic enforcement in Massachusetts. Prior research has demonstrated that racial disparities exist in the ways traffic laws are enforced in Massachusetts and in many other communities across the United States. Little research, however, has focused on what factors may be associated with these disparities. Two theoretical frameworks suggest potential explanations for the disparities that have been identified: racial-threat theory and police-organizational theory. Racial threat theory suggests that racial characteristics of a community, such as the size of the …

Meaningful Reform Of Plea Bargaining: The Control Of Prosecutorial Discretion, Donald G. Gifford

Donald G Gifford

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection And The Prosecutor's Charging Decision: Enforcing An Ideal, Donald G. Gifford

Donald G Gifford

No abstract provided.

The Worldwide Accountability Deficit For Criminal Prosecutors, Ronald Wright, Marc Miller

Ronald F. Wright

In democratic governments committed to the rule of law, prosecutors should be accountable to the public, just like other powerful government agents who make important decisions. The theoretical need for prosecutor accountability, however, meets practical shortcomings in criminal justice systems everywhere. Individual prosecutors everywhere express allegiance to the rule of law through the wise decisions made by each prosecutor and across offices as a whole. But the claim “trust us” does not in fact generate the level of public trust that one should expect in a government of laws. Institutional strategies to guarantee prosecutor accountability all fall short of the …

Public Defender Elections And Public Control Of Criminal Justice, Ronald F. Wright

Ronald F. Wright

Voters in the United States select some of the major actors in criminal justice, but not all of them. Among the major figures in the criminal courtroom, voters typically elect two of the three: the prosecutor and the judge, but not the public defender. Prosecutors in almost all the states are elected at the local level. The public defender, however, is typically not an elected official, even though the defender is a public employee with important budgetary and policymaking authority over criminal justice. Why the difference?

As it happens, we have some actual experience to draw upon in answering these …

The Business Of Punishing: Impediments To Accountability In The Private Corrections Industry, Stephen Raher

Stephen Raher

No abstract provided.

Restructuring Proposal For The Criminal Division Of The Circuit Court Of Cook County, Daniel T. Coyne

Daniel T. Coyne

No abstract provided.

How Prosecutor Elections Fail Us, Ronald F. Wright

Ronald F. Wright

There are several methods for holding prosecutors accountable in this country. Judges enforce a few legal boundaries on the work of prosecutors. Prosecutors with positions lower in the office or department hierarchy must answer to those at the top. But none of these controls binds a prosecutor too tightly. At the end of the day, the public guards against abusive prosecutors through direct democratic control.

Does the electoral check on prosecutors work? There are reasons to believe that elections could lead prosecutors to apply the criminal law according to public priorities and values. Voters choose their prosecutors at the local …

Dead Wrong, Ronald Wright, Marc Miller

Ronald F. Wright

DNA-driven exonerations offer many lessons for police, for prosecutors, and for legislatures. Many scholars have focused on novel procedures to identify and remedy wrongful convictions after they occur. Scholars have also concluded that in our administrative criminal justice system we need prosecutors who are driven less by testosterone and more by a balanced search for the truth.

In our view, the most enduring changes to the work of prosecutors will focus not on softening their adversarial perspective, but on enhancing and staying true to the traditional core of their work on the front end of the process—the charging decisions.

Accuracy …

Does Religion Really Reduce Crime?, Paul Heaton

Paul Heaton

Considerable research in sociology, criminology, and economics aims to understand the effect of religiosity on crime. Many sociological theories positing a deterrent effect of religion on crime are empirically examined using ordinary least-squares (OLS) regressions of crime measures on measures of religiosity. Most previous studies have found a negative effect of religion on crime using OLS, a result I am able to replicate using county-level data on religious membership and crime rates. If crime affects religious participation, however, OLS coefficients in this context suffer from endogeneity bias. Using historic religiosity as an instrument for current religious participation, I find a …

Book Review: A Theory Of Criminal Justice By Jan Corecki. New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. Pp. Xv, 185. $15.00., Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins