Criminal Law Commons^™

Research Brief: Ghosting In The Realm Of Research: The Realities Of Conducting Social Science Research In The Digital Age, Lena M. Campagna, Angela S. Murolo

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Social science research does not occur in a vacuum. Competing for time and attention is the norm in a society that has become more isolated. Because of this, the effects of ghosting are prevalent everywhere. As social scientists, we are not immune to ghosting or its effects. In this research brief, two junior faculty members discuss their efforts to overcome ghosting at every level of the research process and its impact on hiring student workers, knowledge production, and meeting grant funding requirements. Lastly, the authors offer suggestions for overcoming the effects of ghosting and its effect on the challenges of …

Neurocriminology: A Beginner’S Guide, Jerrod Brown

Forensic Scholars Today

No abstract provided.

Neurocriminology: Revolutionizing Specialized Training For Criminal Justice System Professionals, Janina Cich

Forensic Scholars Today

No abstract provided.

A Law Enforcement Leader's Response To Human Trafficking, Samuel Whitebear

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Law enforcement leaders must consider how their agency can effectively investigate human trafficking in their jurisdiction. These leaders are tasked with creating an agency culture that prioritizes ethical decision making, which directly affects variables such as officer training and officer treatment of trafficking victims during investigations. Ethically sound decision making has rewards, such as inspiring other leaders to act in a similar fashion. Human trafficking training with an emphasis on the thought-behavior link will enable officers to understand the motivations of both traffickers and victims. Untrained officers rely on biases and assumptions when interacting with sex workers. This is because …

Solving The Public Defense Crisis In Kansas, Malia N. Brink, Pamela R. Metzger

Deason Center Reports

Kansas has a constitutional obligation to provide counsel to any arrested person who cannot afford to hire a private attorney. But attorney shortages in Kansas threaten this core constitutional right. According to the American Bar Association, there are an average of four attorneys per 1,000 people nationwide. However, only six of Kansas’s 105 counties have two or more attorneys per 1,000 people. In 44 counties, there is just one attorney or fewer per 1,000 residents. The situation is particularly worrisome in rural Kansas. In 2023, nearly half of Kansas’s population lived in rural counties, but 80% of its lawyers lived …

Why Domestic Violence Offenders Don't Give Up Their Guns, Natalie Nanasi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Perpetrators of intimate partner violence are barred by federal law and many states' laws from possessing firearms. While such prohibitions enjoy popular support, they are sporadically and inconsistently enforced, placing the lives of survivors at risk when offenders do not voluntarily comply. Many experts, including this author, have offered legal and policy solutions to increase the likelihood that perpetrators of domestic violence will either willingly relinquish their guns or otherwise be dispossessed of them. But these proposals may have been premature.

This Article is the first to take a step back and inquire why offenders do not surrender their firearms …

Racial Disparities In Crime-Based Removal Proceedings, Emily Ryo, Ian Peacock, Weston Ley, Christopher Levesque

Faculty Scholarship

Whether and to what extent racial minorities experience harsher treatment or face worse outcomes in court are questions of fundamental importance for any justice system. Questions of racial inequality are especially salient in the context of removal proceedings that are triggered by immigrants’ criminal history. Many individuals in crime-based removal proceedings are immigrants of color who face a host of legal disadvantages that are tantamount to double penalties for the same crime for which they have already been punished through the criminal justice system. This Article offers, for the first time, systematic empirical analyses of crime-based removal proceedings decided between …

An Eye For An Eye Makes A Vigilant Society, Liam C. Preyer

Capstone Showcase

Vigilantism is one of the oldest practices of mankind; for as long as there have been moral and legal laws to govern us and live by, there have been individuals who have sought justice outside these systems. Vigilantism is the response to failures in the justice system, and in the United States in particular, we have seen examples from the Western Frontier to the modern-day digital landscape. This paper will explore the nature of vigilante justice through historical, psychological, media-driven, legal, and digital lenses. We will explore how cultural narratives, media influences, government actions, and psychological motivations have shaped the …

Reevaluating Felon-In-Possession Laws After Bruen And The War On Drugs, Laura Ginsberg Abelson

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The legal landscape surrounding firearm possession is evolving rapidly. In 2022, the Supreme Court accelerated its expansion of the individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment in New York Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen. Since Bruen, courts around the country have struck down nearly all types of firearm regulations, with a notable exception: felon-in-possession laws. This Article examines the implications of a legal landscape where those who have prior felony convictions, and especially prior drug convictions, are punished harshly for the same behavior—possession of a firearm—that is constitutionally protected for nearly everyone else. I argue …

Legislatures And Localized Resentencing, Ronald F. Wright, Kay L. Levine

Faculty Articles

Recent legislation, exemplified in statutes from California and Washington, creates new methods for resentencing defendants in old cases. These laws place controlling authority for resentencing in the hands of local officials, especially local prosecutors, and invite variation at the county level.

While some new procedural channels for reducing the sentences of people convicted of past crimes are mandatory, in that they entitle certain defendants to resentencing if they were convicted of certain crimes or were subject to certain penalty enhancements that are no longer valid, other statutes create discretionary resentencing channels. In the discretionary channels, the chief local prosecutor has …

Perceptions And Treatment Decisions For A Drug Offender Based On Social Class, Cocaine Type, Personal Characteristics, And Compassionate Love: A Vignette Study, Yasmin A. Odeh

Theses and Dissertations

Problem: The shift from a focus on rehabilitation to the more punitive, “tough on crime” approach to illegal behavior in the U.S. has been enacted in no small way by policies connected to the use and abuse of drugs. The disparities between crack and powder cocaine—two chemically similar substances—have headlined this shift (Vagins and McCurdy 2006). However, research is scarce on laypeople’s approval of deterrence approaches for drug offenses, including as a function of types (e.g., powder vs. cocaine possession). This study examined people’s perceptions of prosecutorial decisions for drug offenders—whether they are punished, rehabilitated, or both—and whether people perceived …

Internal Or External: An Exploration Of The United States Police Chief Hiring Process, Kayleigh Walker

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper explores the hiring processes of police chiefs across the United States, focusing on internal versus external hiring practices. The goal of this research was to identify common trends, legislative barriers, and the impact of leadership on the hiring process through historical context, legal analysis, and case studies. The findings suggest that internal hires dominate chief appointments, though external hires are often sought during crises. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and highlights the need to more fully understand this phenomenon. Understanding the processes and limitations surrounding the appointment of new leadership is critical to reform and …

Auditing Criminal Justice Minimalism, Trevor George Gardner

Scholarship@WashULaw

If criminal justice minimalism is a shared principle among criminal law scholars, it can help to clarify the quality of our disagreements. Every normative proposal in the criminal legal literature can be held to the minimalist standard—audited, so to speak, to account for the policy author’s minimalist claims. To this end, this Essay proposes a four-step framework by which to evaluate adherence to the minimalist principle, where each step serves as a hub for pointed scholarly debate regarding the path to minimalist criminal justice.

A Liberty-Balancing Approach To Crime, Sheldon Evans

Scholarship@WashULaw

At its core, the criminal legal system is an ecosystem of institutions that seek to balance liberty interests. The insightful theories and complex practices of crime policy coalesce around questions on how crime impacts the liberties of individuals and communities to be safe, and how this correlates with the deprivation of liberty from offenders through our punishment system. But modern criminal policy, most often associated with the problems of overcriminalization and mass incarceration, has wholly abandoned any such delicate and nuanced balancing. Instead, the system thrives on sacrificing the liberties of offenders in a perverse and ineffective regime that leads …

Victim-Offender Relationships And Their Influence On Crime Brutality And Sentencing Outcomes In Capital Homicide Cases, Samantha Jane Trowbridge

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This study examines capital murder cases in Missouri from 1976 to 2022 to explore how victim-offender relationships relate to both the brutality of homicides and sentencing outcomes. It addresses three main questions: What are the different types of victim-offender relationships in these cases, and how frequently does each type occur? How do these relationships influence sentencing outcomes, particularly the likelihood of receiving the death penalty versus life without parole? And which types of relationships are associated with the highest and lowest levels of brutality? The study uses official court records and applies a coding process to analyze relationship type, sentencing …

Disentangling Safety And Accountability In Criminal Justice Policy, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

In this Article, I argue that the U.S. criminal system and debates about criminal justice reform reflect an elision of two largely distinct social functions: ensuring public safety and imposing accountability for harmful conduct. Despite deep disagreement about the specifics, most commentators seem to accept that these are both important social functions. Abolitionists claim that the criminal system doesn’t keep people safe and provide accountability. Instead, it harms—and perhaps is meant to harm—people from marginalized communities and protects the interest of socially dominant groups. Reformers contend that the criminal system can and should serve the safety and/or accountability interests, but …

Abolish What?, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

From leading academic journals to popular press outlets, abolitionist activism and scholarship have earned airtime in national debates about criminal justice reform. But what is "abolition?" When scholars, lawyers, and activists talk about abolition, they seem to mean very different, even conflicting, things. In this Essay, I focus on a core question that might divide different abolitionists-and different critics of abolition: what is to be abolished? Abolitionists argue that it's critically important to abolish something, while critics of abolition insist that something is necessary to a well-functioning society. Yet, it's not always clear what that something is-both for abolitionists and …

Crimes Against Humanity And Customary International Law, Leila Nadya Sadat

Scholarship@WashULaw

A draft text of a treaty on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity was finally sent to negotiations by the U.N. General Assembly on December 4, 2024, after six long years of advocacy by States and civil society. Questions remain, however, with regard to how crimes against humanity will be defined in the new treaty. On the one hand, some States have embraced a definition of crimes against humanity that tracks Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”). Other States have rejected Article 7 as the basis for the new treaty, but theirs …

Ten Years And Ten Miles: Reflecting On "Ferguson", Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay serves as the introduction to a symposium on the ten-year anniversary of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri and the subsequent protests and uprisings across the country. The authors look back on the past decade—their own experiences and our experiences as a nation—to consider the impacts of the Ferguson uprisings and the landscape of criminal justice and racial justice advocacy, scholarship, and teaching today. In this Essay, I provide a brief introduction to the Volume and essays that follow. In Part I, I situate the Ferguson uprisings in the broader context of activism responsive to racial injustice in …

Jurisprudence Of Problem-Solving Courts: A Study Of Structure, Success, And Sociological Theory, Lauren M. Boos

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In response to the failures of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, Problem-Solving Courts (PSCs) have emerged as alternatives to traditional prosecution. These courts employ therapeutic-informed and rehabilitative practices aimed at addressing the root causes of criminal behavior. While widely regarded as more effective than traditional courts, PSCs have developed largely without a formal theoretical foundation. This is notable given their alignment with Sociological Jurisprudence (SJ) and Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ), which view the legal system as a vehicle for promoting individual and community well-being.

Despite being celebrated as therapeutic innovations, PSCs often embody these principles unevenly. Using …

New Insights On Expert Opinion About Eyewitness Memory Research, Travis M. Seale-Carlisle, Adele Quigley-Mcbride, Jennifer E. F. Teitcher, William E. Crozier, Chad S. Dodson, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Experimental psychologists investigating eyewitness memory have periodically gathered their thoughts on a variety of eyewitness memory phenomena. Courts and other stakeholders of eyewitness research rely on the expert opinions reflected in these surveys to make informed decisions. However, the last survey of this sort was published more than 20 years ago, and the science of eyewitness memory has developed since that time. Stakeholders need a current database of expert opinions to make informed decisions. In this article, we provide that update. We surveyed 76 scientists for their opinions on eyewitness memory phenomena. We compared these current expert opinions to expert …

Rising Temperatures, The Prison Litigation Reform Act, And The Heat Death Of Human Dignity In Texas Prisons, Brianne Wylie

Northwestern University Law Review

This Note seeks to shed light on the life-threatening danger of extreme heat in un-air-conditioned Texas prisons. The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) starkly limits the relief available to those suffering and dying in these prisons. This Note proposes an amendment to the legislation that could create a path toward lasting relief for incarcerated people. After analyzing the effects of increasing heat on the particularly vulnerable prison population, this Note analyzes how the Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit have handled claims alleging constitutionally violative prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment—in short, ineffectively, if at all. This Note then details …

Procedural Justice In Prison: Examining Female Inmates’ Experiences, Perceptions, And Interactions With Correctional Officers, Michael E. Antonio, Selena R. Price, Cassandra L. Reyes

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Correctional staff behavior can impact inmates’ perceptions of procedural justice and facilitate incidents of prison misconduct and violence. This analysis showed findings gathered from 136 female inmates incarcerated in a state correctional system. This exploratory analysis examined inmates’ self-reported responses about direct experiences, perceptions, and interactions with correctional officers. Findings from 19 Likert-scale items highlighted inmates’ encounters with correctional officers, however, results shown here focused on findings uncovered from a content analysis performed on inmates’ written comments to an open-ended item. The emerging themes portrayed correctional officers as disrespectful, indifferent, misusing authority, and dehumanizing."

Lessons Learned From An Undergraduate Criminal Justice Internship: The Student Experience, Nancy Blank, Robin S. Goldberg-Glen, Lori Simons, Nicole Scharfetter, Denna Grande

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Internships play a crucial role in the educational and professional training of students. This article presents a qualitative evaluation of the benefits and challenges of an undergraduate internship through an examination of self-reflective journals completed by 20 seniors majoring in criminal justice. Findings were organized into five major themes: knowledge acquisition, professional development, personal development, affective development, and awareness of the realities of the criminal justice system. The most frequently cited benefits included increased learning, the ability to apply coursework to the internship experience, and improved career readiness. Challenges included exposure to field experiences that led to feeling sad and …

Criminology And Criminal Justice Researchers’ Experiences And Challenges With Institutional Review Boards, Elaine Gunnison, Jacqueline B. Helfgott

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Conducting research in criminology and criminal justice settings brings unique challenges involving human subjects. Prior research has examined the quality and effectiveness of Institutional Review Boards (IRB). However, research on the experiences of criminology and criminal justice researchers when interfacing with their IRBs is scant. This study seeks to fill this gap through the exploration of experiences criminology and criminal justice researchers have had with IRBs. Focus groups were conducted with 13 researchers who were members of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and the American Society of Criminology. Results revealed that participants experienced challenges centering around specific themes …

Information Trolls And Democracy: A Qualitative Examination Of Disinformation Campaigns In Canada, Rachelle Louden, Richard Frank

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This research explores disinformation delivered during the 2019 Canadian Federal election. This study explores the methods and techniques used by the perpetrators of disinformation campaigns in the context of Canadian elections. This research also examines whether the disinformation discovered during the election falls within criminal foreign interference. Critical discourse analysis is used to qualitatively analyze 26 articles published by a Northeastern U.S. based independent news website within the ten months leading up to the election. This research finds that the use of unnamed sources, hyperbolic statements to misrepresent facts, and strategies to de-legitimize reputable institutions were the most common tools …

The Making Of (Un)Certainty In Knowledge Production: Rhetoric At Play In A Heritability Controversy, Angelica Camacho, Dominique Robert

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"(Un)certainty is not an inherent quality of a scientific assertion. It is rather the product of negotiations and collective work performed amidst noisy or quiet scientific debates. Using a controversy on heritability of crime-related behaviors as a case study, this paper proposes an analysis of the rhetoric at play to produce (un)certainty in publications presenting competing arguments. The controversy under study is at the heart of the legitimization of biosocial criminology, a contested field of study. The research shows that on the discursive front, three main strategies are used to modalize the (un)certainty of scientific claims over that of competing …

Indiana Law Supporting Newly Established Indiana Innocence Project, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Law students from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law will have the opportunity to help exonerate wrongfully convicted Hoosiers through the newly established Indiana Innocence Project, which officially launched Saturday (Aug. 17).

Established in association with the national Innocence Project—which has helped free more than 240 wrongfully convicted prisoners since 1992—the Indiana Innocence Project (INIP) has been made possible through the support of the Herbert Simon Family Foundation, along with the Law School and IU’s Department of Criminal Justice.

The Indiana Innocence Project will screen and investigate cases with meritorious innocence claims, secure DNA testing when biological evidence …

"You're Going To Make A Hell Of A Corrections Man Someday": Work Experiences Of Female Wardens And Superintendents, Karen A. Altendorf

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This project describes the experiences of female wardens and superintendents in state correctional facilities in the United States. There has been little research on women in leadership positions in corrections; most research has focused on females working in non-traditional occupations or as corrections officers. This project describes how women negotiate gender in a masculine organizational culture where they are not always welcome. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-nine wardens and superintendents from thirteen states. The subjects discussed various issues women working in corrections face, from appearance to interacting with inmates and coworkers, being under near-constant scrutiny as women, and being …

A Thematic Analysis Of Parenting Experiences Of Women In Prison, Pious Maedzenge, Dawn Beichner-Thomas

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Although there is growing literature examining system-involved mothers, little is known about their parenting experiences and coping mechanisms. Using Braun and colleagues’ (2006; 2022) reflexive thematic analysis approach, this qualitative study examines the parenting experiences of forty-four mothers incarcerated in a Midwestern correctional center. The data were gathered from interviews with incarcerated mothers and included accounts of the women’s experiences before and during their incarceration. The narratives illustrate how background experiences (i.e., sexual and physical abuse, drug dependency, and childhood experiences) shape women’s experiences of mothering, perceptions of the effects of incarceration on their children, and reentry plans. Results from …