Criminal Law Commons^™

Straight From The Source: Examining Gender Differences In Inmate Advice For Avoiding Prison Sexual Victimization, Beatriz Amalfi Marques, Ashley G. Blackburn, Shannon K. Fowler, Janet L. Mullings, Maria L. Lecuna

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Once incarcerated, inmates face a myriad of potential threats to their physical and emotional wellbeing. The threat of being sexually or otherwise victimized while in prison breeds anxiety and fear among inmates, especially those who are new to the prison environment. In response, inmates have developed strategies to avoid victimization. The present study, utilizing self-report questionnaires, asked a sample of male and female inmates in a large Southern prison system about the advice they would give to another newly incarcerated inmate to avoid being sexually assaulted. A thematic analysis of inmates’ open-ended responses revealed male and female inmates have different …

Caught In-Between: A Video Essay Of Masculine Identity And Methamphetamine Use In The Rural South, Heith Copes, Jared Ragland, Adam Forrester

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Since the Great Recession in 2007, rural employment rates have been steadily increasing. According to a 2020 United States Department of Agriculture report, rural unemployment has been at its lowest in over a decade. However, such aggregate trends overlook an important aspect of work—its meaningfulness. In many small towns throughout the Southern United States, much of the available work pays little and demands much on the body. As a result, meaningful employment is often out of reach for some men living in the rural South.

Opening The “Black Box” Of Federal Illegal Reentry Sentencing: A Non-Participant Observational Analysis Of Sentencing Constraints And Judicial Discretion, Kevin Buckler

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Judicial discretion in sentencing has historically produced disparities in criminal sentencing outcomes. In an effort to address disparity at the federal level, in 1984, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that led to the creation of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and subsequently the adoption of federal sentencing guidelines. Studies show that even among similarly situated defendants (in terms of offense score and criminal history category) disparities have persisted regardless of the sentencing guidelines. An understudied source of disparity is the combined and interactive role of judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys in the application of the guidelines and the statutory framework that …

Miriam Boeri, Hurt: Chronicles Of The Drug War Generation, Kathleen E. Padilla

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

In 1971, President Nixon officially declared the War on Drugs. Flash forward to 2020 and the prison population is approximately 2.3 million people, with 1 in 5 of those individuals having been incarcerated for a non-violent drug offense (Wagner & Wagner, 2020). Among those caught up in drug offenses stemming from the policies enacted during the War on Drugs, the majority are baby boomers. Baby boomers are those that are born between the years 1946 and 1964, and whose current population is approximately 73 million, the second largest generation aside from Millennials (Census, 2019). By the start of the 21st …

Forced Interactions With Sheriff Deputies Over Time And Their Influence On Stigma And Self Identities Among Individuals Convicted Of Sex Crimes, Lisa L. Sample, Brooke Cooley, Tusty Ten Bensel, Carin Hyter, Brett Hurley

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This paper examined the perceptions of convicted sex offenders and their interactions with law enforcement over time. Specifically, we focused on how formal interactions influenced stigma management and self-identity transformation. For decades, scholars have proposed that identities and behaviors often result from interactions with others. Sex offender registration and notification laws force interactions between registrants and police agents for years, if not a lifetime. Given that desistance from sex offending is dependent on prosocial identity transformation, we analyzed interviews with 63 registrants to uncover how interactions with police promote or inhibit identity transformation over time. Our findings suggested interactions with …

Interpersonal Interaction Between Prisoners And Officers In Prisons: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis Exploring Prison Officer Wellbeing, Davinia Rizzo, Belinda Davey, Melanie Irons

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The wellbeing of prison officers has primarily been understood as a function of contextual variables such as their workplace and the nature of their role. Yet the research suggests the officers’ gender and tenure are the only statistically significant predictors of wellbeing for this population (Butler, Tasca, Zhang, & Carpenter, 2019). These findings suggest that variables at the person level may be more important than contextual variables. As such, we conducted a qualitative, meta-synthesis to explore how interpersonal interactions between prisoners and prison officers may affect the health and wellbeing of prison officers. Following a systematic review of the literature, …

A Page-Turner With A Social Conscience: Requiem For A Female Serial Killer By Phyllis Chesler, Paula J. Caplan

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Through A Lens Of Therapeutic Jurisprudence: A Case Study Of The Children’S Court Drug Court In Perth, Suzanne Ellis

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The Children’s Court Drug Court (CCDC) has operated for 20 years in Perth as an alternative Court for drug-using young offenders who present at the Children’s Court. Despite the CCDC’s relative longevity, researchers have examined neither the inner workings of the Court nor the experiences of its actors. The current study aimed, not to evaluate the CCDC, but to identify measures needed to refine CCDC processes to enhance the experiences and outcomes of young people who participate in the CCDC. It argues that despite the CCDC’s foundations in contentious therapeutic jurisprudence principles, on balance, the actors – young people, their …

The Court Is In Recession: On The Implications Of The Covid-19 Pandemic For Indigent Defense Spending, Andrew L. B. Davies, Victoria M. Smiegocki, Hannah E. Hall

Other Publications

What is the likely effect of the recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic on indigent defense budgets in the United States? To look forward, we look backward. We examine data on county-level spending on indigent defense in Texas during the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Redistributive policies—those which use taxpayer funds to support individuals who themselves pay little or no tax—are particularly susceptible to cuts during times of fiscal stress. Yet our analysis shows indigent defense policy, measured in terms of spending and access to counsel rates, was generally stable through the Great Recession years, even in counties hit hardest. …

Inconspicuous Victims, Itay Ravid

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Recent debates on racial inequalities in the criminal justice system focus on offenders while neglecting the other side of the criminal equation—victims of crime. Such scholarly oversight is surprising given the similarly deep racial disparities in the treatment of victims, manifested in different stages of the criminal justice system. Delving into the underexplored territory of racialized victimization, this project bridges that gap and exposes the roots of the disparate treatment of Black victims in the American criminal justice system. These unprecedented times of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial tensions bring to the fore questions about governmental allocation of resources and …

Murders In The German Sex Trade: 1920 To 2017, Manuela Schon, Anna Hoheide

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This research report is the result of collecting and evaluating data on cases of homicides and attempted homicides in the German sex trade from 1920-2017. The findings show violence against prostituted women and the attitudes of the sex buyers who commit most of the violent acts against the women. The report discusses the media coverage of murder cases, complication of cases, and a critique of methods of criminal evaluation by the police. From 1920 to 2017, 272 victims of murder and attempted murder were identified. Liberalization of prostitution occurred in 2002. From then until 2017, there is a decrease in …

Analyzing Wrongful Convictions Beyond The Traditional Canonical List Of Errors, For Enduring Structural And Sociological Attributes, (Juveniles, Racism, Adversary System, Policing Policies), Leona D. Jochnowitz, Tonya Kendall

Touro Law Review

Researchers identify possible structural causes for wrongful convictions: racism, justice system culture, adversary system, plea bargaining, media, juvenile and mentally impaired accused, and wars on drugs and crime. They indicate that unless the root causes of conviction error are identified, the routine explanations of error (e.g., eyewitness identifications; false confessions) will continue to re-occur. Identifying structural problems may help to prevent future wrongful convictions. The research involves the coding of archival data from the Innocence Project for seventeen cases, including the one for the Central Park Five exonerees. The data were coded by Hartwick College and Northern Vermont University students …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

"Defund The (School) Police"? Bringing Data To Key School-To-Prison Pipeline Claims, Michael Heise, Jason P. Nance

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Nationwide calls to “Defund the Police,” largely attributable to the resurgent Black Lives Matter demonstrations, have motivated derivative calls for public school districts to consider “defunding” (or modifying) school resource officer (“SRO/police”) programs. To be sure, a school’s SRO/police presence—and the size of that presence—may influence the school’s student discipline reporting policies and practices. How schools report student discipline and whether that reporting involves referrals to law enforcement agencies matters, particularly as reports may fuel a growing “school-to-prison pipeline.” The school-to-prison pipeline research literature features two general claims that frame debates about changes in how public schools approach student discipline …

Acid Attacks In India: A Socio-Legal Report, Vidhik Kumar

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

India has the highest number of acid attacks globally every year, and despite the actions taken by the Indian Government and the Supreme Court of India, the crime is on the rise. This increase can be attributed to the patriarchal ideology that is prevalent in India and to India’s inadequate legal system, which does not deliver efficient remedies to the victims. This article will discuss the prevalence of acid attacks in India, motives behind the attacks, consequences on victims, and shortcomings in measures adopted to prevent the crime and provide justice to victims.

Symposium: Expanding Compassion Beyond The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jenny Roberts

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Compassionate relief matters. It matters so that courts may account for tragically unforeseeable events, as when an illness or disability renders proper care impossible while a defendant remains incarcerated, or when family tragedy leaves an inmate the sole caretaker for an incapacitated partner or minor children. It matters too, as present circumstances make clear, when public-health calamities threaten inmates with literal death sentences. It matters even when no crisis looms, but simply when continued incarceration would be "greater than necessary" to achieve the ends of justice.

Seeing And Responding: How Students Perceive School Personnel To Fail To Respond To Bullying, Ethan M. Higgins, Benjamin W. Fisher, Maury Nation

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Although research has shown that students and school personnel believe that adults respond to bullying at different rates, it is unclear why these differences occur. Using open-ended survey responses from 189 students, this study investigates why students perceive that school personnel fail to respond to bullying. Students articulated a variety of reasons for school personnel’s lack of response, including ways in which they could fail to see, notice, or respond to the bullying. In turn, students used their agency to understand and counteract school personnel’s lack of response. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed."

Disparity In Context: Judges’ Perspectives On Disparities In A Sentencing Guideline System, Justin M. Smith

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Unwarranted disparity in sentencing continues to be a problem in criminal courts. Sentencing, a final step in the multi-stage process of criminal justice, is seen as such an important component of ensuring consistency that legislative policy has created guidelines to control judicial decision-making. Nonetheless, research shows that disparity under sentencing guidelines persists due to influences external to the law - referred to as substantive rationality. Sentencing research overwhelmingly utilizes quantitative analysis of official court data to produce its conclusions about the influences of disparity. The current study builds upon past research by using qualitative analysis of interviews with 20 judges …

Social Exchange And The Formation Of Prison Visitation Communities, Adam Trahan, Douglas Evans

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Family members and significant others of incarcerated individuals suffer when their loved ones are incarcerated. The loss of a parent, sibling, child, spouse, or partner to incarceration can be painful. If they wish to stay physically connected to an incarcerated individual, visitation is their only recourse. Visiting a prison can be costly in terms of the amount of time it takes to travel to the facility, the total expenses incurred during travel, and the socio-emotional effects of limited contact. On top of these costs, visitation can be an intricate process to navigate due to the multitude of facility rules and …

Perceptions Of Rehabilitative Change Among Incarcerated Persons Enrolled In A Prison-Equine Program (Pep), Joyce A. Arditti, Amy A. Morgan, Sara Spiers, Virginia Buechner-Maxwell, Vicky Shivy

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Guided by a grounded theory methodology, the authors propose a theory of rehabilitation for incarcerated persons within a prison equine program (PEP). Interviews with ten incarcerated men yielded a grounded theory of rehabilitative change centered around the importance of relationships with program staff and horses, and the uniqueness of the barn-equine environment in promoting safe attachments and positive views of self. Special emphasis is placed on the development of secure reparative attachments between men and their horses grounded in acceptance and mutual empathy, as well as the development of redemptive identities whereby participants viewed themselves as having purpose and value …

"If Consent Is Bought, It Is Not Freely Chosen": Compromised Consent In Prostituted Sex In Ireland, Ivana Bacik

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article offers feminist arguments for the reconsideration of consent as a legal concept, informed by insights gained through the work of the #MeToo movement and other feminist campaigns. It suggests that consent may be seen as legally compromised in certain contexts of structured gender inequality, such as domestic violence, workplace sexual harassment, and prostitution. The legal understanding of consent in such contexts is antithetical to the conception of consent as “freely and voluntarily” given within a mutual sexual relationship. This understanding of consent underpins the recent introduction of the Nordic model approach into Irish law through the Criminal Law …

The Female Face Of Misogyny: A Review Of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach To Intimate Partner Violence By Leigh Goodmark And The Feminist War On Crime: The Unexpected Role Of Women's Liberation In Mass Incarceration By Aya Gruber, Dianne L. Post

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Survivor: An Analysis Of The Term From India, Pravin Patkar

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article discusses the need for greater conceptual clarity of the term survivor. It raises questions about the propriety of the term to refer to the victims of sex trafficking. It points out that in the Indian context, the term victim is legally and operationally defined. It cautions against the hasty incorporation of the term survivor into public policies addressing the trafficked victims' problems. Different social platforms use the term survivor differently, and the difference is not nominal. The use of the term survivor is both casual as well as intentional. The term survivor trivializes the exploitation and makes invisible …

Dirty Johns: Prosecuting Prostituted Women In Pennsylvania And The Need For Reform, Mckay Lewis

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Prostitution is as old as human civilization itself. Throughout history, public attitudes toward prostituted women have varied greatly. But adverse consequences of the practice—usually imposed by men purchasing sexual services—have continuously been present. Prostituted women have regularly been subject to violence, discrimination, and indifference from their clients, the general public, and even law enforcement and judicial officers.

Jurisdictions can choose to adopt one of three general approaches to prostitution regulation: (1) criminalization; (2) legalization/ decriminalization; or (3) a hybrid approach known as the Nordic Model. Criminalization regimes are regularly associated with disparate treatment between prostituted women and their clients, high …

The Never-Ending Grasp Of The Prison Walls: Banning The Box On Housing Applications, Ashley De La Garza

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

It Is Time To Get Back To Basics On The Border, Donna Coltharp

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

"Toughen Up, Buttercup" Versus #Timesup: Initial Findings Of The Aba Women In Criminal Justice Task Force, Maryam Ahranjani

Faculty Scholarship

"Practicing criminal law as a woman is like playing tackle football in a dress.” Andrea George, Executive Director of the Federal Public Defender for Eastern Washington and Idaho, began her testimony to the American Bar Association’s Women in Criminal Justice Task Force with that powerful observation. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the ABA has focused on ways to enhance gender equity in the profession and in the justice system. The Criminal Justice Section of the ABA has invested significant resources in the creation of the Women in Criminal Justice Task Force (WCJ TF), which launched its work in …

Homicide And Drug Trafficking In Impoverished Communities In Brazil, Elenice De Souza Oliveira, Braulio Figueiredo Alves Da Silva, Flavio Luiz Sapori, Gabriela Gomes Cardoso

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Many studies demonstrate that homicides are heavily concentrated in impoverished neighborhoods, but not all socially disadvantaged neighborhoods are hotbeds of violence. Conducted in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, this study hypothesizes that the association between high rates of homicide and impoverished areas is influenced by the emergence of a specific type of street drug-dealing common to favelas (slums). The study applies econometric techniques to police data on homicides and drug arrests from 2008 to 2011, as well as 2010 Census data, to test its hypothesis. The findings provide insight into the development of crime prevention policies in areas of high social vulnerability.

Examining Racial And Ethnic Disparity In Prosecutor’S Bail Requests And Downstream Decision Making, Connor Concannon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rigorous academic research into prosecutorial and judicial decision making has been taking place for over three decades, but a great deal remains unknown about the mechanics of prosecution. A majority of the work done by prosecutors occurs outside of public view, and most research focuses on the ‘back end’ of the adjudication process, leaving unanalyzed numerous decision points made upstream of the final plea and sentencing outcomes. Using unique data from the New York County District Attorney’s Office that tracks 43,971 felony complaints, this research examines racial and ethnic disparity at multiple decision points during case processing, with a focus …

Racial Justice And Decriminalization Of Prostitution: No Protection For Women Of Color, Janice G. Raymond

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.