Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

Multi-Jurisdictional Anti-Corruption Enforcement: Time For A Global Approach, Sharon Oded

Journal of Law and Policy

With the rise of globalization, foreign corruption has become a prominent enemy of the world’s economy. Over time, numerous international initiatives―such as the OECD and United Nations conventions against foreign corruption―have enlisted a growing number of sovereign states to join in the global war against that enemy. As a consequence, global enhancement of anti-foreign corruption enforcement often results in duplicative, multi-jurisdictional enforcement, such that multiple enforcement actions are initiated against the same corporation by several authorities, in one or more jurisdictions, in relation to the same misconduct. This phenomenon, which was recently addressed by the US Department of Justice in …

The Unqualified Mess Of Qualified Immunity; A Doctrine Worth Overruling, Allison Weiss

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This comment is a response to Ryan E. Johnson, Note, Supervisors Without Supervision: Colon, McKenna, and the Confusing State of Supervisory Liability in the Second Circuit, 77 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 457 (2020), which received the 2019 Washington and Lee Law Council Law Review Award.

In his note, Ryan Johnson drills down on the various ways that courts within the Second Circuit are approaching the viability of § 1983 lawsuits by incarcerated individuals against supervisors within correctional facilities. But how important is supervisory liability in the first place? Qualified immunity allows courts, as Mr. Johnson puts …

From First Steps To Second Chances: Addressing Mass Incarceration In State Prisons, Molly Connor

Notre Dame Law Review

In order to address mass incarceration meaningfully, Congress must pass legislation aimed at reducing state prison populations. The legislation’s name (the First Step Act) suggests there will be follow-up legislation—that Congress’s end goal has yet to be fully realized. This Note explores the details of the First Step Act with an eye toward drafting the “Second Step Act” in a way that adequately addresses the root causes of mass incarceration. In Part I, this Note discusses the events leading up to the passage of the First Step Act and its key provisions addressing sentencing reform and rehabilitative programming. Part II …

Juvenile Diversion Programs: Comparing Minnesota County Characteristics To Determine Their Role In Pre-Trial Diversion Programs, Kaydin Schmitt

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The main goal of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate offenders and prevent youth from entering the adult justice system. One approach is through the use of diversion programs. The state of Minnesota requires all counties to offer at least one type of pre-trial diversion program. However, there is no ubiquitous program; the number and types of programs differ between counties, and the reason for these differences between jurisdictions is under-researched. I analyze the number and types of pre-trial diversion programs in Minnesota counties and compare them to various county characteristics to determine which characteristics play a role in …

Understanding Violent-Crime Recidivism, J.J. Prescott, Benjamin Pyle, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

People convicted of violent crimes constitute a majority of the imprisoned population but are generally ignored by existing policies aimed at reducing mass incarceration. Serious efforts to shrink the large footprint of the prison system will need to recognize this fact. This point is especially pressing at the time of this writing, as states and the federal system consider large-scale prison releases motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those convicted of violent crimes constitute a large majority of older prisoners, who are extremely vulnerable to the spread of the virus behind bars. Excluding them from protective measures will deeply undermine those …

Public Matters? Comparing Decision-Making By Appointed And Elected Prosecutors In Cases Of Deadly Use-Of-Force By Police In The Hartford Judicial District And Suffolk County, Andrew E. Dubsky

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis dissects prosecutor discretion for appointed and elected prosecutors after a “catalyst” event shifts public opinion. Previous studies have shown that elected prosecutors are more likely to use discretion favoring the opinion of the public than their appointed counterparts (Bandyopadhyay 2014, Nelson 2014, and Valenti 2011). Because elected prosecutors are more likely to follow public opinion, they should also be more likely to respond to the demands of the public than their appointed counterparts. In effect, elected prosecutors are expected to be more likely to exercise discretion in their charging and prosecuting. To test this, I use the 2014 …

The Violence Of Nosy Questions, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay examines a little-studied aspect of police procedure: police officers’ unfettered power to ask questions of motorists. The questions officers ask after they have stopped a car can run the gamut from questions about the nature of the motorist’s travel plans to nosy personal questions. Such questions are often intrusive, and drivers report feeling degraded by having to answer them. This Essay argues that these questions should be regulated because giving officers complete control over what they ask motorists provides a significant space for racial discrimination in policing, creates resentment, and encourages minorities to distrust the police.

State V. Pinkham: Erosion Of Meaningful Forth Amendment Protection For Vehicle Stops In Maine?, Roger M. Clement Jr.

Maine Law Review

In State v. Pinkham, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, held that a police officer's stop of a motorist to inquire and advise about the motorist's improper-but not illegal-lane usage did not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment's proscription against unreasonable seizures. The Pinkham decision is the first time that the Law Court has validated the stop of a moving vehicle in the absence of either a suspected violation of law or an imminent, ongoing threat to highway safety.
This Note considers whether the Law Court was correct in sustaining the police officer's stop of Ronald Pinkham. …

State Prosecutors At The Center Of Mass Imprisonment And Criminal Justice Reform, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

State prosecutors around the country have played a crucial role in mass imprisonment. Little supervision and virtually unsurpassed decision making power have provided them with unrivaled influence over the size, growth, and composition of our criminal justice system. They decide which cases to prosecute, whether to divert a case, whether to offer a plea, and what sentence to recommend. Their impact does not stop at sentencing. They weigh in on alternative dockets, supervision violations, parole release, and even clemency requests. But they are also part of a larger system that constrains them. Funding, judicial limits on their power, and legislative …

Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep The Formerly Incarcerated Tethered To The Criminal Justice System, Bryan L. Adamson

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article examines the constitutionality of statutes which allow courts to transfer outstanding legal financial obligations to private debt collection agencies. In Washington State, the clerk of courts can transfer the legal financial obligation of a formerly incarcerated person if he or she is only thirty days late making a payment. Upon transfer, the debt collection agencies can assess a “collection fee” of up to 50% of the first $100.000 of the unpaid legal financial obligation, and up to 35% of the unpaid debt over $100,000. This fee becomes part of the LFO debt imposed at sentencing, and like that …

Safe Consumption Sites And The Perverse Dynamics Of Federalism In The Aftermath Of The War On Drugs, Deborah Ahrens

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In this Article, I explore the complicated regulatory and federalism issues posed by creating safe consumption sites for drug users—an effort which would regulate drugs through use of a public health paradigm. This Article details the difficulties that localities pursuing such sites and other non-criminal-law responses have faced as a result of both federal and state interference. It contrasts those difficulties with the carte blanche local and state officials typically receive from federal regulators when creatively adopting new punitive policies to combat drugs. In so doing, this Article identifies systemic asymmetries of federalism that threaten drug policy reform. While traditional …

Recognizing The Need For Mental Health Reform In The Texas Department Of Criminal Justice, Kara Mchorse

St. Mary's Law Journal

The ways in which mental health care and the criminal justice system interact are in desperate need of reform in Texas. The rate of mental illness in Texas is higher than the current state of mental health care can provide for. While state hospitals were once the primary care facilities of those with mental illness, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has taken on that role in the last few decades; and when the criminal justice system becomes entangled with mental health care, it often leads to “unmitigated disaster.” If Texas continues to allow the TDCJ to act as …

The Effects Of Anti-Immigrant Laws In The U.S. On Victims Of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, And Human Trafficking: A Gender-Based Human Rights Analysis, Caroline Bettinger-López, Jamila Flomo, Amanda Suarez

Articles

No abstract provided.

Healers Or Dealers: The Effect Of Doctors Committing Health Care Fraud On The Opioid Epidemic, Peri Novick

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note argues that doctors who commit healthcare fraud by improperly prescribing opioids for personal gain should be held criminally liable for patient deaths resulting from their actions. It emphasizes that these physicians, often operating as "pill mills," violate ethical and legal standards, contributing significantly to the opioid epidemic. The analysis advocates for stronger legal enforcement and accountability to address this issue effectively.

The Misplaced Trust In The Doj's Expertise On Criminal Justice Policy, Shon Hopwood

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As should be clear, this is less a book review and more an in-depth exploration of a key point Professor Barkow makes in Prisoners of Politics as applied to the federal criminal justice system. Sure, we need expertise in order to make data-driven criminal justice policy decisions--as Barkow puts it, “[t]he key is to create and foster an institutional framework that prioritizes data” and “expertise” so as to “create incentives for key decisionmakers to be accountable for real results” (pp. 14-15). But in creating reforms, the kindof expertise is also important. Many federal policymakers currently view the DOJ and …

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Guideline To Remedy Ohio's Sentencing Disparities For White-Collar Criminal Defendants, Joelle Livorse

Cleveland State Law Review

Over the past few decades, white-collar crimes have significantly increased across the country, especially in Ohio. However, Ohio’s judges are ill-equipped to handle the influx of cases. Unlike federal judges who are guided by the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Ohio’s judges have significantly more sentencing discretion because the Ohio legislature provides minimal guidance for these crimes. As a result, Ohio’s white-collar criminal defendants are experiencing dramatic sentencing variations. To solve this problem, Ohio should look to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and neighboring states to adopt and create an innovative sentencing model tailored to white-collar crime. Unlike the federal …

Are Collateral Consequences Deserved?, Brian M. Murray

Notre Dame Law Review

While bipartisan passage of the First Step Act and state reforms like it will lead to changes in sentencing and release practices, they do little to combat the collateral consequences that exoffenders face upon release. Because collateral consequences involve the state’s infliction of serious harm on those who have been convicted or simply arrested, their existence requires justification. Many scholars classify them as punishment, but modern courts generally diverge, deferring to legislative labels that classify them as civil, regulatory measures. This label avoids having to address existing constitutional and legal constraints on punishment. This Article argues that although collateral consequences …

Does Bail Reform Increase Crime? An Empirical Assessment Of The Public Safety Implications Of Bail Reform In Cook County, Illinois, Paul Cassell, Richard Fowles

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Recently bail reform issues have been in the news across the country, as concerns about fair treatment of defendants and possible public safety risks from expanding pretrial release have collided. These issues involve important empirical questions, including whether releasing more defendants before trial leads to additional crimes. An opportunity to investigate this public safety issue has developed in Chicago, our nation’s third largest city. There, the Office of the Chief Judge of the Cook County Courts adopted new bail reform measures in September 2017 and reviewed them empirically in May 2019. Cook County’s Bail Reform Study concluded that the new …

In Re Cook And The Franklin Proceeding: New Door, Same Dilapidated House, Christopher Hawthorne, Marisa Sacks

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

The California Supreme Court’s decision in In re Cook was supposed to bring about a sea change in the way trial courts conduct Franklin mitigation hearings for youthful offenders. In fact, while Cook changed the procedure for initiating a post-conviction Franklin proceeding, little else has changed, including the lack of agreement among attorneys concerning best practices in these proceedings, and a less than less-than-enthusiastic response from the criminal defense bar. Absent any guidance from higher courts, the Franklin proceeding is limited by the personal and institutional energies and preferences of judges, prosecutors, public defenders and private defense counsel. The authors …

Isolation For Profit: How Privately Provided Video Visitation Services Incentivize Bans On In-Person Visitation Within American Correctional Facilities, J. Tanner Lusk

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

American correctional facilities are banning in-person visitation in lieu of privately provided and expensive video visitation services. This Note discusses the types of private services provided; how video visitation negatively affects inmates’ mental health and finances; and the ongoing legal battle occurring in Knox County, Tennessee, regarding whether the Knox County Jail’s ban on in-person visitation violates the Constitution. Because of the significant degree of deference courts grant correctional facilities when considering whether challenged regulations violate the Constitution, it will be difficult for the Knox County Jail inmates to successfully argue that the jail has violated their constitutional rights. There …

Abolishing Racist Policing With The Thirteenth Amendment, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

This Essay was also published online at 67 UCLA L. Rev. Disc. 200 (2020).

Policing in America has always been about controlling the Black body. Indeed, modern policing was birthed and nurtured by white supremacy; its roots are found in slavery. Policing today continues to protect and serve the racial hierarchy blessed by the Constitution itself. But a string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving the Thirteenth Amendment offers Congress a tool with which to target institutions that have preserved social, political, and official norms associated with slavery. In those cases, the Supreme Court held that Congress has broad enforcement …

Nondelegating Death, Alexandra L. Klein

Scholarly Articles

Most states’ method of execution statutes afford broad discretion to executive agencies to create execution protocols. Inmates have challenged this discretion, arguing that these statutes unconstitutionally delegate legislative power to executive agencies, violating the state’s nondelegation and separation of powers doctrines. State courts routinely use the nondelegation doctrine, in contrast to the doctrine’s historic disfavor in federal courts. Despite its uncertain status, the nondelegation doctrine is a useful analytical tool to examine decision-making in capital punishment.

This Article critically evaluates responsibility for administering capital punishment through the lens of nondelegation. It analyzes state court decisions upholding broad legislative delegations to …

The Sativas And Indicas Of Proof: Why The Smell Of Marijuana Should Not Establish Probable Cause For A Warrantless Vehicle Search In Illinois, 53 Uic J. Marshall L. Rev. 187 (2020), Cece White

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

On the basis of fifty-four elite interviews[1] with legislators, judges, attorneys, and civil society advocates as well as a state-by-state data survey, this Article examines the complex linkage between the two major penal trends in American society during the past decades: a declining use of capital punishment across the United States and a growing population of prisoners serving “life without the possibility of parole” or “LWOP” sentences. The main contribution of the research is threefold. First, the research proposes to redefine the boundary between life and death in relation to penal discourses regarding the death penalty and LWOP. LWOP …

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

Does The Woman Suffrage Amendment Protect The Voting Rights Of Men?, Steve Kolbert

Seattle University Law Review

This Article—part of the Seattle University Law Review’s symposium on the centennial of the ratification of the Woman Suffrage Amendment—examines that open possibility. Concluding that the Nineteenth Amendment does protect men’s voting rights, this Article explores why and how that protection empowers Congress to address felon disenfranchisement and military voting. This Article also examines the advantages of using Nineteenth Amendment enforcement legislation compared to legislation enacted under other constitutional provisions.

Part I discusses the unique barriers to voting faced by voters with criminal convictions (Section I.A) and voters in the armed forces (Section I.B). This Part also explains how existing …

Stepping Into The Shoes Of The Department Of Justice: The Unusual, Necessary, And Hopeful Path The Illinois Attorney General Took To Require Police Reform In Chicago, Lisa Madigan, Cara Hendrickson, Karyn L. Bass Ehler

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Have Problem-Solving Courts Changed The Practice Of Law?, Cynthia Alkon

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Title Ix & The Civil Rights Approach To Sexual Harassment In Education, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Syndie G. E. Molina

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.