Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

Three Transformative Ideals To Build A Better Crime Lab, Nicole B. Cásarez, Sandra G. Thompson

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article proposes that policy makers should consider establishing their jurisdiction’s crime laboratories as government corporations independent of law enforcement as a means of improving their quality and efficiency. Simply building new buildings or seeking accreditation will not solve the endemic problems that crime laboratories have faced. Rather, we propose that crime laboratories be restructured with a new organizational framework comparable to the Houston Forensic Science Center's (HFSC) status as a local government corporation (LGC), which has proven to be conducive to creating a new institutional culture.

From our experience with the HFSC, we also believe that crime laboratories are …

The Overdose/Homicide Epidemic, Valena E. Beety

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article explores the lack of regulation of coroners, concerns within the forensic science community on the reliability of coroner determinations, and ultimately, how elected laypeople serving as coroners may influence the rise in drug-induced homicide prosecutions in the midst of the opioid epidemic.

This Article proposes that the manner of death determination contributes to overdoses being differently prosecuted; that coroners in rural counties are more likely to determine the manner of death for an illicit substance overdose is homicide; and that coroners are provided with insufficient training on interacting with the criminal justice system, particularly on overdose deaths. Death …

The Legal Risks Of Big Data Policing, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Katz V. United States: Back To The Future?, Michael Vitiello

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Illuminating Black Data Policing, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The future of policing will be driven by data. Crime, criminals, and patterns of criminal activity will be reduced to data to be studied, crunched, and predicted. The benefits of big data policing involve smarter policing, faster investigation, predictive deterrence, and the ability to visualize crime problems in new ways. Not surprisingly then, police administrators have been seeking out new partnerships with sophisticated private data companies and experimenting with new surveillance technologies. This potential future, however, has a very present limitation. It is a limitation largely ignored by adopting jurisdictions and could, if left unaddressed, delegitimize the adoption and use …

Rethinking The Fourth Amendment In The Age Of Supercomputers, Artificial Intelligence, And Robots, Melanie Reid

West Virginia Law Review

In an era of diminishing privacy, the Internet of Things ("loT") has become a consensual and inadvertent tool that undermines privacy protection. The loT, really systems of networks connected to each other by the Internet or other radio-type device, creates consensual mass self-surveillance in such domains as fitness and the Fitbit, health care and heart monitors, "smart" houses and cars, and even "smart" cities. The multiple networks also have created a degree of interconnectivity that has opened up a fire hose of information for companies and governments alike, as well as making it virtually insuperable to live "off the grid" …

Does "Precrime" Mesh With The Ideals Of U.S. Justice?: Implications For The Future Of Predictive Policing, Jackson Polansky, Henry F. Fradella

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

Both the short story and film Minority Report are premised on a Precrime unit that relies on the psychic abilities of human mutants who can predict the commission of crimes before they occur. Advances in technology suggest that the science fiction depicted in Minority Report may one day become a reality. This paper summarizes the ways in which the criminal justice system currently derives crime predictions and extrapolates from these methods how technology might one day allow police to intervene before crimes are committed with great regularity and accuracy. The paper contemplates how an actual precrime system would struggle to …

Civil Liberty Or National Security: The Battle Over Iphone Encryption, Karen Lowell

Georgia State University Law Review

On June 5, 2013, Edward Snowden released what would be the first of many documents exposing the vast breadth of electronic surveillance the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) had been conducting on millions of United States citizens. Although the federal agencies had legal authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to collect metadata from companies such as Verizon, many Americans considered this data collection to be a massive invasion of privacy.

Equipped with the knowledge of sweeping domestic surveillance programs, citizens and technology firms fighting for strong privacy and security protection, have started …

3d Printing The Road Ahead: The Digitization Of Products When Public Safety Meets Intellectual Property Rights-A New Model, Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Kenneth S. Kwan

Cardozo Law Review

This Article addresses the threats of 3D printing to both the physical and legal world. Not only does 3D printing impact products protected by intellectual property rights, it also poses risk, threats, and challenges to many other regimes, including products governed by product liability and criminal laws, which consequently threatens public safety. 3D printing virtually possesses threats to medical devices and products, threats to legal and illegal drugs, threats to human organs, threats to the food industry, and to the transportation industry, including cars, trains, and aircrafts. Ultimately, 3D printing also threatens environmental protection, workplace protections, households, and even the …

Exposure To Police Brutality Allows For Transparency And Accountability Of Law Enforcement, 33 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 75 (2017), Kendal Harden

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Thanks to the advancements in technology and valor of citizens, the public is finally able to understand the true severity of police brutality within the United States. The following considerations aim to address the lack of accountability and transparency of police brutality in the United States today. Part III will show how advancements in technology brings police brutality to the forefront of our nation’s issues by creating an informed society. Part IV will describe how individual states control the use of private cameras and cell phones of citizens to capture occurrences of police brutality. States do this by employing anti-wiretapping …

Carpenter V. United States: Brief Of Scholars Of Criminal Procedure And Privacy As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Amici curiae are forty-two scholars engaged in significant research and/or teaching on criminal procedure and privacy law. This brief addresses issues that are within amici’s particular areas of scholarly expertise. They have a shared interest in clarifying the law of privacy in the digital era, and believe that a review of scholarly literature on the topic is helpful to answering the question in this case. This brief is co-authored by Harry Sandick, Kathrina Szymborski, & Jared Buszin of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.Carpenter v. United States presents an opportunity to reconsider the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. Cell …

Tightening The Ooda Loop: Police Militarization, Race, And Algorithmic Surveillance, Jeffrey L. Vagle

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines how military automated surveillance and intelligence systems and techniques, when used by civilian police departments to enhance predictive policing programs, have reinforced racial bias in policing. I will focus on two facets of this problem. First, I investigate the role played by advanced military technologies and methods within civilian police departments. These approaches have enabled a new focus on deterrence and crime prevention by creating a system of structural surveillance where decision support relies increasingly upon algorithms and automated data analysis tools and automates de facto penalization and containment based on race. Second, I will explore these …

Technological Opacity, Predictability, And Self-Driving Cars, Harry Surden, Mary-Anne Williams

Cardozo Law Review

Autonomous or "self-driving" cars are vehicles that drive themselves without human supervision or input. Because of safety benefits that they are expected to bring, autonomous vehicles are likely to become more common. Notably, for the first time, people will share a physical environment with computer-controlled machines that can both direct their own activities and that have considerable range of movement. This represents a distinct change from our current context. Today people share physical spaces either with machines that have free range of movement, but are controlled by people (e.g. automobiles) or with machines that are controlled by computers, but highly …

Rise Of The Mosaic Theory: Implications For Cell Site Location Tracking By Law Enforcement, 32 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 236 (2016), Lance Selva, William Shulman, Robert Rumsey

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

The authors examine the unique legal and privacy implications that cell site location information tracking by law enforcement poses for current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Following a brief explanation of how cell phone tracking works, their discussion is directed to the concept of privacy under the Fourth Amendment both prior to and following the seminal Supreme Court decision of Katz v. United States (1967), including a review of the Supreme Court’s historical treatment of tracking devices post-Katz. Consideration is then directed to the United States. v. Maynard (2010) decision, where the court employed the “mosaic” theory in a Fourth …

Rfid Implementation: Testing In Prisons And Parolees For The Greater Good, 33 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 22 (2016), Mirko Akrap

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

No abstract provided.

Policing Criminal Justice Data, Wayne Logan, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article addresses a matter of fundamental importance to the criminal justice system: the presence of erroneous information in government databases and the limited government accountability and legal remedies for the harm that it causes individuals. While a substantial literature exists on the liberty and privacy perils of large multi-source data assemblage, often termed "big data," this article addresses the risks associated with the collection, generation and use of "small data" (i.e., individual-level, discrete data points). Because small data provides the building blocks for all data-driven systems, enhancing its quality will have a significant positive effect on the criminal justice …

Fourth Amendment Time Machines (And What They Might Say About Police Body Cameras), Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

When it comes to criminal investigation, time travel is increasingly possible. Despite longstanding roots in traditional investigation, science is today providing something fundamentally different in the form of remarkably complete digital records. And those big data records not only store our past, but thanks to data mining they are in many circumstances eerily good at predicting our future. So, now that we stand on the threshold of investigatory time travel, how should the Fourth Amendment and legislation respond? How should we approach bulk government capture, such as by a solar-powered drone employing wide-area persistent stare technology? Is it meaningfully different …

Predictive Prosecution, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Police in major metropolitan areas now use “predictive policing” technologies to identify and deter crime. The early successes of predictive policing have led a few prosecutor’s offices to adopt quasi-“predictive prosecution” strategies. Predictive prosecution involves the identification and targeting of suspects deemed most at risk for future serious criminal activity, and then the use of that information to shape bail determinations, charging decisions, and sentencing arguments. This type of “Moneyball” prosecution has begun in New York City and Chicago, and this essay addresses the promise and peril of this new technology.This essay for the Wake Forest Law Review’s Symposium on …

Implications For The Future Of Global Data Security And Privacy: The Territorial Application Of The Stored Communications Act And The Microsoft Case, Russell Hsiao

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Voluntary Disclosure Of Information As A Proposed Standard For The Fourth Amendment's Third-Party Doctrine, Margaret E. Twomey

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The third-party doctrine is a long-standing tenant of Fourth Amendment law that allows law enforcement officers to utilize information that was released to a third party without the probable cause required for a traditional search warrant. This has allowed law enforcement agents to use confidential informants, undercover agents, and access bank records of suspected criminals. However, in a digital age where exponentially more information is shared with Internet Service Providers, e-mail hosts, and social media “friends,” the traditional thirdparty doctrine ideas allow law enforcement officers access to a cache of personal information and data with a standard below probable cause. …

Leveraging Predictive Policing Algorithms To Restore Fourth Amendment Protections In High-Crime Areas In A Post-Wardlow World, Kelly K. Koss

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Rapid technological changes have led to an explosion in Big Data collection and analysis through complex computerized algorithms. Law enforcement has not been immune to these technological developments. Many local police departments are now using highly advanced predictive policing technologies to predict when and where crime will occur in their communities, and to allocate crime-fighting resources based on these predictions.

Although predictive policing technology has an array of the potential uses, the scope of this Note is limited to addressing how the statistical outputs from these technologies can be used to restore eroded Fourth Amendment rights in alleged high-crime areas. …

No More Shortcuts: Protect Cell Site Location Data With A Warrant Requirement, Lauren E. Babst

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

In modern society, the cell phone has become a virtual extension of most Americans, managing all kinds of personal and business matters. Modern cell tower technology allows cell service providers to accumulate a wealth of individuals’ location information while they use their cell phones, and such data is available for law enforcement to obtain without a warrant. This is problematic under the Fourth Amendment, which protects reasonable expectations of privacy. Under the Katz two-prong test, (1) individuals have an actual, subjective expectation of privacy in their cell site location data, and (2) society is prepared to acknowledge that expectation as …

Drones, Henry H. Perritt Jr., Eliot O. Sprague

All Faculty Scholarship

Abstract

Drone technology is evolving rapidly. Microdrones—what the FAA calls “sUAS”—already on the market at the $1,000 level, have the capability to supplement manned helicopters in support of public safety operations, news reporting, and powerline and pipeline patrol, when manned helicopter support is infeasible, untimely, or unsafe.

Larger drones–"machodrones”–are not yet available outside battlefield and counterterrorism spaces. Approximating the size of manned helicopters, but without pilots, or with human pilots being optional, their design is still in its infancy as designers await greater clarity in the regulatory requirements that will drive airworthiness certification.

This article evaluates drone technology and design …

Big Data Distortions: Exploring The Limits Of The Aba Leatpr Standards, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article examines the American Bar Associations’ Standards for Criminal Justice proposed Law Enforcement Access to Third Party Records (LEATPR). The article was written to be part of an Oklahoma Law Review Symposium on the subject of the LEATPR Standards. The article explores how the ABA LEATPR Standards can survive the impact of big data policing. Big data policing, as described here, involves utilizing vast, networked databases to investigate and also predict criminal activity. Big data policing involves the use of not just third party, but "fourth party" commercial aggregators as well as de-identified data sets, that eventually can be …

Personal Curtilage: Fourth Amendment Security In Public, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Do citizens have any Fourth Amendment protection from sense-enhancing surveillance technologies in public? This article engages a timely question as new surveillance technologies have redefined expectations of privacy in public spaces.This article proposes a new theory of Fourth Amendment security based on the ancient theory of curtilage protection for private property. Curtilage has long been understood as a legal fiction that expands the protection of the home beyond the formal structures of the house. Curtilage recognizes a buffer zone beyond the four corners of the home that deserves protection, even in public, even if accessible to public view. Based on …

Justice Policy Reform For High-Risk Juveniles: Using Science To Achieve Large-Scale Crime Reduction, Jennifer L. Skeem, Elizabeth S. Scott, Edward Mulvey

Faculty Scholarship

After a distinctly punitive era, a period of remarkable reform in juvenile crime regulation has begun. Practical urgency has fueled interest in both crime reduction and research on the prediction and malleability of criminal behavior. In this rapidly changing context, high-risk youth – the small proportion of the population where crime is concentrated – present a conundrum. Research indicates that these are precisely the individuals to intensively treat to maximize crime reduction, but there are both real and imagined barriers to doing so. Institutional placement or criminal court processing can exclude these youths from interventions that would better protect public …

The Mosaic Theory Of The Fourth Amendment, Orin S. Kerr

Michigan Law Review

In the Supreme Court's recent decision on GPS surveillance, United States v. Jones, five justices authored or joined concurring opinions that applied a new approach to interpreting Fourth Amendment protection. Before Jones, Fourth Amendment decisions had always evaluated each step of an investigation individually. Jones introduced what we might call a "mosaic theory" of the Fourth Amendment, by which courts evaluate a collective sequence of government activity as an aggregated whole to consider whether the sequence amounts to a search. This Article considers the implications of a mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment. It explores the choices and puzzles that …

A Tale Of Two Sciences, Erin Murphy

Michigan Law Review

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . .. . So might one describe the contrasting portraits of DNA's ascension in the criminal justice system that are drawn in David Kaye's The Double Helix and the Law of Evidence and Sheldon Krimsky and Tania Simoncelli's Genetic Justice: DNA Data Banks, Criminal Investigations, and Civil Liberties. For Kaye, the double helix stands as the icon of twenty-first-century achievement, a science menaced primarily by the dolts (lawyers, judges, and the occasional analyst) who misuse it. For Krimsky and Simoncelli, DNA is a seductive forensic tool that is …

One More Good Reason For In-Car Videotaping Of Traffic Stops: An Accurate Assessment Of "Consent", Robert L. White

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

There are a number of reasons why legislative reform mandating the use of in-car cameras in police cruisers would benefit the criminal justice system in Illinois. In-car cameras provide evidence for cases involving traffic violations or intoxicated motorists. They produce instantly available training materials. They also assist victims of police misconduct, as well as officers defending themselves against misconduct claims. This Comment looks to add to this list of benefits the role in-car cameras can play in assessing the validity of consents to search that officers obtain during traffic stops.

The Latest 4th Amendment Privacy Conundrum: "Stingrays", Max Bulinksi

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Wired is reporting renewed hubbub regarding statutory and Fourth Amendment protections of individuals’ privacy in the digital age. This time, it comes in the form of federal officers using a fake cellphone tower (called a “stingray”) to locate their suspect, Mr. Rigmaiden, by tracking the location of his cellphone. According to an affidavit submitted to the court, the stingray only captures the equivalent of header information – such as the phone or account number assigned to the aircard as well as dialing, routing and address information involved in the communication.