Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

The New Religious Prisons And Their Retributivist Commitments, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

The rise of the religious, or "faith-based," prison at the turn of the twenty-first century bears witness to the remarkable resilience of religion in shaping the philosophy of punishment. In the last decade, prisons that incorporate religion in various ways have sprouted around the country and there are some indications, though preliminary, inconclusive, and hotly contested, that inmates who participate in religious instruction and “programming” recidivate at lower rates than those who do not. The early success of these programs (and, some say, the preferential treatment accorded to participants in them) has resulted in high demand and long waiting lists. …

Murder, Meth, Mammon & Moral Values: The Political Landscape Of American Sentencing Reform (In Symposium On White Collar Crime), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the ongoing American experiment in mass incarceration and considers the prospects for meaningful sentencing reform.

Racial Threat, Urban Conditions And Police Use Of Force: Assessing The Direct And Indirect Linkages Across Multiple Urban Areas, Karen F. Parker, John M. Macdonald, Wesley G. Jennings, Geoffrey P. Alpert

Faculty Publications

Traditionally explanations of police use of force have relied on a racial threat perspective. Tests of this perspective, however, typically offer a single indicator of threat (the relative size of the black population) and fail to adequately take into account the complex relationship between racial threat and police use of force. Drawing on racial threat, social disorganization, and police use of force literature, this study hypothesizes that macro-level patterns in police use of force are embedded in the racial and structural composition of cities and the organizational climate of local politics and police departments. The present study examines these relationships …

The Challenge Of Motive In The Criminal Law, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

The purchase of illegal drugs by an undercover police officer is commonly known as a “buy and bust” operation. In the twenty-first century, the stakes in the longstanding war on drugs are high as law enforcement and national security agencies join forces to confront the disturbing ties between terrorism and illegal narcotics. In addition to being a weapon in the arsenal of law enforcement, the buy and bust operation also tells an interesting story about motive in the criminal law. This article uses the simple street sale to demonstrate how the criminal law suffers from its ambivalent attitude towards the …

Review Of The Hanging Of Ephraim Wheeler : A Story Of Rape, Incest, And Justice In Early America, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Retribution For Rats: Cooperation, Punishment, And Atonement, Michael A. Simons

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

To mobsters, he is a "rat"; to drug dealers, a "snitch." To school children, he is a "tattletale"; to corporate executives, a "whistleblower." To cops, he is an "informant"; to prosecutors, a "cooperator." By whatever name he is known, the person who betrays his associates to the authorities is almost universally reviled. In movies, on television, in literature, the cooperator embodies all that society holds in contempt: he is disloyal, deceitful, greedy, selfish, and weak.

The cooperator, though, has long been a mainstay of our criminal justice system. For centuries, criminal defendants have received leniency in return for testimony …

Civil Rights Plaintiffs And John Doe Defendants: A Study In § 1983 Procedure, Howard M. Wasserman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Editor's Observations: The Geology Of Drug Policy In 2002, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Public concern about drug abuse as a major issue in American life may be ebbing. The notion that "the drug war is a failure" has become the common wisdom in academic and journalistic circles. Support for routine and lengthy imprisonment of non-violent drug offenders may be eroding, even among the prosecutors, police, and judges whose job it is to enforce the law. Anger among African American, Latino, and other minority communities at the perceived discriminatory enforcement of drug laws is simmering and may begin to boil over in ways that effect the political terrain. And after the events of September …

Departing Ways: Uniformity, Disparity And Cooperation In Federal Drug Sentences, Michael A. Simons

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In 1995, this law review sponsored a symposium entitled The Sentencing Controversy: Punishment and Policy in the War Against Drugs. That symposium's focus on sentencing was appropriate because, as one of the participants noted, "[s]entencing is the bottom line of the criminal justice system."  Six years later, as this current symposium makes clear, we are still waging "war" on drugs. And although this symposium is not devoted exclusively to punishment, sentencing is still a central—and vexing—battlefield in that war.

The war on drugs is fought on multiple fronts: education, treatment, interdiction, diplomacy and law enforcement. Law enforcement, however, …

Effective Community Policing Performance Measures, Geoffrey P. Alpert, Daniel Flynn, Alex R. Piquero

Faculty Publications

As the philosophy of policing moves from a traditional to a community-oriented approach, performance measures must shift as well. Unlike the typical police performance measures of arrest and crime rates found in traditional police philosophies, community-oriented policing performance measures are more general and tend to measure the extent to which police affect the quality of life in the communities they serve as well as the problems they solve. This manuscript begins the process of developing effective community policing performance measures and presents three case studies through which objectives and performance measures are conceptualized.

Police Accountability And Early Warning Systems: Developing Policies And Programs, Geoffrey P. Alpert, Samuel Walker

Faculty Publications

The identification of police officers who have potential problems has emerged as a popular approach for curbing police misconduct and achieving accountability. Early warning (EW) systems are data-driven programs whose purpose is to identify officers whose behavior is problematic and to subject those officers to some kind of intervention, often in the form of counseling or training. Because of their potential for providing timely data on officer performance and giving police managers a framework for correcting unacceptable performance, early warning systems are consistent with the new demands for performance evaluation raised by community policing and the effective strategic management of …

Public Opinion About Punishment And Corrections, Francis T. Cullen, Bonnie S. Fisher, Brandon K. Applegate

Faculty Publications

"Get tough" control policies in the United States are often portrayed as the reflection of the public's will: Americans are punitive and want offenders locked up. Research from the past decade both reinforces and challenges this assessment. The public clearly accepts, if not prefers, a range of punitive policies (e.g., capital punishment, three-strikes-and-you're-out laws, imprisonment). But support for get-tough policies is "mushy." Thus citizens may be willing to substitute a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for the death penalty. Especially when nonviolent offenders are involved, there is substantial support for intermediate sanctions and for restorative justice. Despite three decades …

Prosecutorial Discretion And Prosecution Guidelines: A Case Study In Controlling Federalization, Michael A. Simons

Faculty Publications

In this Article Michael Simons examines the ways in which the federalization of crime can be controlled. Simons argues that prosecutorial discretion is the most important variable in the federalization process and that controlling prosecutorial discretion is the key to controlling federalization. He presents the Child Support Recovery Act as a model for how prosecution guidelines for federal criminal statutes can provide such control Federalization of criminal child support enforcement has been successful because federal prosecutors have exercised discretion in a manner consistent with the concerns expressed by the bench and the academy about federalization. Simons concludes by exploring how …

"Trapped" In Sing Sing: Transgendered Prisoners Caught In The Gender Binarism, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A transgendered woman, who has undergone extensive hormonal therapy and cosmetic surgery, is convicted and imprisoned. Because she still has a penis, albeit a nonfunctioning one, prison officials categorize her as a male, and place her in a men's prison. "You were born a boy, and you're going to stay a boy," the prison doctor says, rejecting continuation of her long-term estrogen treatment. Her body begins to regain the masculinity she had largely escaped. Bruised by the changes, her body no longer feels like her own, but one imposed on her by the criminal justice system. Her femininity stands …

Toward The Development Of A Pursuit Decision Calculus: Pursuit Benefits Versus Pursuit Cost, Thomas J. Madden, Geoffrey P. Alpert

Faculty Publications

To make unbiased decisions about whether to pursue a fleeing vehicle, officers must understand both the costs and the potential benefits of a pursuit. This manuscript describes an approach that identifies and assesses the impact of pursuit characteristics on pursuit costs. Data from official pursuit forms generated by officers in the Miami-Dade police department were used as a basis of the study. Log-linear models were used to identify direct and interactive effects of the pursuit characteristics. Upon finding significant effects, odds ratios were calculated. The findings indicate that there are certain pursuit characteristics, including number of units and speed, that …

The Changing Tradition Of Constitutional Review Of Sign And Billboard Regulation, Ronald H. Rosenberg

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Entrapment, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Criminal Discovery, Scientific Evidence, And Dna, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Police Interrogations And Confessions, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Police Under The Gun, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Back in 1968, Justice William O. Douglas warned in a dissenting opinion in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, that the Court was opening a Pandora's box by eschewing the traditional "probable cause" standard for Fourth Amendment search and seizures in traffic stop cases, and permitting warrantless detentions based merely on "reasonable suspicion."

More than a quarter-century later, the confusion over the "reasonable suspicion" approach is still commanding the Supreme Court's attention. A pair of cases on the justices' argument calendar this spring address the tension between legitimate traffic stops and those based on pretext.

Playing "21" With Narcotics Enforcement: A Response To Professor Carrington (Symposium, Regulatory Future Of Contingent Employment), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Although I have fundamental disagreements with Professor Carrington even when his argument is reduced to its core, my purpose here is neither to defend every jot and tittle of national drug policy, nor to propose any sweeping personal vision of the place of recreational drugs in America. My ambitions are more modest. I suggest three premises: (1) Intelligent discussion of drug policy requires that we shed the image of law enforcement as warfare. (2) Instead, criminal narcotics prohibitions, penalties, and enforcement methods should be analyzed by the same standards which *939 govern any other type of crime. (3) If antinarcotics …

How Reasonable Is The Reasonable Man?: Police And Excessive Force, Geoffrey P. Alpert, William C. Smith

Faculty Publications

The authority of the police to use force represents one of the most misunderstood powers granted to representatives of government. Police officers are authorized to use both psychological and physical force to apprehend criminals and solve crimes. This Article focuses on issues of physical force. After a brief introduction and a review of current legal issues in the use of force, the Article discusses "reasonableness" and the unrealistic expectation which is placed on police to understand, interpret, and follow vague "reasonableness" guidelines. Until the expectations and limitations on the use of force are clarified, in behavioral terms, police officers will …

Policing Hot Pursuits: The Discovery Of Aleatory Elements, Geoffrey P. Alpert, Roger G. Dunham

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Miranda Decision Revisited: Did It Give Criminals Too Many Rights?, Paul Marcus, Stephen J. Markman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Neighborhood Differences In Attitudes Toward Policing: Evidence For A Mixed-Strategy Model Of Policing In A Multi-Ethnic Setting, Roger G. Dunham, Geoffrey P. Alpert

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Excessive Force, R. Wilson Freyermuth

Faculty Publications

Each year claimants file thousands of section 1983 actions against law enforcement or prison officials. Many of these claimants allege that officials used excessive force against them in violation of their constitutional rights. Despite the large number of excessive force cases in the federal courts, however, the Supreme Court has decided only two excessive force cases brought under section 1983. In Whitley v. Albers, the Court elaborated the appropriate standard for determining whether the shooting of a prisoner violated the eighth amendment. In Tennessee v. Garner, the Court applied the fourth amendment to strike down a Tennessee statute that authorized …

Inverse Liability Of The State Of Wisconsin For A De Facto "Temporary Taking" As A Result Of An Administrative Decision: Zinn V. State, Alemante G. Selassie

Faculty Publications

This Note examines Zinn v. State, a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, which held that plaintiff stated a claim for inverse condemnation against the State of Wisconsin when, as a result of an erroneous quasi-judicial decision by the DNR, plaintiff lost the use of her property for a little longer than a month. This Note takes the position that Zinn represents the growing tendency among courts to enlarge the scope of fact situations in which they will find a taking. Given this tendency, and given that the substantive test in Wisconsin of what constitutes a taking is identical whether a taking …

Constitutional Law - The Eighth Amendment And Prison Reform, Ronald H. Rosenberg

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.