Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

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.

Difficult Times In Kentucky Corrections—Aftershocks Of A "Tough On Crime" Philosophy, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The objective of this article is to cast some light on corrections system problems brought on by elevated (and possibly unnecessary) levels of incarceration, and especially on problems that trouble the Kentucky corrections system and threaten to undermine the effectiveness of the state's justice system. Part II describes how the country came to embrace sentencing policies and practices capable of producing "a penal system of a severity unmatched in the Western world.” Part III describes Kentucky's embrace of equally harsh sentencing policies and practices and the inmate population explosion that has occurred as a direct result of those policies and …

Watching You, Watching Me, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This article addresses these arguments and ultimately concludes that same-sex supervision should be adopted in U.S. prisons in supervising both male and female prisoners. First, while same-sex supervision may not prevent sexual misconduct, it may reduce it by cutting off a primary vector of sexual misconduct-cross-gender interactions between staff and inmates. Second, same-sex supervision may increase prisoner well-being by giving prisoners a greater sense of control over their bodies, thereby reducing their sense of vulnerability to abuse. Finally, adopting same-sex supervision policies would make the United States' position more congruent with international standards for the treatment of prisoners.

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, …

How To Construct An Underclass, Or How The War On Drugs Became A War On Education, Eric D. Blumenson, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

The war on drugs has spawned a second front-a war on education. The casualties of this war are all poor or lower-income people who cannot afford to buy a private education. This article details the consequences of this other war, and explores some legislative and litigation strategies for reclaiming educational opportunity for all Americans. First, however, we must set out in more detail the laws and policies that now deploy educational privation as punishment in public schools, colleges, and prisons.

Book Review, David S. Tanenhaus

Scholarly Works

This ambitious book impressively chronicles forms of imprisonment in American history from Columbus’s crossing in 1492, with at least four convicts among his crew, to the rise of five hundred years later of a “prison-industrial complex,” which employs over half a million people and incarcerates more than one million others. According to Christianson, a former investigative reporter and gubernatorial aide who is now contributing editor of The Criminal Law Bulletin, director of the New York Death Penalty Documentation Project, and chairman of the Board of the Safer Society Foundation, With Liberty for Some “is a history of how we …

"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 …

Inmates' Rights: Lost In The Maze Of Prison Bureaucracy?, A Wayne Mackay

Dalhousie Law Journal

A prison inmate is supposed to have the same basic rights as any other citizen, except to the extent that such rights are circumscribed by physical confinement. This may be surprising to many prison authorities, and most of the general public. The point was made forcefully by Mr. Justice White of the United States Supreme Court in Wolffv. McDonnelI But though his rights may be diminished by the needs and exigencies of the institutional environment, a prisoner is not wholly stripped of constitutional protections when he is imprisoned for crime. There is no iron curtain between the Constitution and the …