Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

The State Of The Death Penalty, Ankur Desai, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

The death penalty is in decline in America and most death penalty states do not regularly impose death sentences. In 2016 and 2017, states reached modern lows in imposed death sentences, with just thirty-one defendants sentenced to death in 2016 and thirty-nine in 2017, as compared with over three hundred per year in the 1990s. In 2016, only thirteen states imposed death sentences, and in 2017, fourteen did so, although thirty-one states retain the death penalty. What explains this remarkable and quite unexpected trend? In this Article, we present new analysis of state-level legislative changes that might have been expected …

Honesty Without Truth: Lies, Accuracy, And The Criminal Justice Process, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

Focusing on “lying” is a natural response to uncertainty but too narrow of a concern. Honesty and truth are not the same thing and conflating them can actually inhibit accuracy. In several settings across investigations and trials, the criminal justice system elevates compliant statements, misguided beliefs, and confident opinions while excluding more complex evidence. Error often results. Some interrogation techniques, for example, privilege cooperation over information. Those interactions can yield incomplete or false statements, confessions, and even guilty pleas. Because of the impeachment rules that purportedly prevent perjury, the most knowledgeable witnesses may be precluded from taking the stand. The …

Introduction: Symposium On “Forensics, Statistics, And Law”, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Evidence-Informed Criminal Justice, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

The American criminal justice system is at a turning point. For decades, as the rate of incarceration exploded, observers of the American criminal justice system criticized the enormous discretion wielded by key actors, particularly police and prosecutors, and the lack of empirical evidence that has informed that discretion. Since the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, there has been broad awareness that the criminal system lacks empirically informed approaches. That report unsuccessfully called for a national research strategy, with an independent national criminal justice research institute, along …

The Intersection Between Young Adult Sentencing And Mass Incarceration, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article connects two growing categories of academic literature and policy reform: arguments for treating young adults in the criminal justice system less severely than older adults because of evidence showing brain development and maturation continue until the mid-twenties; and arguments calling for reducing mass incarceration and identifying various mechanisms to do so. These categories overlap, but research has not previously built in-depth connections between the two.

Connecting the two bodies of literature helps identify and strengthen arguments for reform. First, changing charging, detention, and sentencing practices for young adults is one important tool to reduce mass incarceration. Young adults …

Life, Liberty, And Trade Secrets: Intellectual Property In The Criminal Justice System, Rebecca Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

The criminal justice system is becoming automated. At every stage, from policing to evidence to parole, machine learning and other computer systems guide outcomes. Widespread debates over the pros and cons of these technologies have overlooked a crucial issue: ownership. Developers often claim that details about how their tools work are trade secrets and refuse to disclose that information to criminal defendants or their attorneys. The introduction of intellectual property claims into the criminal justice system raises undertheorized tensions between life, liberty, and property interests.

This Article offers the first wide-ranging account of trade secret evidence in criminal cases and …

Project Safe Neighborhoods In Chicago: Looking Back A Decade Later, Ben Grunwald, Andrew V. Papachristos

Faculty Scholarship

Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is a federally funded initiative that brings together federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce gun violence in urban centers. In Chicago, PSN implemented supply-side gun policing tactics, enhanced federal prosecution of gun crimes, and notification forums warning offenders of PSN’s heightened criminal sanctions. Prior evaluations provide evidence that PSN initiatives have reduced crime in the first few years of their operation. But over a decade after the program was established, we still know little about whether these effects are sustained over an extended period of time. This Article examines PSN Chicago, an anti-violence program …

Convicting The Innocent Redux, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sexual Misconduct In Prison: What Factors Affect Whether Incarcerated Women Will Report Abuses Committed By Prison Staff?, Sheryl Pimlott Kubiak, Hannah Brenner, Deborah Bybee, Rebecca Campbell, Cristy E. Cummings, Kathleen M. Darcy, Gina Fedock, Rachael Goodman-Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fostering Legal Cynicism Through Immigration Detention, Emily Ryo

Faculty Scholarship

Every year, tens of thousands of noncitizens in removal proceedings are held and processed through an expanding web of immigration detention facilities across the United States. The use of immigration detention is expected to dramatically increase under the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy. I argue that this civil confinement system may serve a critical socio-legal function that has escaped the attention of policymakers, scholars, and the public alike. Using extensive original data on long-term immigrant detainees, I explore how immigration detention might function as a site of legal socialization that helps to promote or reinforce widespread legal cynicism among immigrant …

The American Death Penalty Decline, Brandon L. Garrett, Alexander Jakubow, Ankur Desai

Faculty Scholarship

American death sentences have both declined and become concentrated in a small group of counties. In his dissenting opinion in Glossip v. Gross in 2014, Justice Stephen Breyer highlighted how from 2004 to 2006, "just 29 counties (fewer than 1% of counties in the country) accounted for approximately half of all death sentences imposed nationwide." That decline has become more dramatic. In 2015, fifty-one defendants were sentenced to death in thirty-eight counties. In 2016, thirty-one defendants were sentenced to death in twenty-eight counties. In the mid-1990s, by way of contrast, over 300 people were sentenced to death in as many …

Dignity Is The New Legitimacy, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In this chapter, Jeffrey Fagan responds to Jonathan Simon’s essay by exploring the emotional dimensions of individual interactions with state actors. In a procedural justice vein, this chapter considers the dignitary implications of official maltreatment, focusing in particular on the dignity-injuring potential of unjustified, racially motivated, or otherwise abusive police stops. Such interactions not only personally humiliate, but they also deny the targeted individuals “basic and essential recognition” as social and political equals, instilling instead “a profound sense of loss.” Fagan calls for a jurisprudence that “recognizes the emotional highway between dignity and legitimacy.” This approach would “internalize[] the central …

Identifying Criminals’ Risk Preferences, Murat C. Mungan, Jonathan Klick

Faculty Scholarship

There is a 250-year-old presumption in the criminology and law enforcement literature that people are deterred more by increases in the certainty rather than increases in the severity of legal sanctions. We call this presumption the Certainty Aversion Presumption (CAP). Simple criminal decision-making models suggest that criminals must be risk seeking if they behave consistently with CAP. This implication leads to disturbing interpretations, such as criminals being categorically different from law-abiding people, who often display risk-averse behavior while making financial decisions. Moreover, policy discussions that incorrectly rely on criminals’ risk attitudes implied by CAP are ill informed, and may therefore …

Charging The Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons, Neil L. Sobol

Faculty Scholarship

Debtors’ prisons should no longer exist. While imprisonment for debt was common in colonial times in the United States, subsequent constitutional provisions, legislation, and court rulings all called for the abolition of incarcerating individuals to collect debt. Despite these prohibitions, individuals who are unable to pay debts are now regularly incarcerated, and the vast majority of them are indigent. In 2015, at least ten lawsuits were filed against municipalities for incarcerating individuals in modern-day debtors’ prisons. Criminal justice debt is the primary source for this imprisonment.

Criminal justice debt includes fines, restitution charges, court costs, and fees. Monetary charges exist …

Neuroscience And Behavioral Genetics In Us Criminal Law: An Empirical Analysis, Nita A. Farahany

Faculty Scholarship

The goal of this study was to examine the growing use of neurological and behavioral genetic evidence by criminal defendants in US criminal law. Judicial opinions issued between 2005–12 that discussed the use of neuroscience or behavioral genetics by criminal defendants were identified, coded and analysed. Yet, criminal defendants are increasingly introducing such evidence to challenge defendants’ competency, the effectiveness of defense counsel at trial, and to mitigate punishment.

Decriminalizing Delinquency: The Effect Of Raising The Age Of Majority On Juvenile Recidivism, Charles E. Loeffler, Ben Grunwald

Faculty Scholarship

In the last decade, a number of states have expanded the jurisdiction of their juvenile courts by increasing the maximum age to 18. Proponents argue that these expansions reduce crime by increasing access to the beneficial features of the juvenile justice system. Critics counter that the expansions risk increasing crime by reducing deterrence. In 2010, Illinois raised the maximum age for juvenile court for offenders who commit a misdemeanor. By examining the effect of this law on juvenile offenders in Chicago, this paper provides the first empirical estimates of the consequences of recent legislative activity to raise the age of …

Culpability And Modern Crime, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal law has developed to prohibit new forms of intrusion on the autonomy and mental processes of others. Examples include modern understandings of fraud, extortion, and bribery, which pivot on the concepts of deception, coercion, and improper influence. Sometimes core offenses develop to include similar concepts, such as when reforms in the law of sexual assault make consent almost exclusively material. Many of these projects are laudable. But progressive programs in substantive criminal law can raise difficult problems of culpability. Modern iterations of criminal offenses often draw lines using concepts involving relative mental states among persons whose conduct is embedded …

Decision-Making In The Dark: How Pre-Trial Errors Change The Narrative In Criminal Jury Trials, Kara Mackillop, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade and a half, a great deal of attention has rightfully been given to the issue of wrongful convictions. In 2003, Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck published Actual Innocence, an eyeopening treatise on the reality of wrongful convictions in the United States. In the years since, more than 1400 innocent persons have been exonerated, and a very diverse research community of attorneys, academics, social scientists, and activists has developed in response to the realization offlaws in our criminal justice system. In 2012, Brandon Garrett's Convicting the Innocent quantitatively evaluated the first 250 DNA exonerations and …

Changing Punishments For Property Offenses, To Change The Lives Of Women In Need, Amber Baylor

Faculty Scholarship

In 2014, many states revisited disproportionately high sentencing schemes for low-level property offenses. Voters in states across the country rallied in favor of reductions in penalties for low-level, nonviolent property offenses, such as theft, check fraud, and larceny. Bipartisan efforts to ease the financial burden of incarceration have lead to criminal justice reforms in states like California, Oregon, and Mississippi. Advocates for women in the criminal justice system have embarked on campaigns to frame reforms as not just a cost-cutting measure, but also as a moral imperative.

For many women, primarily women with little money, relatively low-value property offense convictions …

“White Collar” Crimes, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

In addition to serving as a précis of the subject of ‘white collar’ crime, this chapter does three things. First, it deals with white collar crime’s longstanding definitional problem, rejecting several standard approaches and arguing that the category is most usefully understood according to the conceptual legal problem these offenses generate. White collar crimes, much more than other offenses, are committed in social settings in which undesirable behaviors are embedded within socially welcome conduct. Thus they are difficult to set apart and extract through clearly specified ex ante rules of law. Second, the chapter illustrates this definitional claim, and discusses …

Book Review: American Jericho: A Book Review Of The Hanging Judge By Michael A. Ponsor, Giovanna Shay

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prosecutorial Discretion In Three Systems: Balancing Conflicting Goals And Providing Mechanisms For Control, Sara Sun Beale

Faculty Scholarship

In regulating the authority and discretion exercised by contemporary prosecutors,national systems balance a variety of goals, many of which are in tension or direct conflict. Forexample, making prosecutors politically or democratically accountable may conflict with theprinciple of prosecutorial neutrality, and the goal of efficiency may conflict with accuracy. National systems generally seek to foster equal treatment of defendants and respect for theirrights while also controlling or reducing crime and protecting the rights of victims. Systems thatrecognize prosecutorial discretion also seek to establish and implement policy decisions aboutthe best ways to address various social problems, priorities, and the allocation of resources. …

Incarceration And The Economic Fortunes Of Urban Neighborhoods, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter turns to the response of the criminal justice system to neighborhood violence, in particular examining to what extent persistently high levels of incarceration can depress economic well-being and human capital in disadvantaged and racially segregated communities. A panel analysis of New York City neighborhoods between 1985 and 1996, a period in which the city's violent-crime rates both rose and fell sharply, provides evidence that high incarceration rates reduce income growth, educational attainment, and work experience in disadvantaged and racially segregated neighborhoods. To rectify this, targeted micro investment and housing development in such areas can break the connection between …

Book Review, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The North Carolina Racial Justice Act: An Essay On Substantive And Procedural Fairness In Death Penalty Litigation, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Overcriminalization For Lack Of Better Options: A Celebration Of Bill Stuntz, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

The unity of Bill Stuntz's character – his profound integrity – makes it easy to move from a celebration of his friendship (which I’ve treasured since we first met back in 1985) to one of his scholarship, for creativity, wisdom, and humility are strengths not just of Bill himself but of his work. Even as his broad brush strokes have fundamentally advanced our understanding of the interplay between substantive criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminal justice institutions over time, Bill's work – like Bill himself – welcomes and endures sustained engagement. Humility is appropriate for me, too, as I offer …

Building Pathways Of Possibility From Criminal Justice To College: College Initiative As A Catalyst Linking Individual And Systemic Change, Susan P. Sturm, Kate Skolnick, Tina Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Across the United States, communities, especially marginalized and low income communities, face challenges resulting from the “school-to-prison pipeline”—a continuum of conditions increasing the probability that people from such marginalized communities, particularly black men, will find themselves in prison rather than college.1 Dismantling this pipeline has become a significant national focus of advocates and policy makers. In New York City, a network has emerged in the last ten years to focus on building a new pipeline from criminal justice to college. This network focuses on rebuilding the lives of the over 70 thousand people who have fallen into the school-to-prison pipeline. …

A Chinese Theory Of Community Policing, Kam C. Wong

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reflections And Perspectives On Reentry And Collateral Consequences, Michael Pinard

Faculty Scholarship

This essay addresses the continued and dramatic increase in the numbers of individuals released from correctional institutions and returning to communities across the United States. It provides a brief history of the collateral consequences of criminal convictions, and the ways in which these consequences impede productive reentry. It then highlights national and state efforts to address to persistent reentry obstacles and to better understand the range and scope of collateral consequences. It concludes by offering suggestions for reform.

Retribution And The Experience Of Punishment, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.