Criminal Law Commons^™

The Law And Politics Of Ransomware, Asaf Lubin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

What do Lady Gaga, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the city of Valdez in Alaska, and the court system of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul all have in common? They have all been victims of ransomware attacks, which are growing both in number and severity. In 2016, hackers perpetrated roughly four thousand ransomware attacks a day worldwide, a figure which was already alarming. By 2020, however, ransomware attacks reached a staggering number, between twenty thousand and thirty thousand per day in the United States alone. That is a ransomware attack every eleven seconds, each of which …

Letting Offenders Choose Their Punishment?, Gilles Grolleau, Murat C. Mungan, Naoufel Mzoughi

Faculty Scholarship

Punishment menus allow offenders to choose the punishment to which they will be subjected from a set of options. We present several behaviorally informed rationales for why punishment menus may serve as effective deterrents, notably by causing people to refrain from entering a calculative mindset; reducing their psychological reactance; causing them to reconsider the reputational impacts of punishment; and reducing suspicions about whether the act is enforced for rent-seeking purposes. We argue that punishment menus can outperform the traditional single punishment if these effects can be harnessed properly. Our observations thus constitute a challenge, based on behavioral arguments, to the …

Effectiveness Of Catch Documentation Schemes In Ghana’S Fisheries And Their Role In Deterring Iuu Fishing, Misornu Yaw Logo

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Crime Victimisation In India, Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Renuka Sane, Ajay Shah, Varsha Aithala

Books

This edited volume is a pioneering and comprehensive study of crime victimisation in India. Relying on the findings of four crime victimisation surveys conducted in India, it provides a unique basis for understanding crime in society. It considers the public’s fear of crime and perceptions of safety and security, focusing on their access to the police and how they view police effectiveness. This study provides critical data on the level of crime within particular spatial and temporal conditions which can supplement official statistics on crime published by the state, help systematically diagnose law and order issues and develop solutions for …

Cardozo Launches The Perlmutter Center For Legal Justice, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

2022 Event Invitations

The Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law will be comprised of two components:

The Perlmutter Forensic Science Educational Program, an ambitious legal education program in scientific evidence for practicing attorneys.

The Perlmutter Freedom Clinic, seeking justice for the unjustly incarcerated, will fight wrongful convictions based on the misuse of scientific evidence and work to obtain clemency for individuals that have been unjustly incarcerated.

The Center will be led by prominent civil rights attorney and criminal justice reform advocate Josh Dubin, who will serve as Executive Director. The Deputy Director will be Derrick Hamilton, a formerly incarcerated individual who …

High Time For Change: The Legalization Of Marijuana And Its Impact On Warrantless Roadside Motor Vehicle Searches, Molly E. O'Connell

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The proliferation of marijuana legalization has changed the relationship between driving and marijuana use. While impaired driving remains illegal, marijuana use that does not result in impairment is not a bar to operating a motor vehicle. Scientists have yet to find a reliable way for law enforcement officers to make this distinction. In the marijuana impairment context, there is not a scientifically proven equivalent to the Blood Alcohol Content standard nor are there reliable roadside assessments. This scientific and technological void has problematic consequences for marijuana users that get behind the wheel and find themselves suspected of impaired driving. Without …

Advocates’ Perspectives On The Canadian Prison Mother Child Program, Martha Paynter, Clare Heggie, Ruth Martin-Misener, Adelina Iftene, Gail Tomblin Murphy

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Over twenty years ago, Correctional Services Canada launched the Mother Child Program (MCP) to mitigate harms of separating incarcerated mothers from their babies. It has never been subjected to internal evaluation or independent study. The aim of the qualitative study was to explore the experiences of advocates employed by Elizabeth Fry Societies (EFS), community organizations dedicated to the support of incarcerated women, with respect to supporting people who were pregnant or had young children while federally incarcerated and did or did not participate in the MCP.

A Not-So-Clean Slate: A Progress Report Of Pa’S Automated Record Sealing Law, Matt B. Saboe, Tekia Huger-Burton

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

Professor Matt B. Saboe, Economics and Finance, and Tekia Huger-Burton - A Not-So-Clean Slate: A Progress Report of PA’s Automated Record Sealing Law

The Fourth Amendment And The Problem Of Social Cost, Thomas P. Crocker

Northwestern University Law Review

The Supreme Court has made social cost a core concept relevant to the calculation of Fourth Amendment remedies but has never explained the concept’s meaning. The Court limits the availability of both the exclusionary rule and civil damages because of their “substantial social costs.” According to the Court, these costs primarily consist of letting the lawbreaker go free by excluding evidence or deterring effective police practices that would lead to more criminal apprehension and prosecution. But recent calls for systemic police reform by social movements have a different view of social cost. So too do calls for reforming qualified immunity. …

Law School News: Should Prison Be Abolished? 10-6-2022, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Impermissibility Of Police Deception In Juvenile Interrogations, Gina Kim

Fordham Law Review

Although perjury is a criminal offense in all states and a felony in many, law enforcement may routinely lie to suspects during interrogations. This widespread, judicially authorized practice consists of interrogators making false promises of leniency that the suspect will receive a lighter sentence in exchange for a confession, and making misrepresentations about the evidence against the suspect. Police deception in interrogations becomes even more problematic when used against juvenile suspects because the psychological vulnerability of minors may lead them to succumb to deceptive pressures and even to falsely confess.

This Note explores the debate surrounding the use of police …

Sentencing After Stash Houses: Addressing Manipulation Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Elizabeth Foy Gudgel

Fordham Law Review

In the realm of undercover work, law enforcement has broad discretion to define the contours of a criminal offense. Due to quantity-based provisions in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, federal agents or their informants may coerce an individual into a higher sentencing range by escalating their behavior to align with mandatory minimums or quantifiable offense levels. Because this type of offense is police-initiated, law enforcement has discretion to select the individuals subject to these tactics and influence their eventual sentences. The defenses of sentencing entrapment and sentencing manipulation are meant to combat this discretion. However, these defenses are rarely invoked successfully …

Does Brady Apply To Supervised Release Revocation Hearings?, Alex Breindel

Fordham Law Review

Many federal offenders face a term of supervised release upon leaving prison. The successor to the federal parole system, supervised release places conditions upon individuals’ freedom. Violation of a condition may result in revocation of release and reimprisonment. To revoke release, the government must prove to a judge by a preponderance of the evidence that a violation occurred. At this proceeding, known as a “revocation hearing,” the individual may contest the alleged violation and present their own evidence.

Under Brady v. Maryland and its progeny, due process requires the government to disclose material exculpatory evidence to criminal defendants. This Note …

Green Crimes In The Empire State: Analyzing The Criminal Enforcement Of Environmental Law In New York, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa Jarrell Ozymy

Pace Environmental Law Review

Ensuring compliance with federal and state environmental laws and deterring future offenses can require the application of criminal enforcement tools. Yet we have a limited understanding of how the criminal enforcement of environmental laws has progressed historically in The Empire State. To explore this phenomenon, we undertake content analysis of federal prosecution summaries for all environmental crime prosecutions stemming from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency criminal investigations from 1983 to 2019. We explore which federal environmental laws were violated, determine which charging statutes were used, analyze sentencing patterns, and illustrate the broader themes that emerge in such prosecutions over 37 years. …

Decarceration's Inside Partners, Seema Tahir Saifee

Fordham Law Review

This Article examines a hidden phenomenon in criminal punishment. People in prison, during their incarceration, have made important—and sometimes extraordinary—strides toward reducing prison populations. In fact, stakeholders in many corners, from policy makers to researchers to abolitionists, have harnessed legal and conceptual strategies generated inside the walls to pursue decarceral strategies outside the walls. Despite this outside use of inside moves, legal scholarship has directed little attention to theorizing the potential of looking to people on the inside as partners in the long-term project of meaningfully reducing prison populations, or “decarceration.”

Building on the change-making agency and revolutionary ideation inside …

An Algorithmic Assessment Of Parole Decisions, Hannah Lacqueur, Ryan W. Copus

Faculty Works

Objectives: Parole is an important mechanism for alleviating the extraordinary social and financial costs of mass incarceration. Yet parole boards can also present a major obstacle, denying parole to low-risk inmates who could safely be released from prison. We evaluate a major parole institution, the New York State Parole Board, quantifying the costs of suboptimal decision-making.

Methods: Using ensemble Machine Learning, we predict any arrest and any violent felony arrest within three years to generate criminal risk predictions for individuals released on parole in New York from 2012–2015. We quantify the social welfare loss of the Board’s suboptimal decisions by …

Greening Criminal Legal Deserts In Rural Texas, Pamela R. Metzger, Claire Buetow, Kristin Meeks, Blane Skiles, Jiacheng Yu

Deason Center Reports

Texas’ rural communities urgently need more prosecutors and public defense providers. On average, Texas’ most urban areas have 28 lawyers for every 100 criminal cases, but rural areas only have five. Many rural prosecutor’s offices cannot recruit and retain enough staff. The Constitution’s promise of equal justice for all remains unfulfilled. Rural Texans charged with misdemeanors are four times less likely to have a lawyer than urban defendants. In 2021, only 403 rural Texas lawyers accepted an appointment to represent an adult criminal defendant. In 65 rural counties, no lawyer accepted an appointment. And the problem is getting worse. Since …

Police Vehicle Searches And Racial Profiling: An Empirical Study, Griffin Edwards, Stephen Rushin

Fordham Law Review

In 1981, the U.S. Supreme Court held in New York v. Belton that police officers could lawfully search virtually anywhere in a vehicle without a warrant after the arrest of any occupant in the vehicle. Then, in 2009, the Court reversed course in Arizona v. Gant, holding that police could only engage in vehicle searches after such arrests in a smaller number of extenuating circumstances. This series of cases became a flash point for the broader debate about the regulation of policing. Law enforcement groups argued that administratively complex rules, like those established in Gant, risk officer safety. …

The Politics Of The Criminal Enforcement Of The U.S. Clean Air Act, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa Jarrell Ozymy

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Criminal prosecution has always existed in a political context. Democratic and Republican presidents have treated environmental regulation very differently over time and this may have a profound effect on how the criminal enforcement of air pollution laws has proceeded in the United States both historically and in the future. There was enough of a bipartisan consensus to allow the institutionalization of resources for the policing and prosecution of air pollution crimes that began in the 1980s and lasted until the early 1990s, where criminal investigators and specialized prosecutors were hired; institutionalized places for these operations to specialize and collaborate were …

Defending The Less Dead: Using The Decriminalization Of Sex Work To Combat The High Incidence Of Serial Homicide Of Street-Based Sex Workers, Lauren E. Fernandez

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Sex workers have historically represented a disproportionate percentage of all victims of serial murder. Several serial murderers in the past thirty years have evaded detection for years, taking the lives of dozens of victims, by targeting sex workers, playing off the biases of society and law enforcement, and counting on the halfhearted investigation techniques that often followed missing person reports for less valued members of society, or the “less dead.” This Note argues that the decriminalization of all aspects of sex work is the surest way to improve the safety of street-based sex workers and reduce high victimization of this …