Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

Learning To Counter Mass Incarceration, Brett Dignam

Faculty Scholarship

Limited access to education inside American prisons imposes a devastating condition of confinement that cripples both the offender and the community. The prolonged and empty time that characterizes prison today affords little mental stimulation, productive engagement, or preparation for post-release employment. Recent research and analysis has found that education during incarceration correlates with lower rates of recidivism and increases the likelihood and quality of post-release employment. There is a pronounced racially disparate dimension to these effects that are concentrated in communities where investment by the criminal justice system is extraordinarily high. Failure to provide education and the resulting higher rates …

The New Public, Sarah Seo

Faculty Scholarship

By exploring the intertwined histories of the automobile, policing, criminal procedure, and the administrative state in the twentieth-century United States, this Essay argues that the growth of the police’s discretionary authority had its roots in the governance of an automotive society. To tell this history and the proliferation of procedural rights that developed as a solution to abuses of police discretion, this Essay examines the life and oeuvre of Charles Reich, an administrative-law expert in the 1960s who wrote about his own encounters with the police, particularly in his car. The Essay concludes that, in light of this regulatory history …

Rules, Standards, Sentencing, And The Nature Of Law, Russell D. Covey

Faculty Publications By Year

Sentencing law and practice in the United States can be characterized as an argument about rules and standards. Whereas in the decades prior to the 1980s when sentencing was largely a discretionary activity governed only by broad sentencing standards, a sentencing reform movement in the 1980s transformed sentencing practice through the advent of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum provisions. As a result, sentencing became far less standard-like and far more rule-like. Although reform proponents believed that this "rulification" of sentencing would reduce unwarranted sentencing disparities and enhance justice, it is far from clear that these goals were achieved. Indeed, the …

Cyber Force: The International Legal Implications Of The Communication Security Establishment's Expanded Mandate Under Bill C-59, Leah West

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Canada is about to join the ranks of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea; countries with a declared policy and authorized program of state-sponsored cyber attacks. In the summer of 2017, the Liberal Government introduced Bill C-59 An Act 2 Respecting National Security Matters. The bill, if passed, represents the most significant overhaul to Canadian national security institutions since the establishment of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) as a separate organization from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 1984. One component of this sweeping reform is the introduction of The Communications Security Establishment Act (CSE Act or the …

Up In The Cloud: Finding Common Ground In Providing For Law Enforcement Access To Data Held By Cloud Computing Service Providers, Matthew Mckenna

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Cloud computing is an everyday part of the modern world; a technology that is increasingly transcending international borders. Disregarding international borders allows cloud computing to operate more efficiently and thus provides better service to users. Yet, the global nature of cloud computing raises a question--what happens if multiple countries apply facially similar laws to cloud computing providers differently? This scenario is common, especially in the context of law enforcement seeking access to cloud computing data. The United States and the United Kingdom have similar laws regarding the government's ability to acquire users' data. Importantly, neither law explicitly addresses the question …

Law Enforcement Access To Data Across Borders: The Evolving Security And Rights Issues, Jennifer Daskal

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Next Fifteen Years, Melynda Barnhart

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Had To Be Held Down By Big Police: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Perspective On Interactions Between Police And Persons With Mental Disabilities, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Lynch

Articles & Chapters

It is a truism that the largest mental health facilities in the nation are the nation’s largest urban jails. Most of the predictable solutions that are offered to curb the influx of individuals with mental illness into jails -- especially those that urge the loosening of civil commitment standards and the return to large psychiatric institutions -- are dreary at best, unconstitutional at heart, and mean-spirited at worst. However, we pay remarkably little attention to one of the primary causes of this reality: the decisionmaking processes "on the street" by police officers who choose to apprehend and arrest certain cohorts …

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 …

Search Incident To Probable Cause?: The Intersection Of Rawlings And Knowles, Marissa Perry

Michigan Law Review

The search incident to arrest exception authorizes an officer to search an arrestee’s person and his or her area of immediate control. This exception is based on two historical justifications: officer safety and evidence preservation. While much of search incident to arrest doctrine is settled, tension exists between two Supreme Court cases, Rawlings v. Kentucky and Knowles v. Iowa, and a crucial question remains unanswered: Must an officer decide to make an arrest prior to commencing a search? In Rawlings, the Supreme Court stated that a search may precede a formal arrest if the arrest follows quickly thereafter. In Knowles, …

Deaths Due To Use Of Lethal Force By Law Enforcement: Findings From The National Violent Death Reporting System, 17 U.S. States, 2009–2012, Sarah Degue, Katherine A. Fowler, Cynthia Calkins

Publications and Research

Introduction: Several high-profile cases in the U.S. have drawn public attention to the use of lethal force by law enforcement (LE), yet research on such fatalities is limited. Using data from a public health surveillance system, this study examined the characteristics and circumstances of these violent deaths to inform prevention.

Methods: All fatalities (N¼812) resulting from use of lethal force by on-duty LE from 2009 to 2012 in 17 U.S. states were examined using National Violent Death Reporting System data. Case narratives were coded for additional incident circumstances.

Results: Victims were majority white (52%) but disproportionately black (32%) with a …

Paws Up, Don't Shoot: Preventing Officer-Involved Shootings Of Companion Canines, Elizabeth Olsen

Animal Law Review

This Article discusses situations in which an officer has shot a companion canine, and evaluates the efficacy of the different potential civil claims that an owner may have against the individual officer, his supervisor, the department, or the municipality. It then goes on to suggest that the relief granted, even for successful claims, is insufficient to alter municipal policies governing officer’s interactions with canines because such relief is typically retrospective in nature. Additionally, this Article discusses the serious problems that arise in relying on civil litigation as a mechanism for addressing officer-involved canine companion shootings because of the status of …

Let My People Grow: Putting A Number On Strict Scrutiny In The Wake Of Holt V. Hobbs, Dana A. Schwartzenfeld

Georgia Law Review

Beards have always played an important role in human
society, especially in the religious context. One man's
beard even got him in front of the United States Supreme
Court. In Holt v. Hobbs, the Court decided that a prisoner
had a constitutional right to grow a one-half-inch beard
for religious purposes. In making the decision, the Court
made clear that the prisoner's religious interest far
outweighed any security threat that such a short beard
could pose to the prison. The Court declined to go any
further, however, in clarifying the beard length at which
the scales would begin to tip …

Values And Assumptions In Criminal Adjudication, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Response to Andrew Manuel Crespo's Systemic Facts: Toward Institutional Awareness in Criminal Courts proceeds in two Parts. In Part I, I argue that Crespo presents a compelling case for the importance of systemic factfinding to the task of criminal court judges. If, as a range of scholars has argued, criminal courts are increasingly serving a quasi-administrative function, then shouldn’t they at least be administrating accurately? Systemic Facts provides a novel account of how — with comparatively little institutional reform — courts might begin to serve as more effective administrators. However, in Part II, I also argue that Crespo’s account …

Body-Worn Cameras: Exploring The Unintentional Consequences Of Technological Advances And Ensuring A Role For Community Consultation, Kami N. Chavis

Faculty Publications

This Essay will discuss the role police body-worn cameras can play in ensuring police legitimacy by increasing transparency, deterring police and citizen misbehavior, increasing officer professionalism, providing valuable training tools, and improving evidentiary documentation when crimes occur. This Essay will also discuss the need to view body-worn cameras and similar technologies with a healthy bit of skepticism. While body-worn cameras can have a significant impact on police accountability and public safety, local officials must carefully consider camera implementation and draft clear guidelines to balance the concerns for accountability with the privacy concerns articulated below. Therefore, this Essay seeks to identify …

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 …

The Prosecutor's Ethical Duty To End Mass Incarceration, Angela J. Davis

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Arbitrary Detention? The Immigration Detention Bed Quota, Anita Sinha

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

When President Obama took office in 2009, Congress through appropriations linked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) funding to “maintaining” 33,400 immigration detention beds a day. This provision, what this Article refers to as the bed quota, remains in effect, except now the mandate is 34,000 beds a day. Since 2009, DHS detentions of non-citizens have gone up by nearly 25 percent. To accommodate for this significant spike over a relatively short period of time, the federal government has relied considerably on private prison corporations to build and operate immigration detention facilities.

This Article takes a comprehensive look at …

Vilifying The Vigilante: A Narrowed Scope Of Citizen's Arrest, Ira P. Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Ira P. Robbins* The doctrine of citizen’s arrest in the United States has been ignored for far too long. In every jurisdiction in the United States, a private person may lawfully detain another and often may even use physical force to do so. Placing such power in the hands of ordinary, untrained individuals creates the possibility that citizens will misuse or abuse the privilege, sometimes with serious consequences for both the arrestor and the arrestee. This risk is compounded by the disparate treatment of the citizen’s arrest doctrine in different jurisdictions and the ambiguities inherent in many of the doctrine’s …

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.