Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

Truth, Fiction, And Abolition, Xiao Wang, Samuel Weiss

Michigan Law Review

A review of Chain-Gang All-Stars. By Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Pay Transparency Laws Clear As Mud: A Discussion Of And Proposal For The Pay Transparency Legislation In Colorado And New York, Emily Hall

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that while pay transparency laws in Colorado and New York represent progress, they fall short of achieving true pay equity because they do not require employers to disclose the factors influencing salary ranges. The author advocates for amendments to these laws, including mandatory annual pay audits and the disclosure of factors and their weights used in determining salary ranges, to enhance transparency and fairness in negotiations.

Taking Revolution Seriously, Zohra Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Every so often, a prison strike will make national news, as it did in 2014, 2016, and 2018. ¹ The media will focus on the atrocious conditions of confinement; the unchecked violence; the wages numerated in pennies; and the state’s indifference to the strikers’ modest demands for food, medical care, and human contact.

Orisanmi Burton’s² book, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, urges us to process such reporting with a healthy dose of skepticism. What if prison rebellions were telling us something else, something even more important? What if they were …

Shoot First, Think Later, Pay Never: How Qualified Immunity Perpetuates The Modern-Day Lynching Of Black Americans And Why Abolition Is The Answer, Abigail Sloan

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

The purpose of this Note is to analogize today’s police killings of Black Americans to lynchings, and to examine how qualified immunity is one of many mechanisms governments and police departments use to evade accountability. The word “lynching” itself evokes an emotional and disturbing image of horror from the reconstruction-era South, with images of terroristic, racist violence which can be uncomfortable and traumatizing to confront. However, in using the word “lynching,” I intentionally and respectfully draw upon the similarities between historical lynchings and the police killings of Black Americans today, particularly in tracking the evolution of brutal violence to …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Re-Imagining Tomorrow: A Technology, Innovation Law, And Ethics Symposium On Addictive Technology And Children, Margaret Chon

Seattle University Law Review

In this Foreword, Professor Margaret Chon introduces Seattle University's Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) program, the 2024 TILE Symposium, and Dr. Gaia Bernstein’s Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

Keynote Address: The Movement To Protect Kids From Addictive Technologies, Gaia Bernstein

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, I describe my personal journey starting with a school outreach program I created in 2017 to address technology overuse among kids. While I initially advocated for self-help methods, I grew to recognize that the tech industry bore responsibility. This realization led me to write Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, which focused on collective action to pressure the tech industry to redesign its addictive products.

I then describe the movement to control addictive technologies and protect kids, which has gained momentum since the end of the pandemic. This movement combines grassroots parent activism with legal-political action. …

Moral Panic Or Public Health Crisis? Lessons From Drugs And Gambling For “Addictive” Design, Matthew B. Lawrence, Haomin (Kevin) Yan

Seattle University Law Review

Alcohol, automobiles, guns, lottery, loot boxes, meat, music, opioid painkillers, processed foods, prop bets, slot machines, television, tobacco, violent video games. Over the last century each of these has been subject to concerns—some might even say “moral panics”—from parents and policymakers about avoidable harms to kids and adults. In some cases we look back with the benefit of hindsight and dismiss those concerns as naïve or moralistic. In others we look back at them as justified or as having come too late to check an expanding industry before it did unfathomable harm while growing so powerful that it became all …

Responding To Digital Addiction, Ned Snow

Seattle University Law Review

In Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, Professor Gaia Bernstein calls our attention to the growing problem of digital addiction. Digital addiction may sound like something out of a science-fiction novel or something that does not raise the same sort of real-life practical concerns as are present in a physical health crisis or an economic decline. But as Bernstein presents the evidence, we learn that the consequences of digital addiction can be just as harmful as a serious disease or a financial depression. Cognitive development disorders, anxiety, emotional depression, social isolation, and other mental health ills can be debilitating—as much …

The Ai Doppelgänger Dilemma: Cloned Voices In The Music Industry, Elizabeth Shields

Seattle University Law Review

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), there has been an influx of “voice clones”—deep-learning algorithms that create synthetic speech to realistically mimic human voices. Celebrities and, in particular, music artists, have been subjected to the proliferation of AI voice clones on social media platforms like TikTok and streaming platforms such as Spotify. Despite music utilizing AI voice clones having amassed much popularity, this technology can be harmful and highly invasive to musicians whose livelihoods often depend on their distinct voices. While legal scholars have attempted to articulate various rights that could protect a person’s voice, individuals are largely …

Let The Sunshine In: Crafting Constitutional Transparency Regulations For Content Moderation, Caitlin Ring Carlson

Seattle University Law Review

In response to public concern about the impact of social media, legislators in some U.S. states have developed laws to regulate the process of content moderation. Many include mandatory transparency and disclosure requirements, some of which courts have already deemed an unconstitutional infringement on social media platforms’ right to free expression. This article explores the parameters for crafting constitutional social media transparency regulations using existing U.S. media policy and insights from recent legal challenges. The resulting analysis identifies content neutral transparency requirements that mandate the disclosure of purely factual, non-controversial information as those most likely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Specifically, …

This Is Not A Game: The Addictive Allure Of Digital Companions, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents have become an inescapable part of modern childhood, reshaping education, leisure activities, entertainment, and social interaction. From AI-powered tutors that adapt to individual learning styles to emotionally responsive chatbots that simulate human companionship, these systems promise unprecedented personalization, cognitive stimulation, and social support. However, these benefits mask significant risks that remain unregulated and inadequately addressed.

Although adults are also susceptible to forming deep emotional bonds with AI companions—often trusting them as if they possessed genuine understanding and empathy—children are particularly vulnerable. Their misplaced trust can more severely distort social development, weaken critical thinking, and foster unhealthy …

Cars Don’T Stop For Yellow Lights: Turning Maine’S Yellow Flag Law Red, Jamison Rhoads-Doyle

Maine Law Review

This Case Note is about Maine’s Extreme Risk Protection Order law, Title 34-B, Section 3862-A, of the Maine Revised Statutes. The purpose of Maine’s law and others like it is to proactively take firearms away from individuals who present a substantial risk of violently harming themselves or others. In the aftermath of the mass shooting which occurred in Lewiston, Maine on October 25, 2023, there was debate over whether law enforcement could have used Section 3862-A to proactively prevent the shooting, as well as over whether Section 3862-A was an effective tool for preventing violence in the first place. This …

Power, Responsibility, And Judicial Deference To Police Expertise In Fourth Amendment Decisionmaking, Nicholas A. Kahn-Fogel

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Courts have long deferred to police expertise in Fourth Amendment decisionmaking, most prominently in their application of the reasonable-person standard in assessments of probable cause and reasonable suspicion. Scholars have often bemoaned such deference as an abdication of the judicial obligation to make independent determinations of Fourth Amendment reasonableness. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court of the United States and lower courts are unlikely to abandon their view of police officers as possessing elevated knowledge, skill, experience, and perceptual abilities that merit judicial consideration in the evaluation of Fourth Amendment probabilities. On the other hand, the Court has tended to assume …

True Experimental Research Design, Mustafa Demir

Open Educational Resources

This assignment, created by Mustafa Demir of the Law and Police Science Department at John Jay College, tasks students with designing a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on police use-of-force incidents in a city of the student's choice. Students must gather setting and demographic data from open data sets, such as those available from the Census Bureau, to inform their research design.

Community-Driven Policy Solutions To Police Accountability, Rashawn Ray

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

George Floyd’s death shifted public opinion as 76% of Americans agreed that incidents such as the killing of Floyd are signs of racism within law enforcement. While police reforms such as implicit bias training and body-worn cameras gained public support, they insufficiently address the structural, cultural, and organizational components of policing that can obstruct accountability and contribute to racial disparities in policing. In this lecture, Brooking Senior Fellow Rashawn Ray presents interview, survey, social media, and virtual reality data with police officers, activists, and civilians, and demonstrates state- and city-level databases on police reform legislation. Ray posits that evidence-based policy …

Individual Liberty, Safety And Police Liabilities Under The Mental Health (Care And Treatment) Act, Gary Kok Yew Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

How should a society strike a balance between the objective of ensuring safety from dangers that may be posed by individuals believed to have a mental disorder and the deprivation of their liberty? How should police officers discharge their duties in apprehending such individuals with a view to conveying them to a medical practitioner at a psychiatric institution? These legal issues took centrestage in the Singapore High Court decision of Mah Kiat Seng v Attorney-General in which the apprehended individual brought claims in false imprisonment against a police officer. The decision examined the underlying purposes of the Singapore Mental Health …

Assessing Alexithymia In Law Enforcement: The Role Of Service Tenure And Sex, Elfego J. Gallardo Jr

Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Alexithymia, characterized by difficulties in identifying and expressing emotions, has significant implications for professions requiring emotional intelligence and trauma-informed response. Law enforcement officers routinely navigate high-stress encounters that demand emotional regulation, clear communication, and empathy, yet those with alexithymic traits may struggle in these areas, potentially affecting interactions with victims, suspects, and the community. This study examined the prevalence of alexithymia among front-line police officers in suburban municipal agencies within the Chicago metropolitan area, using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) as a standardized assessment. The research addressed three questions: (1) What proportion of officers exhibited normative or elevated levels …

Policing’S Free-Speech Problem, G. Alex Sinha

Utah Law Review

The central claim of this Article is that a significant share of typical policing activity is wildly and egregiously unconstitutional. More precisely, police regularly, predictably, and systematically violate the hardest, most settled core of free-speech law under the First Amendment. We have grown to tolerate these violations—we have not even noticed them!—because they are difficult to litigate. But they are inescapable. Having seen them, we cannot abide these violations without entirely overturning the modern understanding of free-speech rights under the First Amendment.

It is well-settled that, under the First Amendment, the government generally may not discriminate against (or in favor …

Abolition By Algorithm, Peter N. Salib

Michigan Law Review

In one sense, America’s newest abolitionist movement—advocating the elimination of policing and prison—has been a success. Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, a small group of self-described radicals convinced a wide swath of ordinary liberals to accept a sweeping claim: Mere reforms cannot meaningfully reduce prison and policing’s serious harms. Only elimination can. On the other hand, abolitionists have failed to secure lasting policy change. The difficulty is crime. In 2021, following a nationwide uptick in homicides, liberal support for abolitionist proposals collapsed. Despite being newly “abolition curious,” left-leaning voters consistently rejected concrete abolitionist policies. Faced with the difficult …