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Part I of this study, a survey of inmates in the Athenian prison, traces the emergence of imprisonment as a political weapon in periods of partisan tension, civil discord, and breakdown in intra-elite cooperation in classical Athens. Part II complements the aggregative and quantitative analysis of Part I with close readings of Athenian accounts of incarceration from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Athenian narratives of imprisonment reveal profound shifts in perceptions of the prison particularly in response to the undemocratic regimes of 411/10 BCE and 404/3 BCE. Early and mid-fifth-century authors often portray imprisonment as a mechanism of democratic self-governance, a judicial procedure used (and abused) by the dêmos and its leaders to check antidemocratic factions, seeking to destabilize popular rule. Post-404/3 BCE narratives of imprisonment, by contrast, represent the prison as coopted by elites hostile to democracy in Athens and abroad, and emblematic of antidemocratic subversion, oligarchy, and tyrannical ambition. The conclusion attempts to reconcile ancient perceptions of the prison as a political institution with the conventional tripartite classification of Athenian imprisonment as custodial, coercive, and punitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various aspects of community sanctions as alternatives to imprisonment in the Nordic (Scandinavian) countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and it mentions community service, crime prevention, and the use of conditional and suspended sentences in the Nordic criminal justice system. The socio-economic and political aspects of criminal justice reforms, sentencing, and imprisonment are assessed.

Research finds that police legitimacy is enhanced when citizens believe the police exercise their authority using fair procedures. Using ethnographic examples of police-citizen encounters, I use interaction order sociology (IOS) to examine the relationship between interactional and procedural justice. I argue that the principles associated with procedural justice are connected to objectively moral, concrete interactional practices that are required for the existence of selves and shared understandings during interaction in modern, diverse contexts. I argue that perceptions of procedural fairness depend on the experience of interactional fairness that results when these practices are used during encounters. I demonstrate that collective beliefs and institutionalized policies can interfere with interaction order practices but that the interaction order, and officers' and citizens' mutual commitment to situated practice, can block this interference and act as a buffer between citizens and negative stereotypes and punitive criminal justice policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homicide survivors are at increased risk for mental health disorders, including depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and complicated grief (CG). Accordingly, this survey study examined how satisfaction with the criminal justice system (CJS) was associated with depression, PTSD, and CG among 47 homicide survivors. It also examined how satisfaction with specific aspects of the CJS related to satisfaction with the overall CJS. Satisfaction with the overall CJS was uniquely associated with depression (odds ratio [OR] = 2.32; 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.16, 4.66]) while satisfaction with the police department was uniquely associated with CG (OR = 2.14; 95% CI [1.02, 4.47]). Satisfaction with having input into the CJS process and satisfaction with efforts devoted by the CJS to apprehend the perpetrator were uniquely related to satisfaction with the overall CJS (β = .49, p = .003 and β = .40, p = .007, respectively). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the many diagnoses of American criminal justice’s ills, few focus on externalities. Yet American criminal justice systematically overpunishes in large part because few mechanisms exist to force consideration of the full social costs of criminal justice interventions. Actors often lack good information or incentives to minimize the harms they impose. Part of the problem is structural: criminal justice is fragmented vertically among governments, horizontally among agencies, and individually among self-interested actors. Part is a matter of focus: doctrinally and pragmatically, actors overwhelmingly view each case as an isolated, short-term transaction to the exclusion of broader, long-term, and aggregate effects. Treating punishment like other public-law problems of regulation suggests various regulatory tools as potential solutions, such as cost-benefit analysis, devolution, pricing, and caps. As these tools highlight, scarcity often works not as a bug but as a design feature. Criminal justice’s distinctive intangible values, politics, distributional concerns, and localism complicate the picture. But more direct engagement with how best to ration criminal justice could help to end the correctional free lunch at the all-you- can-eat buffet and put the bloated American carceral state on the diet it needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of race and racism on the criminal justice system in the U.S. Topics discussed include the advantages afforded to the prosecutor in the system, the creation of narratives by the prosecutors in the courtroom, and the creation of a narrative in criminal trials. Also mentioned is narrative creation in post-conviction context.

The history of prisons and methods of incarceration has been a subject of interest and popular distraction since the great European reform movement in the 19th century. Critics (e.g., Foucault 1977) have concentrated their efforts on demonstrating that the ends achieved in the design of prisons and methods of correction have had effects outside of the prison walls in the daily lives of free and innocent citizens, both in the loss of privacy due to increased police surveillance and in the creation of a population of criminals and personnel of the criminal justice system in an integrated culture. Whether we view a society regimented by a uniform ideology like the Soviet Union or one with a less systematic one like the USA, the effects are clear. This paper examines the practice and ideology of prisons, in historical context and in cross-cultural analysis. Worldwide incarceration of people takes up an increasing amount of state budgets and targets in many cases minorities or ethnic groups. This has economic effects on society at large and specifically those minorities as well as repressing the incomes of sectors of cities. Public health is impacted as is education and inequality enhanced. Prisons and punishment differ historically in the same culture and between cultures. The goal of punishment and discipline in society has many forms, to control certain populations, to enrich others and to define certain behaviors and people as dangerous. Inevitably we want to know, can we do without prisons in complex society? Is our system of punishment accelerating the collapse of social capital in America and social cohesion? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often, discussions of wrongful convictions focus almost entirely on the wrongfully convicted and ignore two important constituencies: prosecutors and crime victims. Both constituencies have unique connections to wrongful convictions and should be recognized as potentially powerful allies for change. Prosecutors are deeply committed to justice and to the outcomes of their cases; they can help identify and correct wrongful convictions and introduce policies to avoid wrongful convictions in the first place. Wrongful convictions matter to crime victims because convicting the wrong person leaves the real perpetrator free to commit more crimes, creates a new, innocent victim, and drains resources that could be devoted to victim services. The authors argue for a broader recognition of the strong interest prosecutors and crime victims have in avoiding wrongful convictions and a more robust role for both stakeholders in the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and policy-makers typically laud restorative justice as being ‘victim-friendly’ in its rules and practices. High levels of victim satisfaction with its outcomes are put forward to substantiate this claim. However, there has been little research that engages with the constitutive role of restorative justice in shaping conceptions of identities, practices and needs. To address this gap, this article develops an analytic framework through which to assess the victim-friendly approach of restorative justice processes across social and legal contexts. In so doing, it engages with three key elements of restorative justice processes: firstly, how this justice approach conceives victims; secondly, how it shapes its practices (and not just outcomes) to address their concerns; and thirdly, how it responds to individual needs. The paper argues that engagement with the constitutive processes can bring a fresh perspective to the relationship between victims and restorative justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal courts are often required, in the course of implementing existing doctrines of constitutional criminal law, to regulate other institutional actors within the criminal justice system - most notably, prosecutors and police officers. The one-off nature of constitutional criminal adjudication, however, often impedes such regulation, in part by denying courts an opportunity to "see" the systemic features of law enforcement behavior. This mismatch between criminal courts' institutional task and their institutional capacity has inspired efforts to identify other means of addressing systemic failings of American criminal justice - including calls for a pivot to law enforcement self-regulation as a primary means of constraining state power in the criminal justice arena. The true capacity of criminal courts, however, has thus far been significantly underappreciated. For at an institutional level, criminal courts are not only deeply and serially engaged with the very governmental entities that constitutional criminal law seeks to regulate, but are also constantly collecting - often in a digital format readily amenable to organization, search, and analysis - valuable and detailed systemic facts about how other criminal justice actors operate. This information extends far beyond the truncated transactional horizon of a given case, and thus could allow courts to access a deep internal well of institutional knowledge about their local criminal justice systems. Uncovering the hidden potential of this latent institutional knowledge raises important questions about the opportunities for - and the responsibilities of - criminal courts to collect systemic facts, to analyze them, to make them transparent to litigants and to the public, and to integrate them into the process of constitutional criminal adjudication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses what the author refers to as an American defense lawyer's obligation to speak truth to power to a prosecutor and a court when the U.S. criminal justice system is unjust, and it mentions public defenders in America and the U.S. Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright which deals with an indigent defendant's right to counsel. U.S. attorney-client relations are examined, along with legal case management, unfairness, and outrage in relation to legal wrongdoing.

Existing research indicates that members of poor and minority groups are less likely than their higher income counterparts to seek help when they experience a civil legal problem. Indeed, roughly three-quarters of the poor do not seek legal help when they experience such problems. Inaction is even more pronounced among poor blacks. This Article uses original empirical data to provide novel explanations for these puzzling and troubling statistics. This study shows, for the first time, a connection between negative past experiences with the criminal justice system and decisions to seek help for civil justice problems. For those familiar with the law, civil and criminal law are separate categories across which experiences do not generalize, any more than a negative experience of subways would lead one to avoid driving. For most respondents, though, the criminal and civil justice systems are one and the same. Injustices they perceive in the criminal system translate into the belief that the legal system as a whole is unjust and should be avoided. Second, this Article shows that past negative experiences with a broad array of public institutions perceived as legal in nature caused respondents to feel lost and ashamed, leading them to avoid interaction with all legal institutions. Third, my data and interviews suggest that respondents helped make sense of these troubling experiences by more generally portraying themselves as self-sufficient citizens who solve their own problems. Seeking help from the legal system might run counter to this self-portrayal. Finally, this Article provides a novel analysis of racial differences in how much citizens use the civil legal system and argues that disparities in trust levels help to explain these differences. This Article concludes by discussing potential policy implications of the findings and identifies key areas for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's (USSC's) ruling in the criminal law case Gideon v. Wainwright in relation to the author's claim that the USSC often relinquishes its judicial review role in litigation matters involving ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Fair trials and equality in America's criminal justice system are examined, as well as the legal rights of indigent criminal defendants who are not represented by attorneys.

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 debate between sentencing reformers and their critics is a paradigmatic illustration of the limits of relying upon modifications of legal form to enhance substantive justice. Building upon the work of legal theorists who have considered the rules versus standards conundrum, this article uses sentencing law as a lens to view some of the fundamental perplexities that bedevil law's grander aspirations-for determinacy, fairness, even coherence itself. Because, it is argued, refinements in legal form will never achieve the substantive goals to which law strives, the Essay urges a turn away from formal equality and toward a conception of sentencing justice that is centered on process values such as respect for those affected by sentencing decisions, concern that all voices be adequately heard, and decision making that reflects the considered moral judgment of the decision maker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses significance of justice in the U.S., citing reference to a symposium on mass incarceration hosted by Roger Williams University School of Law, as of April 2016. It states pertinence of views of Justice Louis D. Brandeis on justice, and mentions social aspects of criminal justice reform in the U.S. It notes the role of lawyer Bryan Stevenson in U.S. criminal justice landscape, and cites the need of compassion among communities.

The article discusses the historical origins of the late English jurist William Blackstone's theory which favors acquittals of guilty parties if they minimize the number of innocent people who are convicted of crimes, and it mentions errors in criminal justice (CJ) and jurist Daniel Epps' claim that Blackstone's theory might actually harm innocent defendants. Traditional justifications for Blackstone's CJ principle are assessed, along with legal history and the benefits of judicial errors.

We analyzed whether a Bible college program had an impact on prison misconduct by examining 230 offenders in the Texas prison system. Findings suggest participation in the Bible college significantly improved offender behavior, reducing misconduct by one discipline conviction per participant. The results also showed that participation significantly decreased the risk of incurring a discipline conviction, lowering it by 65 percent for minor misconduct, 80 percent for major misconduct, and 68 percent for any misconduct. The findings are consistent with existing research, which has generally found that participation in prison-based programming, including educational and faith-based programs, produces better misconduct outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several law-related developments in South Korea as of 2015, and it mentions judicial reform in the nation, citizen participation in South Korea's criminal justice system, and various aspects of the nation's jury system. The establishment of a criminal jury trial-related benchmark standard in South Korea is examined, as well as democratization in the country and South Korea's 1987 Constitution. The nation's constitutional laws are also assessed.

The article discusses law and justice in relation to the potential establishment of community-based justice forums for people dealing with intimate partner abuse in America as of 2015, and it mentions how retributive, restorative, and transformative justice programs operate in the U.S. criminal justice system. Vindication and reparations are examined, along with alternative models for dealing with intimate partner abuse in the U.S. Navajo Indian laws and peacemaking are also assessed.

The article discusses the efforts to mitigate what the author refers to as the negative effects that personal belief and bias have on America's criminal justice system as of 2015, and it mentions justice, fairness, and the pre-trial beliefs that prosecutors and defense attorneys have regarding an accused person's guilt or innocence. Probable cause and wrongful convictions are examined, along with the goal of revealing the truth in a judicial proceeding. U.S. legal ethics are also assessed.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution I briefly outline some of the historical and current trends in prison research and question how a prison researcher can work towards influencing policy and practice. I discuss the current role of 'what works' research and the way it is sometimes utilized in a time of penal populism and rising prison populations. I argue in favour of a broader approach which recognizes the wider societal effects of imprisonment and I provide a concrete example of how one can attempt to plan research and project work in order to facilitate progression from research and knowledge production to action and implementation. Finally I discuss some of the scientific and ethical implications which can arise when working with reform and implementation projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rates of contact with the criminal justice system are geographically and racially sensitive such that some groups of people experience contact at much higher rates than others. The negative effects of personal contact with the criminal justice system are well documented. Less well understood are the effects of the criminal justice system on those who have not had personal contact but who are members of groups where contact is a common occurrence. This research explores the political effects of the carceral state for the second group, and finds that proximal contact mobilizes, an effect that is most pronounced for nonwhites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses key issues that affect the efficiency and credibility of criminal justice systems. It discusses the consequences of an ineffective criminal justice system, which include unnecessary delays within the court process, 'cracked' or 'collapsed' trials, and lack of public confidence. It notes that a successful system must contain strategic, integrated, and sustainable mechanisms that enhance the entire criminal justice process. The article examines a number of initiatives taken by various countries, noting the measurable and sustainable results, while also suggesting ways that these programs could be improved. Finally, the author notes the importance of measuring the outcomes and impact of the suggested initiatives in an effort to promote transparency and accountability, as well as effectively record successful strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short response to Loïc Wacquant's ‘Marginality, Ethnicity and Penality in the Neo-liberal City’, I outline two intellectual conversations that emerge from the author's work. The first develops out of the connections that the author draws between systems of criminal justice and welfare. The second grows out of the disassociation he urges us to see between the logics and trajectories of crime, on the one hand, and criminal justice on the other. I then briefly describe how my own work has been influenced by and contributes to these two ongoing streams of research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although sociologists have long studied public emergency rooms (ERs) and their service delivery to the urban poor, little is known about how crime control and criminal justice contact affect ER admission decisions—a critical oversight given the documented increase in incarceration rates, intensification of policing, and proliferation of crime control language in public institutions. Using ethnographic methods and a count of ER admission decisions (N = 1,114), this article describes the continual rushing and delaying of medical resources to patients based on their perceived criminality or actual relationship to the criminal justice system. These dynamics develop through four processes: (1) widespread administration of pain medication, which associates waiting patients with criminal narcotics; (2) deployment of criminal stigma along race and gender lines to select some qualified patients over others; (3) patrolling of waiting rooms by police; and (4) rushing of beds to vast numbers of arrestees, inmates, and witnesses. Key to these findings is that if the urban poor happen to be wards of the criminal justice system, they receive rushed health care resources, but if they enter health care organizations on their own accord they are policed, delayed, and deterred from accessing care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents an overview of the strategies adopted by prison systems around the world to enable communication between foreign language-speaking inmates and corrections staff. Following a survey-based research design, the study targeted prison systems where the incarcerated population is at least 10% foreign-born. Information was gathered about the following issues: the legal framework ensuring communication rights of prisoners, interpretation and translation service provision, and non-mediated initiatives to overcome the language barrier. The findings show that interpreting in prison settings is still an area in the making, in terms of both professional practice and scholarly research. However, despite the paucity of legislative support and the widespread dependence on ad hoc measures and natural interpreters (mainly prisoners, and sometimes staff), a slow shift towards professionalization can be observed in some countries. These modest advances in prison interpreting seem to be taking place in countries which also pioneered - or are pioneering -the professionalization of community interpreting as a whole. This trend seems to bear very little relation to the degree of development of national prison systems, or to the proportion of foreign-born inmates in the overall prison population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper involves an attempt to provide a framework for developing a critical realist analysis. The aim is to provide a left social democratic criminology that involves the pursuit of evidence based policy. Realising this objective necessarily requires the linking of theory and practice as well as incorporating considerations of social class and human rights. The theoretical base involves moving beyond the hard version of social constructionism and developing an approach that links agency and structure in an attempt to develop causal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal scholars today criticize the lack of public participation in the criminal justice system as a barrier to democratic accountability, legitimacy, and fairness. When searching for solutions, these critiques bypass consideration of the audience members who attend criminal court each day -- people who fill courtrooms to watch the cases in which their friends, family, and community members have been either victimized or accused of a crime. Overlooking these audience members is a mistake, for the constitutional function of the audience is one uniquely suited to help restore public participation and accountability in a world without juries. The Constitution protects the democratic function of the local audience through both the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial and the First Amendment right of the public to attend criminal court. This Article argues that these rights apply with full force in the routine criminal courtroom, where arraignments, pleas, and sentencings, rather than trials, are taking place. Recognizing and enforcing the constitutional protection of the audience will require local criminal courts to grapple with widespread issues of public exclusion from the courtroom. Doing so has the potential to play a part in reinvigorating the lost connection of the public to the realities of routine criminal justice, linking a generally disempowered population to mechanisms of government accountability and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court (USSC), implicit racial bias, and alleged racial disparity in America's criminal justice system as of June 2014, focusing on the efforts to end discrimination based on race in various U.S. courts. USSC Chief Justice John Roberts and America's Constitution are mentioned, along with the legal rights of racial minorities. The New York, New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" policy is addressed, along with incarcerations involving black males.

The degree and scope of criminal justice surveillance increased dramatically in the United States over the past four decades. Recent qualitative research suggests the rise in surveillance may be met with a concomitant increase in efforts to evade it. To date, however, there has been no quantitative empirical test of this theory. In this article, I introduce the concept of “system avoidance,” whereby individuals who have had contact with the criminal justice system avoid surveilling institutions that keep formal records. Using data from Add Health (n = 15,170) and the NLSY97 (n = 8,894), I find that individuals who have been stopped by police, arrested, convicted, or incarcerated are less likely to interact with surveilling institutions, including medical, financial, labor market, and educational institutions, than their counterparts who have not had criminal justice contact. By contrast, individuals with criminal justice contact are no less likely to participate in civic or religious institutions. Because criminal justice contact is disproportionately distributed, this study suggests system avoidance is a potential mechanism through which the criminal justice system contributes to social stratification: it severs an already marginalized subpopulation from institutions that are pivotal to desistance from crime and their own integration into broader society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented which offers a defense of American criminal justice as of May 2014, focusing on various aspects of wrongful convictions, a right to counsel in the U.S., and America's plea bargaining process. Democratic virtues and criminal juries are addressed, along with accountability in state judiciaries in the U.S. The relationship between crime and punishment is mentioned, along with the Innocence Project advocacy group and efforts to overhaul America's criminal laws and procedures.

A defining feature of criminal federalism is extreme disparities in case outcomes across state and federal forums. All else being equal, prosecution in the federal forum entails a significantly higher likelihood of conviction, and a higher penalty. But why do such disparities exist? Conventional explanations point to differences among sovereigns' legal rules, resources, and dockets. These understandings, while valid, neglect to account for a less tangible source of federal criminal power: legitimacy. "Legitimacy" refers to the concept, refined through decades of empirical research, that citizens comply with the law, and defer to and cooperate with legal authority, when they perceive both the laws and the authorities to be fair. A legitimacy-based exploration of the federal criminal justice system significantly enriches our understanding of the sources of federal criminal enforcement power. Distilling those sources, moreover, reveals surprising and counterintuitive implications: to emulate the sources of federal legitimacy in local systems, we need more localized criminal justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses grand jury panels in the People's Republic of China (China) and Japan as of 2014, focusing on Chinese state inquisitorial institutions, Prosecution Review Commissions (PRCs) in Japan, and people's supervisors in China. Civic reviews of prosecutors' non-indictment decisions are addressed, along with the legal aspects of bribery involving public officials in China. Prosecutorial power and authority in China and lay participation in criminal justice procedure are examined.

This Article emphasizes that forensic flaws persist and that deficiencies in forensic science have harrowing implications for criminal justice. In the wake of numerous calls for forensic reform, I propose that we use existing models and frameworks already in place to improve the quality and cost of the U.S. forensic science program, rather than creating an entirely new and unaffordable system. At bottom, this Article calls for collaboration between crime labs, universities and research centers, and the criminal justice system with the goal of making forensic science more reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass incarceration in the United States has led many state governments to hand over the management and construction of prisons to private corporations, which are able to meet demand more quickly and are perceived as more cost-effective. There are approximately 100 private prisons housing about 62,000 inmates today, and this number is expected to increase to 360,000 in the coming decade. Unfortunately, private prisons have failed to effectively address many of the issues pervasive in public prisons--namely recidivism, violence, and poor living conditions. Furthermore, the government-customer has failed to effectively hold private prisons accountable for their failures. As a solution this Note proposes the Private Prisoner Rehabilitation (PPR) credit: a performance-based, refundable tax credit that incentivizes private prisons to address some of the key issues plaguing the criminal justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) have taken the innovative approach of granting victims of international crimes the status of a legal party to the proceedings. The implementation of the new concept of civil party participation has caused controversial discussions about the advantages of including victims in international(ized) criminal trials. This article presents the results of the qualitative study, ‘Victims in Trials of Mass Crimes: A Multi-Perspective Investigation of the Value of Civil Party Participation at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’ which has explored the perspectives of legal professionals on victim participation in Cambodia. In light of the study’s findings and an analysis of the court’s jurisprudence, three main challenges of civil party participation have been identified: (i) the lack of coordination among civil party lawyers; (ii) deficiencies in representation; and (iii) uncertainties about the procedural rights of the civil parties. The findings give rise to the question whether the attribution of legal standing is required to guarantee meaningful victim participation. Based on an evaluation of the benefits and drawbacks of civil party participation, this article discusses what lessons can be learned from the experiences at the ECCC and the role that victims can play in trials of mass crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses a report which claims that the U.S. criminal justice system is experiencing a constitutional crisis as of 2014, focusing on cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Eighth Amendment), and racial disparities in relation to punishment in America. Majority norms and the apparent countermajoritarian principles of the Eighth Amendment are mentioned, along with then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan's declaration of a war on drugs in 1982.

As implemented in the United States, the adversarial system is a significant cause of wrongful convictions, wrongful acquittals, and "wrongful" sentences. Empirical evidence suggests that a hybrid inquisitorial regime can reduce these erroneous results. This Article proposes that the American trial process incorporate three inquisitorial mechanisms--judicial control over the adjudication process, nonadversarial treatment of experts, and required unsworn testimony by the defendant--and defends the proposal against constitutional and practical challenges. While other scholars have suggested borrowing from overseas, these three proposals have yet to be presented as a package. Together they might measurably enhance the accuracy of the American criminal justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses U.S. criminal laws and the reported accuracy of verdicts involving America's criminal justice system as of 2014, focusing on mandatory minimum punishments, bipartisanship, and various "truth in sentencing" regimes. Racial disparities are addressed in relation to punishment rates for drug crimes involving crack cocaine and powder cocaine. The U.S. Fair Sentencing Act, the legal rights of African American defendants, and the stop and frisk police technique are examined.

The shortcomings of forensic evidence in the criminal justice system are now well known. But most scholarly attention has concentrated on "first-generation" forensic techniques such as hair or pattern analysis, bite marks, firearms, and ballistics. Moreover, most of the attention has centered on the investigative process, specifically the collection and analysis of evidence. This Essay turns the critical lens on scientific evidence in a different direction. It focuses on "second-generation" technologies--such as location tracking, biometrics, digital forensics, and other database-driven techniques, and it scrutinizes the adjudicative system--the "bail to jail" stream--rather than the investigative process. Ultimately, this Essay argues that almost every aspect of the adversarial process, as currently conceived, is ill-suited to ensuring the integrity of high-tech evidence. Specifically, the adversarial model demands individualized rather than collective inquiries, embraces secrecy rather than transparency, and privileges viva voce evidence over other forms of fact-gathering. Furthermore, it heavily depends upon the skill of counsel and in-court confrontation rather than out-of-court oversight and structural reform to address problems related to evidentiary integrity, and adopts rigid rules of finality grounded in part on an assumption that proof is always inconclusive. This Essay concludes that the eighteenth-century model of justice may be ill-suited to twenty-first-century evidence, and offers recommendations for a more reliable factfinding system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal and state law confers broad discretion on courts to administer the criminal laws, impose powerful penalties, and leave serious criminal behavior unpunished. Each time an appellate court reviews a criminal verdict, it performs an important systemic function of regulating the exercise of that power. Trial courts do the same when, for example, they admit or exclude evidence generated by government investigators. For decades, judicial decisions of this sort have been guided by case law made during the Supreme Court's Criminal Procedure Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the rule-bound, essentially bureaucratic regulatory regime that emerged in the 1960s does not assure accurate outcomes, especially for poor and minority criminal defendants and victims. As an additional protection, this Essay urges criminal courts to stop resisting and to embrace regulatory innovations in wide use in other domains that foster self-improvement through continuous observation and rigorous analysis of data on the system's own results and error rates. The Supreme Court's own penalty-default and head-counting innovations point the way forward. A certain conception of liberty or individualism--which intersected with the Criminal Procedure Revolution but has not traditionally served the interests of populations most at risk from miscarriages of criminal justice--is the main obstacle to such reforms and should be abandoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses injustice and the reported challenges that are associated with the various postconviction discovery, investigation, and litigation processes in America as of March 2014. U.S. criminal laws and the nation's criminal justice system are mentioned, along with the legal rights of American prisoners. Legal presumptions and exonerations are assessed, along with American prosecutors and petitioners. Evidentiary hearings and capital punishment-related legal cases are also examined.

The article discusses the reported efforts to improve state capital punishment counsel systems through the use of the American Bar Association's (ABA's) "Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases" which have apparently been adopted by every active death penalty jurisdiction in the U.S. as of March 2014. America's criminal justice system and ineffective assistance of counsel claims in the U.S. are mentioned, along with various state supreme courts.

The doing/allowing distinction plays an important role in our thinking about a number of legal issues, such as the need for criminal process protections, prohibitions on torture, the permissibility of the death penalty and so on. These are areas where, at least initially, there seem to be distinctions between harms that the state inflicts and harms that it merely allows. In this paper I will argue for the importance of the doing/allowing distinction as applied to state action. Sunstein, Holmes, Vermeule and others have presented influential arguments for the claim that where the state is concerned the doing/allowing distinction has no moral significance, even if it does elsewhere. I show that these arguments can be resisted. In doing so, I defend some important distinctions and principles that help us understand the state's role in protecting people from harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). It mentions its establishment in 2002 though a United Nations (UN) treaty for prosecuting individuals with serious humanitarian law violations. It also provides an analysis on the court for determining the way international criminal justice is viewed in the domestic settings of its intercession.

The article discusses criminal behavior in America, former Georgetown University Law Center criminal law professor Samuel "Sam" Dash, and the pursuit of justice as of January 2014. The "American Criminal Law Review" periodical and the racial aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system are addressed, along with statistics on prison populations, solitary confinement, and the number of black defendants who were sentenced in felony cases at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.