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The US Senate is unique in the United States and rare internationally for its total disregard of population differences among its representational units. To analyze malapportionment’s policy impact, we devised a hypothetical reapportionment scheme that more closely approximates state population but remains favorable to small states. We developed a formula to reweight senators’ roll-call votes to reflect better state population differences. We recalculated 804 key US Senate votes between 1961 and 2019 and found that state equality in the Senate systematically biases policy outcomes toward Republican preferences.

‘American exceptionalism in imprisonment’ has become a useful heuristic for analyzing the extremely high rates of imprisonment in the United States that emerged in the late 20th century. This perspective, however, has largely marginalized violent crime as an important and distinguishing feature of the United States in contrast to most of the (largely western) countries to which it is usually compared. But violent crime in the United States – particularly murder – is extraordinarily high, making violence almost as exceptional as imprisonment. In fact, American exceptionalism may be better understood as exceptionalism of the Americas. By linking crime, punishment, and inequality, the relevant comparisons for the United States look less like Europe and more like Latin America. This chapter develops a conceptual framework for understanding state-building in the Americas, which the author refers to as racialized state-building. This framework proposes that the roots of high violence in the Americas (from both fellow citizens and from the state) lie in the fragmented state capacity and accountability that characterize the vast majority of countries in the Americas, including the United States. These state features are a function of extractive, settler, and slave colonialism which created incentives – to varying degrees – for elites to avoid institutional configurations that would result in power-sharing across populations. The resultant states are institutionally disjointed and excessively complex with high levels of mistrust and inequality, conditions which are ripe for violence in many forms.

This article reviews classic and contemporary case study research in law and social science. Taking as its starting point that legal scholars engaged in case studies generally have a set of questions distinct from those using other research approaches, the essay offers a detailed discussion of three primary contributions of case studies in legal scholarship: theory building, concept formation, and processes/mechanisms. The essay describes the role of case studies in social scientific work and their express value to legal scholars, and offers specific descriptions from classic and contemporary works.

An expert makes a detailed case for criminal justice reform, yet offers few answers for the kind of violent crime wave that led to the era of mass incarceration—and ravages minority communities.

This article challenges contemporary understandings of the US carceral state by confronting the realities of exceptionally high rates of homicide victimization among Black women and considering the implications for equality and understandings of the carceral state. We propose that neither the US state nor the US penal order can be fully understood without taking account of the exceptionally high rates of violence to which Black women are exposed. Conceptions of the carceral state that do not situate criminal justice within the larger context of raced and gendered subject formation depict criminal “justice” as an arena composed almost entirely of adult males. This obscures the realities of how state form contributes not only to criminal justice practices but also to risk of violence. Black women are uniquely situated at the intersection of risk of violence, and risk of experiencing the collateral damage of the carceral state. Without significant attention to issues of connectivity and care, which are direc...

This paper offers a reframing of the dynamics of crime and punishment in the United States by exploring lethal violence and situating both violence and punishment within the larger capacity of the US political system to shield citizens from a range of social risks. I argue that security from violence is an important state obligation and then illustrate the exceptionally high rates of lethal violence in the US, relative to other rich democracies, and their clustering with a range of other racialized social risks, including poverty and imprisonment. I then provide a framework for understanding the exceptional status of the US by exploring the fragmented, racialized and legalistic institutions of American politics and the role they play in producing a range of socio-economic insecurities. I argue that both violence and punishment in the US can be seen as limited forms of state failure, particularly with respect to African-Americans.

This chapter argues that the literature on the politics of punishment generally, and on US exceptionalism specifically, suffers from insufficient attention to serious violence. It complicates conventional assumptions about democratic politics, mass publics, and crime. Drawing on three cases—the United Kingdom, the United States, and the state of Pennsylvania—this chapter illustrates that rates of violence matter for political attention to crime. It also shows that the politicization of crime does not always lead to a singular focus on punishment and that this politicization in the United States is shaped by both high rates of violence and distinctive institutional dynamics that decouple crime from related social and economic insecurities. The consequence is an (exceptional) political process in the United States that makes it difficult for the polity to make the state pay for high rates of violence and the criminogenic conditions that give rise to them.

Contemporary scholarship on punishment, politics and society generally treats democratic politics and crime policy as a dangerous mix. In this view, when crime comes onto democratic political agendas, it generates perverse political incentives that result in politicians pandering to and/or manipulating mass publics bent on harsh punishment. In this article, I argue that an examination of violent victimization complicates this conventional wisdom. Using violence as a framework, I challenge three fundamental assumptions about the relationship between democracy and crime. From there, I suggest how different democratic institutional arrangements might facilitate broader public participation in crime politics, and how that participation can lead to promoting less, rather than more punishment.

The question of how courts respond to national emergencies or crises is of profound importance in a democratic society. In the United States, the federal courts exercise the power of judicial review, giving them the authority to invalidate acts of legislatures or executives as unconstitutional. Given this, those groups who wish to ensure that government does not infringe on valued liberties during times of crisis often look to the federal courts to serve as a limitation on legislative and executive overreach. This policy brief suggests that framing the question as an oppositional one; that is, as a question of the courts in opposition to other branches of government, misrepresents fundamental and distinctive aspects of the US federal courts. Rather, the judiciary operates in conjunction with other branches of government, often by invitation or by default when governing majorities either cannot or will not resolve disputes that divide them. In this sense, the impact of court decisions is measured less by direct social policy outcomes or compliance by other actors, than by the ways in which they contribute to or challenge dominant governing coalitions.

The promise of civil rights is the promise of inclusion; yet the vast disparity in incarceration rates between blacks, Latinos, and whites stands as an ugly reminder of the nation's long history of race-based exclusionary practices. In this article, I argue that an important aspect of understanding race and the law in the twenty-first century is an appreciation of the American federal system that structures legal authority, political mobilization, and policy solutions and serves as an important and overlooked obstacle to more complete and sustained racial equality in crime and punishment in the United States. In contrast to the conventional wisdom about the role of the national government in protecting the rights of minorities and other disadvantaged groups, I suggest that crime and justice are arenas where the nationalization of issues has left the most important constituents behind. In fact, local crime politics provides a space where there is regular and ongoing articulation of the inclusionary goals of the civil rights agenda and sustained efforts to move forward in realizing that agenda through meaningful community involvement in promoting public safety, economic development, and social justice. This article explores these themes and offers a discussion of the linkages between federalism, racial inequality and crime, victimization and punishment.

Purpose The purpose of the present review was to evaluate the protocol and technique used in a large population of patients with cleft lip and palate when secondary grafting is performed during the early mixed dentition stage, as determined by eruption of the central incisor. In the United States, most investigators have recommended alveolar grafting at the 9- to 11-year age range or before eruption of the permanent canines. Materials and Methods An institutional review board-approved chart review of 99 patients undergoing alveolar cleft bone grafting during a 7-year period at a single institution was performed. Data were collected regarding demographics, operative time, length of hospitalization, follow-up time, complications, and additional procedures performed. The cases were divided by patient age into 2 groups: group 1, aged 6 to 8 years (n = 61); and group 2, aged 9 years and older (n = 38). Statistical analysis was performed for various comparisons in the study. Results The average operative time for groups 1 and 2 was 86 and 103 minutes, respectively. The complication rate, length of stay, and follow-up time between the 2 groups was not statistically significant at the P = .05 significance level. Conclusions We recommend earlier bone grafting at or before the eruption of the central incisor, rather than delaying until the cuspid tooth root is 25% formed. We believe this will provide better bone support for the dentition, a decreased burden of treatment for the patient, and improved quality of life. Performing the procedure at this time can lead to decreased operative times, with comparable postoperative outcomes.

The authors critique the ways that science and higher education are being revisioned and reconstituted as servants of profiteering and fundamentalist power agendas. This discussion recognizes that higher education, while generating all manner of "discovery"-oriented research, has also been the sight of contestation, debate, critiques of science, and even zealous philosophical disagreements regarding science. Higher education has been the accepted location of the postmodern turn; the recognition of diverse scientific paradigms such as constructivist, feminist, and critical sciences; and major critiques of positivist science. This academic work is not perfect and is certainly not without power struggles but is absolutely necessary. Reconstituting American higher education into a fundamentalist, corporatist institution will certainly narrow and potentially eliminate critique, philosophical diversity and science itself. Faculty in academia must take action, rather than succumbing "to the new spirit of the age, (which seems to be) gain(ing) wealth, and forgetting all but self."

Contemporary studies of prosecutorial decision making at the state level are infrequent, and even fewer studies examine the discretionary decisions of federal prosecutors. In addition, virtually no scholarly literature examines the growing overlap between federal and state criminal jurisdiction. This paper advances both theoretical and empirical understandings of the organizational and political contexts in which prosecutorial discretion takes place by exploring the nexus between federal and state criminal jurisdictions. Drawing on interview research in a large urban area with several active federal/state cooperative prosecution programs, we suggest that these cooperative relations open new avenues of discretion for local and federal prosecutors; limit the authority of other court actors, including state judges; and erode the distinctions between federal and local criminal jurisdiction.

Policy scholars have noted that bureaucrats can play an important role in defining policy alternatives. Few studies, however, examine the extent of their involvement in this process. This study contributes to public policy scholarship by offering a framework for understanding the strength of bureaucratic involvement in the process of defining problems and policy alternatives. Using witness data from congressional hearings on crime between 1947 and 1998, I find that federal, state, and local criminal justice bureaucrats have come to occupy a central role in the process of defining policy alternatives. In addition, I find that the centrality of criminal justice actors comes at the expense of interest groups, community organizations, and citizens/victims. Implications for criminal justice policy and understanding bureaucratic involvement in the policy process are discussed.

Why do youth in structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods experience lower levels of informal social control? To answer this question, we examined multilevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Using hierarchical regression, we found that (1) neighborhood attachment and satisfaction with police contributed significantly to neighborhood levels of informal social control; and (2) neighborhood attachment and satisfaction with police mediated a substantial portion of the association between informal social control and neighborhood levels of concentrated disadvantage and immigrant concentration.

This paper explores the notion of a postmodern penology by examining a crime control programme called Operation Weed and Seed in the United States. A postmodern penology abandons the idea of reducing crime through broad social programmes and rehabilitative efforts and is aimed at simply managing the harm that crime inflicts. This paper argues that while a postmodern penology may indeed be observable at the discursive level, policy implementation at the local level significantly complicates matters, reorienting programmatic goals to the ideal of aime reduction through expansive state efforts.

Society has been uncertain about how best to respond to sex offenders. One policy option is a community supervision and treatment alternative such as the Special Sex Offender Sentencing Alternative (SSOSA) enacted in Washington State in 1984. This study examines variables associated with the sentencing decision and compares recidivism rates of offenders granted the alternative and those who received the standard punishment (N = 646 convicted adult sex offenders). It also reports the results of a survey of key professionals regarding the sentencing alternative. Recidivism rates of the two groups were equivalent for sex offenses, while recidivism rates for other crimes were significantly higher among offenders who did not receive the sentencing alternative. Overall, the results provide support for the availability of a sentencing alternative for certain sex offenders.

Like popularized stories amplifying the dangers associated with stranger-predator street crime, immigrant-as-criminal narratives are as widespread as they are inconsistent with the best available data. A growing body of research suggests that immigration not only does not increase crime, it may reduce it. Building on what Scheingold referred to as political criminology, our analysis suggests that the continued salience of immigrant-as-criminal narratives tells us more about politics and power, the symbolic life of the law, and the multifaceted importance of proximity to understanding debates about crime and punishment, than it tells us about how to construct more effective immigration or crime control policies.