j u s t c r i m

Targeted Policing versus Mass Incarceration ... The latest from Criminology & Public Policy - Volume 10, Issue 1 - February 2011 - Wiley Online Library

( ht sentencing law & policy )

"Mass incarceration is the criminological issue of our time. A close contender is so-called hot-spots policing.  The former invites condemnation from most criminologists.  The latter inspires confidence that smart policing can reduce crime. In their provocative and important paper that is the focus of this special issue of Criminology & Public Policy, Steven Durlauf and Daniel Nagin (2011) bring the two issues together and propose that we might be able to achieve crime reductions by shortening prison sentences and using the cost savings to support more and better policing.  They rest their case squarely in a deterrence framework.  They argue that increasing the severity of punishment through marginal increases in the length of prison sentences has weak deterrent effects, at best; by the same logic, shortening prison sentences should not produce appreciable crime increases.  In contrast, increasing the perceived certainty of punishment can reduce crime without increasing imprisonment levels through targeted policing strategies that reduce criminal opportunities.  If the authors are right, this is a win-win strategy for crime control and criminal justice policy. ..."

via onlinelibrary.wiley.com

ARCAblog: The Journal of Art Crime: Essayist Simon Cole on Connoisseurship

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

In one of ARCA’s three scholarly responses to David Grann’s “The Mark of a Masterpiece,” published in The New Yorker in July 2010, Simon A. Cole penned an editorial essay, “Connoisseurship All the Way Down: Art Authentication, Forgery, Fingerprint Identification, Expert Knowledge” in the fourth issue of The Journal of Art Crime (Fall 2010).

Simon A. Cole is Associate Professor & Chair of the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification (Harvard University Press, 2001) and Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting (University of Chicago Press, 2008, with Michael Lynch, Ruth McNally & Kathleen Jourdan). His work has been published in numerous criminology journals, Art Journal, and Suspect (MIT Press, 2005), the 10th issue of the design award winning series Alphabet City. He is co-editor of the journal Theoretical Criminology.

via art-crime.blogspot.com

deinstitutionalization || mass incarceration

Harcourt, Bernard E., Reducing Mass Incarceration: Lessons from the Deinstitutionalization of Mental Hospitals in the 1960s  (January 26, 2011).

U of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 542; U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 335. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1748796

Abstract:    
In 1963, President Kennedy outlined a federal program designed to reduce by half the number of persons in custody in mental hospitals. What followed was the biggest deinstitutionalization this country has ever seen. The historical record is complex and the contributing factors are several, but one simple fact remains: This country has deinstitutionalized before. As we think about reducing mass incarceration today, it may be useful to recall some lessons from the past. After tracing the historical background, this essay explores three potential avenues to reduce mass incarceration: First, improving mental health treatment to inmates and exploring the increased use of medication, on a voluntary basis, as an alternative to incarceration; in a similar vein, increasing the use of GPS monitoring and other biometric monitoring, and moving toward the legalization of lesser controlled substances. Second, encouraging federal leadership to create funding incentives for diversionary programs that would give states a financial motive to move prisoners out of the penitentiary and into community-based programs. Third, encouraging impact litigation of prison overcrowding, as well as documentaries of prison life, as a way to influence the public perception of prisoners. With regard to each of these strategies, however, it is crucial to avoid the further racialization of the prison population and merely transferring prisoners to equally problematic institutions.

on capital mitigation specialists

Hughes, Emily, Mitigating Death. Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 18, p. 337, 2009; Washington University in St. Louis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-10-03. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1726045

Capital mitigation specialists are critical members of the capital defense team. Their job involves investigating the life history of the defendant in order to develop a comprehensive defense against execution at the sentencing phase of a capital trial. To develop the life history of the defendant, capital mitigation specialists must uncover as much information as they can about the defendant from the defendant’s family, friends, and virtually any other person in the defendant’s life. This Article examines the role of mitigation specialists who have formal social work training, exploring how legal ethics and world views they experience on capital defense teams interact with ethical norms and world views they learn as social workers. By understanding how ethical norms and world views from law and social work interact, this Article strives to ensure that interdisciplinary capital defense teams anticipate and resolve ethical conflicts in order to safeguard the capital defendant’s constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel.

hac (heinous, atrocious, cruel)~capital sentencing in alabama

Quantifying the ‘Worst of the Worst’: Victim, Offender and Crime Characteristics Contributing to ‘Heinous, Atrocious, or Cruel’ Findings in Alabama

Jennifer Leigh Adger, Columbia University (July 15, 2010

ABSTRACT:   This study focuses on capital sentencing in Alabama. Specifically, it will attempt to identify characteristics of homicides that distinguish cases with “heinous, atrocious, and cruel” (HAC) findings from those homicides that do not have this finding. Critics of HAC assert that it lacks a clear statutory definition, and is, as a result, particularly vulnerable to being applied inconsistently. HAC is found in approximately forty percent of the cases in which an individual is sentenced to death in Alabama and is one of the most highly litigated aggravating circumstances across the country.

In order to examine how Alabama trial courts have been applying the HAC aggravating circumstance this study gathered data from all 414 individuals sentenced to death in Alabama from 1976 to 2008. Information was collected about procedural aspects of the cases, perpetrator and victim characteristics, and characteristics of the homicide. I examined the relationship between HAC findings and various crime characteristics using a logistic regression model. Even though the results of this analysis indicated that some case characteristics may be statistically relevant in predicting whether a particular case will result in a HAC finding, this study’s overall quantitative and qualitative examination was unable to identify a unifying set of characteristics that categorically distinguish the cases in which HAC is found from those where it is not. Because of these results, it appears that Alabama’s construction of HAC does not result in a consistent application of this aggravating circumstance ...  (via Sentencing Law and Policy)

rock paper scissors - ssrn crim downloads

Heavily edited best of SSRN crim content uploads by downloads this past week (thx SSRN Top Downloads)

The Shadow of State Secrets
Laura Donohue,
Georgetown University Law Center,
Date posted to database: March 8, 2010 [2nd last week]

Disentangling Child Pornography from Child Sex Abuse
Carissa Byrne Hessick,
Arizona State, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law,
Date posted to database: March 28, 2010 [3rd last week]

Vigilante Justice: Prosecutor Misconduct in Capital Cases
Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier, Stephen R. Greenwald, Harold Reynolds, Jonathan Sussman,
CUNY School of Law, Fordham University - School of Law, Private Practice, New York County Defender Services,
Date posted to database: April 5, 2010 [6th last week]

Is the Prohibition of Homicide Universal? Evidence from Comparative Criminal Law
John Mikhail,
Georgetown University - Law Center,
Date posted to database: March 23, 2010 [7th last week]

Recognizing Constitutional Rights at Sentencing
F. Andrew Hessick, Carissa Byrne Hessick,
Arizona State University - Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law,
Date posted to database: March 3, 2010 [9th last week]

Making the Punishment Fit the (Computer) Crime: Rebooting Notions of Possession for the Federal Sentencing of Child Pornography Offenses
Jelani Jefferson Exum,
University of Kansas School of Law,
Date posted to database: March 12, 2010 [new to top ten]

SSRN-A Conversation About End-of-Life Decisionmaking

Ouellette, Alicia R., Quill, Timothy, Swidler, Robert, Pope, Thaddeus Mason and Dubler, Nancy, A Conversation About End-of-Life Decisionmaking (January 8, 2010). NYSBA Health Law Journal Vol. 14, No. 2, 2009; Widener Law School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-05. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1533517

top five 5 papers by download | SSRN

"The top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending January 22, 2010:

1. Conspiracy Theories
by Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard University - Harvard Law School) and Adrian Vermeule (Harvard University - Harvard Law School)

2. Constraining Dominant Shareholders’ Self-Dealing: The Legal Framework in France, Germany, and Italy
by Pierre-Henri Conac (University of Luxembourg - Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance) and Luca Enriques (University of Bologna - Faculty of Law) and Martin Gelter (Fordham University School of Law)

3. In Vino Veritas: The Economics of Drinking
by Jan Heufer (TU Dortmund University)

4. A True Story About Civil Courts and Company Valuation
by Pablo Fernandez (University of Navarra - IESE Business School)

5. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)