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Fordham Urban Law Journal
#Closerikers: The Campaign to Transform New York City's Criminal Justice System
2018 •
Janos Marton
Pace Environmental Law Review
Green Unionism and Human Rights: Imaginings Beyond the Green New Deal
2023 •
Chaumtoli Huq
Brooklyn law review
Give Me Liberty or Give Me . . . Alternatives?: Ending Cash Bail and Its Impact on Pretrial Incarceration
2019 •
Basit Sardar
Public Integrity
U.S. Bail, Pretrial Justice, and Charitable Bail Organizations: Strengthening Social Equity and Advancing Politics and Public Ethics of Care
2022 •
Cynthia Golembeski
The U.S. criminal legal system contributes to the oppression and harm of marginalized groups, calling into question ethical governance. The front end of this system, specifically bail and pretrial justice, exploits opportunities for resource generation and social control as a major driver of incarceration, yet receives limited attention in public administration or ethics. Disproportionate punishment and collateral penalties associated with bail and pretrial justice are causes and consequences of structural racism and administrative dysfunction. Excessive bail as a poverty penalty incurs risks to health, safety, financial security, and constitutional presumptions and protections. In light of civil and constitutional rights concerns, bail and pretrial-associated philanthropic solutions have proliferated. This article provides background on bail and pretrial justice policies and politics; outlines evidence of related consequences; describes select reform efforts and philanthropic tools, including the charitable bail organization The Bail Project; and contextualizes bail and pretrial justice within a public values framework, which centers social equity and incorporates critical race theory alongside politics and public ethics of care. Upholding the Constitution and the law, strengthening social equity, and ensuring procedural due process are core tenets of good governance, yet anathema to the current bail and pretrial justice system, which is a critical public ethics concern.
Social Science Research Network
The Sanctuary of Prosecutorial Nullification
2020 •
Zohra ahmed
Prison Abolition: From Naïve Idealism to Technological Pragmatism
2020 •
Jennifer Svilar
The United States is finally recoiling from the mass incarceration crisis that has plagued it for half a century. The world’s largest incarcerator has seen a small drop in prison numbers since 2008. However, the rate of decline is so slow that it would take half a century for incarceration numbers to reduce to historical levels. Further, the drop in prison numbers has occurred against the backdrop of piecemeal reforms, and there is no meaningful, systematic mechanism to reduce incarceration levels. Despite this, there is now, for the first time, a growing public acceptance that prison is a problematic, possibly flawed, sanction. Prison is expensive, inflicts serious unintended suffering on offenders, and profoundly damages families. Alternatives to prison are finally being canvassed. In one respect this is not surprising. The manner in which we deal with serious offenders has not meaningfully changed for over 500 years—during all this time, we have simply locked offenders behind hig...
Grassroots Challenges to the Effects of Prison Sprawl on Mental Health Services for Incarcerated People
2018 •
Stefen Short
New York State’s prison system is broken in several ways, many of which are linked to a fundamental geographical problem. Almost all of New York’s fifty-four state prisons are located in rural, underresourced communities. Prison units serving people with mental health needs are concentrated in communities with major physician shortages. Without a drastic influx of resources, New York’s prisons will continue to over-utilize “half-measures,” such as video teleconferencing, in a failed attempt to meet the mental health needs of incarcerated people. Lawyers continue to develop strategies— most of which are based in Eighth Amendment litigation—to either improve prison mental health care or increase prison mental health resources. But litigation is not the solution to every social problem and it most likely will not solve this problem on its own. Eighth Amendment litigation cannot change demographics, ameliorate physician shortages, or reverse prison sprawl. Movement lawyers have known si...
Cardozo law review
Broken Windows: Restoring Social Order or Damaging and Depleting New York’s Poor Communities of Color?
2016 •
Jonathan Oberman
UC Irvine law review
Gideon Incarcerated: Access to Counsel in Pre-Trial Detention
2018 •
johanna kalb
As the population of incarcerated persons has swelled in local, state, and federal facilities around the country, the infrastructure supporting the attorney-client relationship is under increasing stress. The result is an array of new cases about the difficulties of lawyering in jails and prisons. These cases challenge the lack of private space for legal visits, reductions in visiting hours, remote carceral placements, interference with legal mail, and monitoring of legal phone calls and legal email. Despite (or perhaps because of) these mounting challenges, many courts have become less receptive to Sixth Amendment claims from people behind bars, putting the right to counsel at risk. This Article traces the hidden ways in which mass incarceration has worked to degrade the right to counsel, both in fact and in law, for incarcerated criminal defendants. It then proposes possibilities for reinvigorating the Sixth Amendment’s protections for incarcerated defendants, through intersecting...
Harvard Law Review
The Effects of Holistic Defense on Criminal Justice Outcomes
2019 •
Maya Buenaventura
Debates over mass incarceration emphasize policing, bail, and sentencing reform, but give little attention to indigent defense. This omission seems surprising, given that interactions with government-provided counsel critically shape the experience of the vast majority of criminal defendants. This neglect in part reflects our lack of evidence-based knowledge regarding indigent defense, making it difficult to identify effective reforms. One newer model gaining support is the holistic defense model, in which public defenders work in interdisciplinary teams to address both the immediate case and the underlying life circ*mstances--such as drug addiction, mental illness, or family or housing instability--that contribute to client contact with the criminal justice system. This holistic model contrasts with the traditional public defense model which emphasizes criminal representation and courtroom advocacy. Proponents contend holistic defense improves case outcomes and reduces recidivism b...
