AuthorTitleCitationSummaryYearKey Terms in Title
Shima Baradaran Baughman DO PROSECUTORIAL DECLINATION TRENDS PROVIDE HOPE FOR REDUCING MASS INCARCERATION? 60 Gonzaga Law Review 255 (2024-2025) Very little is known about why prosecutors charge a given case, how frequently they charge, and why they decline to charge cases. Scholars have discussed this issue despite the acknowledged black box around these questions. Some have recently argued that progressive prosecution has influenced prosecutors to decline more cases. Others discuss... 2025 Yes
Kevin Woodson DOING JUSTICE WITH EMPATHY: BLACK PROSECUTORS IN THE AGE OF MASS INCARCERATION 93 Fordham Law Review 1297 (March, 2025) Introduction. 1297 I. When Prosecution Is Personal. 1301 II. Protecting Black People. 1305 III. Empathetic Leniency. 1308 IV. The Pain of Punishment. 1311 Conclusion. 1313 2025 Yes
Mandy Mericle FEEDING THE FIRE: THE FEEDBACK LOOP CREATED BY MASS INCARCERATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE AND WHY ABOLITION IS THE ONLY WAY TO A STABLE CLIMATE 5 North Carolina Civil Rights Law Review 151 (Spring, 2025) Introduction. 152 I. The Prison System's Contribution to Climate Change. 156 A. Fossil Fuel Emissions and other Pollutants Created in Building and Maintaining Prison Facilities. 157 B. Prisons Create a Captive Class of Consumers. 160 C. Use of Incarcerated Workers as Low-Cost Labor. 164 II. Rising Temperatures and Unconstitutional Conditions of... 2025 Yes
Raina Machisen MADE IN THE USA: A PRISON OF OUR OWN EMISSIONS: EXAMINING THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF MASS INCARCERATION FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE 49 William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review 485 (Winter, 2025) Introduction. 485 I. Background. 487 A. Mass Incarceration. 487 B. Carbon Footprint. 489 II. Prison Infrastructure. 490 A. The United States' Prisons' Emissions. 490 B. Looking to the United Kingdom's Green Carceral Infrastructure. 497 III. Prison Programs. 501 IV. Policy, Crime, and Mass Incarceration. 506 A. The Origins of Mass Incarceration.... 2025 Yes
Andrew Manuel Crespo ROOT AND BRANCH: LAWYERS, MOVEMENTS, AND THE END OF MASS INCARCERATION 60 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 567 (Spring, 2025) C1-2Table of Contents Introduction. 567 I. Understanding the Problem. 568 A. A System of Unprecedented Scale. 568 B. Race, Class, Place. 571 C. Not an Accident. 573 D. A Set of Radically Obvious Ideas. 578 II. The Role of the Lawyer in the Movement to End Mass Incarceration. 579 A. Lawyers as Carceral Constructors. 579 B. Lawyers as Harm... 2025 Yes
Julia Alicia Mendoza THE LANGUAGE OF MASS INCARCERATION AND ORGANIZED ABANDONMENT 21 Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties 43 (May, 2025) Our capacity to see and understand the extent of carceral violence is thwarted by the language and narratives employed by the judicial system. As evidenced by the Supreme Court's historicization of the factual record in Johnson v. California and other ancillary prison law cases, the judicial system mobilizes a language of mass incarceration: a... 2025 Yes
Terry Allen "NOT SEPARATE BUT STILL UNEQUAL" 100 New York University Law Review 971 (October, 2025) Much of education law scholarship on school segregation has focused on majority-minority schools. Yet school segregation does not occur only in majority-minority schools, but also in so-called integrated schools: majority-white and Latine schools in which Black children are in the minority. What we know about segregation in these schools focuses on... 2025  
Sheldon A. Evans A LIBERTY-BALANCING APPROACH TO CRIME 62 American Criminal Law Review 155 (Spring, 2025) At its core, the criminal legal system is an ecosystem of institutions that seek to balance liberty interests. The insightful theories and complex practices of crime policy coalesce around questions on how crime impacts the liberties of individuals and communities to be safe, and how this correlates with the deprivation of liberty from offenders... 2025  
Jordan Laris Cohen A REEMPLOYMENT RIGHT FOR PEOPLE IN PRETRIAL DETENTION 13 Texas A&M Law Review 187 (Fall, 2025) Job loss is a major collateral consequence of pretrial detention. It frequently results from even short periods of detention and can have cascading and longterm effects on income, housing security, family stability, and likelihood of incarceration--all despite the fact that people in pretrial detention are entitled to a presumption of innocence and... 2025  
Katharine R. Skolnick A SECOND LOOK AT SECOND LOOK: PROMOTING EPISTEMIC JUSTICE IN RESENTENCING 100 New York University Law Review 1 (April, 2025) Despite an increasing number of critiques from many commentators-- abolitionists, social scientists, and fiscal conservatives among them--mass incarceration remains an ongoing crisis. Dealing with the wreckage of carceral overreach requires not just changing policies about what gets criminalized and how offenses are punished prospectively, but also... 2025  
Hannah Chang A STEP FORWARD OR A STEP BACKWARDS: AN ANALYSIS OF ASSEMBLY BILL 333 AND GANG ENHANCEMENT SENTENCING IN CALIFORNIA 65 Santa Clara Law Review 731 (2024-2025) The prosecution of gang crimes and gang enhancements have historically been a source of racial inequity and disparity within the criminal justice system. In California, this is undoubtedly so, as Hispanic and Black men make up the vast majority of individuals on the CalGang gang database and in California prisons. The state Legislature attempted to... 2025  
Patrick C. Brayer A STUDY OF THE TAP IN CENTER MOVEMENT: HOW COLLABORATION IN THE LEGAL SYSTEM IS REDUCING THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF BENCH WARRANTS AND RESTORING JUSTICE IN COMMUNITIES 104 Nebraska Law Review 379 (2025) While many aspects of the criminal legal system have been criticized for the harm judicial institutions inflict on communities, a unique legal initiative is garnering praise from observers across the nation. What started as a local effort to help residents withdraw bench warrants during the COVID-19 Pandemic has blossomed into four independent... 2025  
Marisa Omori , Alessandra Milagros Early , Luis Torres A THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL CRITIQUE OF RACIAL INNOCENCE IN SENTENCING 59 Law and Society Review 382 (June, 2025) (Received 25 March 2024; revised 11 November 2024; accepted 8 December 2024) Despite large-scale racial inequalities across multiple social domains, racial innocence highlights the complacency of the law and social science research in denying racial power through race neutral assumptions. We explore three theoretical and methodological mechanisms... 2025  
Stephanie Richard AGAINST CRIMINALIZING WAGE THEFT: LESSONS FROM THE ANTITRAFFICKING MOVEMENT 46 Cardozo Law Review 1317 (April, 2025) Criminalizing wage theft is a popular idea. This Article argues that--based on practitioners' experience with human trafficking--workers' rights groups, legislators, and prosecutors should reconsider embracing the criminalization of wage theft as an effective response to preventing this form of abuse. Twenty years of experience with trafficking... 2025  
Julia Mizutani BARRED FROM THE PROFESSION, MISCHARACTERIZED AS UNFIT BY LAW 98 Saint John's Law Review 1159 (2025) There is growing recognition that the bar examination can have racial and social effects when determining who can be an admitted and barred attorney in the United States. This Essay explores the history and current racialized issues with the other portion of bar admission--the character and fitness process. The simultaneously rigid and fluid... 2025  
Sebastian Miller CHAINS DON'T FLOAT: THE INCOMPATIBILITY OF CARCERAL LOGIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE 49 Harvard Environmental Law Review 345 (2025) When societies in distress are faced with nuanced and pernicious social ills, they often respond by falling into a default posture of criminalization and incarceration. In answer to the drug epidemic, escalating homelessness, and acute mental health crises, governments--and the United States especially--seek solutions in the tried-and-true tools... 2025  
Addrain Conyers, Amanda N. Bergold, Antoinette Critelli CHALLENGING BATSON: INTEREST CONVERGENCE AND PERMANENCE OF RACISM IN JURY SELECTION 28 Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social 179 Justice(2025) Abstract: A Batson challenge is an objection to the use of peremptory challenges to dismiss potential jurors based on their race; however, Batson challenges are rarely successful. In this paper, we apply Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework to analyze the Batson Challenge. More specifically, we argue that the Batson challenge is a practice... 2025  
Daniel S. Harawa COMPLICATING RACIAL JUSTICE NARRATIVES: THE PEREMPTORY ELIMINATION DEBATE 105 Boston University Law Review 1731 (October, 2025) Studies consistently show that prosecutors disproportionately use peremptory challenges to strike people of color from juries. Several states have endeavored to address this well-documented problem by fortifying the Batson framework. Arizona, however, recently took the radical step of eliminating peremptory challenges altogether. This... 2025  
Andrew Ingram CONSPIRACY, REALLY? 110 Iowa Law Review 1203 (March, 2025) ABSTRACT: A heap of criminals is not a conspiracy any more than a pile of bricks is a house, yet every day in court, prosecutors elevate the stakes in prosecutions and plea bargaining by charging defendants who commit crimes in groups with conspiracy. The crime may be as disorganized as the impulsive decision to rob a convenience store, but if the... 2025  
Steven Arrigg Koh CONTESTED CRIMINALIZATION 105 Boston University Law Review 1799 (October, 2025) How does the U.S. government decide to deploy criminal justice abroad? From the Syrian civil war to the Israel-Gaza conflict, Russia-Ukraine war, and U.S.-China relations, criminal law sits at the heart of contemporary U.S. foreign relations. And yet legal scholarship has not precisely explained how the U.S. government deploys or supports criminal... 2025  
Christina Koningisor COOPTING PRIVACY 105 Boston University Law Review 765 (April, 2025) Privacy law in the United States is sectoral in nature. And at every turn, it privileges the police. On the front end, privacy statutes uniformly exempt law enforcement agencies, allowing police to gather private information when access is denied to other government and private actors. And on the back end, public records laws contain myriad privacy... 2025  
William J. Aceves CRITICAL CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AND THE ALITO PALIMPSEST 27 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 720 (September, 2025) This article uses an innovative metaphor--the palimpsest--and a provocative philosophical tradition--genealogy--to generate a new theory of critical constitutional law. It is a theory born from this unique moment in time. Originalism is now ascendant at the Supreme Court. Its search for essential origins in history as a method for grounding extant... 2025  
Trace M. Maddox DEFUNDING THE PROSECUTION 58 Suffolk University Law Review 1 (2025) Prosecuting attorneys have been called the most powerful agents of the criminal justice system, and the American prosecutor certainly exercises a level of discretion that would be unthinkable in many legal systems. In recent years, however, the office has come under fire, with many critics observing that prosecutorial decisions are highly... 2025  
Ekow N. Yankah DEPUTIZATION AND PRIVILEGED WHITE VIOLENCE 77 Stanford Law Review 703 (March, 2025) Abstract. A number of high-profile and racially charged killings, such as Trayvon Martin's, Kenneth Herring's, Ahmaud Arbery's, and Jordan Neely's, have been at the hands of civilians declaring themselves the law. These deaths stemmed from a phenomenon best described as deputization. Deputization describes a latent legal power that has empowered... 2025  
Jonathan Simon, Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law, University of California Berkeley, United States, Email: jssimon@berkeley.edu DIGNITY DEFIED: LEGAL-RATIONAL MYTHS AND THE SURPLUS LEGITIMACY OF THE CARCERAL STATE 50 Law and Social Inquiry 955 (November, 2025) (Received 29 October 2022; revised 22 June 2023; accepted 15 September 2023; first published online 20 January 2025) A decade ago, it seemed that America's punitive system of mass incarceration was on the precipice of a transformation, stimulated by a legitimacy crisis as great as any in a century. A decade later, far more modest steps toward... 2025  
Paul H Robinson , Jeffrey Seaman DON'T BLACK LIVES MATTER? CONFRONTING THE PROBLEM OF DISPROPORTIONATE BLACK VICTIMIZATION 53 Fordham Urban Law Journal 449 (December, 2025) Introduction. 450 I. The Disproportionate Criminal Victimization of Black Americans. 452 A. The Facts. 452 1. Does NCVS Data Downplay Black Victimization?. 454 2. The Undeniable Reality: A Racial Disparity in Safety and Justice. 456 B. Ignoring the Facts. 457 II. Criminal Justice Policies Allowing or Increasing the Disproportionate Victimization of... 2025  
Hon. Renee N.G. Stackhouse EXPLORING JUDICIAL DECISION-MAKING: Q&A FROM THE WOMEN IN THE LAW CONFERENCE 46 Thomas Jefferson Law Review 6 (Spring, 2025) This is an adaptation from a panel discussion on exploring judicial decision-making on the bench. Professor Julie Greenberg was the moderator of the panel. The panel featured valuable insights from the Honorable Jinsook Ohta and Honorable Renee N.G. Stackhouse. Opinions are personal and not reflective of the courts or the Governor's Office. The... 2025  
Steven Arrigg Koh , Armen J. Grigorian GENOCIDAL ACCUSATION 59 U.C. Davis Law Review 509 (December, 2025) To accuse of genocide -- what does it mean? Genocidal accusation is ubiquitous today, evident more in the public square than in any courtroom. At first glance, such accusation seemingly relies on a central assumption: genocidal accusation is critical to preventing atrocity. This Article argues that this widespread assumption is incomplete,... 2025  
G. Alex Sinha , Janani Umamaheswar HIDDEN TAKINGS AND THE COMMUNAL BURDEN OF PUNISHMENT 60 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 517 (Spring, 2025) Legal scholars devote significant attention to the plight of incarcerated people, and they increasingly extend their focus to confront the social implications of incarceration for those outside the system. This Article goes further still: it argues that harsh conditions of confinement in the American criminal legal system may violate the... 2025  
Brandon E. Beck HOW TO START (OR STOP) A WAR ON CRIME: A CONCEPTUAL COOKBOOK 41 Georgia State University Law Review 803 (Summer, 2025) Beginning in the early 1990s, the Executive Branch began an era of enforcement of federal firearms crime that was different in kind and degree from the prior seventy-five years. The federal crime policies of the 1990s and 2000s led to a significant increase both in the total number of federal firearms prosecutions and in how often mandatory-minimum... 2025  
Mugambi Jouet HUMANITY, RACE, AND INDIGENEITY IN CRIMINAL SENTENCING: SOCIAL CHANGE IN AMERICA, CANADA, EUROPE, AUSTRALIA, AND NEW ZEALAND 48 New York University Review of Law and Social Change 188 (2025) The role of systemic racism in criminal justice is a growing matter of debate in modern Western democracies. The United States has garnered the most attention given the salience of its racial issues and the disproportionate attention that American society garners around the world. This has obscured major developments in Canadian society with great... 2025  
Renagh O'Leary IDEOLOGICAL TESTING 103 North Carolina Law Review 909 (May, 2025) This Article describes and critiques a practice I call the ideological testing of criminal defendants. Ideological testing occurs when state actors within the criminal legal system elicit and evaluate the defendant's views of the criminal legal system. For example, as part of the presentence investigation process in some jurisdictions, probation or... 2025  
Amy Dallas IN RIGHT RELATIONSHIP: PRACTICING AND TEACHING TRAUMA-RESPONSIVE RESTORATIVE ADVOCACY 53 Fordham Urban Law Journal 241 (October, 2025) Attorneys who can recognize and respond to trauma and stress, in both their clients and in themselves, are better positioned to provide effective advocacy and help shape a more restorative legal practice. As clients and communities face mounting pressure amid growing social, economic, climate, and systemic challenges, legal education must evolve to... 2025  
Danieli Evans INSTITUTIONALIZED OSTRACISM 29 Michigan Journal of Race and Law 155 (Winter, 2025) Belonging is a fundamental need, like food or water. Hundreds of social psychology studies find that people who are ostracized (excluded, rejected, or ignored) experience severe pain and suffering. Ostracism threatens basic needs, triggers the same neurocognitive processing system as physical pain, and impairs functioning. Furthermore, ostracized... 2025  
Lark Mulligan KNOWLEDGE AND PUNISHMENT: THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND EPISTEMIC OPPRESSION 27 Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social 173 Justice(2025) Introduction. 174 I. Defining Epistemic Oppression. 180 II. Testimonial Injustice and the PIC. 186 III. The PIC and Hermeneutical Injustice. 200 IV. The PIC and Epistemic Resilience. 212 V. Abolitionist Epistemologies. 220 Conclusion. 227 2025  
Russell M. Gold LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO 82 Washington and Lee Law Review 1377 (Fall, 2025) We have understood for centuries that crime is both the product of social forces and individual choice. We know now that crime is affected by economic deprivation, addiction, trauma, and mental health issues. But American criminal legal processes hide this reality by coercing defendants into expressing a profoundly simple narrative: crime is solely... 2025  
Jessica Huang MISAPPLYING PINKERTON AND ACCOMPLICE LIABILITY IN THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL SENTENCING GUIDELINES: HOW COURTS HAVE WRONGLY IMPRISONED CRIMINAL DEFENDANTS FOR DECADES 62 San Diego Law Review 533 (August-September, 2025) C1-2Table of Contents Abstract 534 I. Introduction 535 II. Background on the United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines 540 A. How the Modern-Day United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines Came to Be: From Unbridled Discretion to No Discretion to . Bridled Discretion? 540 1. Unbridled Discretion 540 2. No Discretion 543 3. Bridled Discretion: The... 2025  
Emily M. Poor POLICE GATEKEEPING 30 Michigan Journal of Race and Law 49 (Spring, 2025) The role of policing in American society is more pervasive (and less visible) than many acknowledge. Police do not just patrol, arrest, and keep peace - they also gatekeep. Many and varied ostensibly non-criminal processes rely on police fact-finding to adjudicate claims, establish eligibility for resources, and take adverse action against... 2025  
Jonathon J. Booth POLICING AFTER SLAVERY: RACE, CRIME, AND RESISTANCE IN ATLANTA 96 University of Colorado Law Review 1 (2025) This Article places the birth and growth of the Atlanta police in context by exploring the full scope of Atlanta's criminal legal system during the four decades after the end of slavery. To do so, it analyzes the connections Atlantans made between race and crime, the adjudication and punishment of minor offenses, and the variety of Black protests... 2025  
Shima Baradaran Baughman PROSECUTION DEFERRED 77 Florida Law Review Deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) have been used with increasing frequency, particularly in corporate criminal prosecutions, over the past two decades. By allowing prosecutors to offer a path for rehabilitation without requiring a defendant to enter a guilty plea, DPAs present a valuable tool for progressive prosecutors to use in a broader... 2025  
J.D. King PROSECUTION WITHOUT PROSECUTORS 60 Wake Forest Law Review 1061 (2025) As the United States debates once again what it wants from its criminal justice system, the role of the American prosecutor is under scrutiny. After the explosion of prosecution and incarceration rates that occurred over the past half-century, most observers agreed that the American criminal justice system had become too large, locking up scores of... 2025  
Justin Murray PROSECUTORIAL REFORM AND THE MYTH OF INDIVIDUALIZED ENFORCEMENT 102 Washington University Law Review 1435 (2025) The American prosecutor's legitimacy faces unprecedented challenges. A new wave of reformist prosecutors has risen to power promising to transform the criminal justice system from within, sparking fierce backlash from defenders of the prosecutorial status quo. Central to this conflict is a debate over the nature of prosecutorial discretion,... 2025  
Shima Baradaran Baughman PUNISHING VIOLENCE 75 American University Law Review 11 (October, 2025) The American criminal justice system doles out the harshest punishments in the world. It is infamous for its protracted criminal sentences and prodigious criminal code. But, what most scholars and policymakers overlook is that the United States punishes only a fraction of the total serious crime that occurs in the country--including violent crime.... 2025  
Sheldon A. Evans PUNISHMENT AS PLACEBO 98 Southern California Law Review 513 (February, 2025) The modern criminal punishment regime has failed to deliver on its promise of public safety. For all of the resources expended and all of the human costs incurred, the ever-growing carceral state does not make us safer. Scholars across the social sciences have studied these shortcomings for decades using various methodologies. The burgeoning prison... 2025  
Tia L. Holmes , Office of the Public Defender, Baltimore, Maryland, 410-767-9854, Email tia.holmes@maryland.gov RACE AND PRETEXTUAL TRAFFIC STOPS: STRATEGIES FOR CHALLENGING WHREN v. UNITED STATES AND ITS VESTIGES 49-DEC Champion 16 (November/December, 2025) Traffic stops are one of the most common ways that people interact with police officers. Sometimes the traffic stop is warranted to keep the roads safe, as in the case of a driver who is recklessly driving or committing some other safety-related traffic infraction. Other times (perhaps many or most times), the traffic stop is wholly unrelated to... 2025  
Bennett Capers, Jeffrey Bellin RACE, THE ACADEMY, AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE WAR ON DRUGS, THE CONSTITUTION OF THE WAR ON DRUGS BY DAVID POZEN, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2024 134 Yale Law Journal 1763 (March, 2025) The war on drugs is widely viewed as a policy failure. Despite massive government intrusions on personal liberty, drug addiction, overdoses, and drug-related violence have only increased since the war was declared in 1971. David Pozen's new book, The Constitution of the War on Drugs, reveals a constitutional failure as well. Pozen chronicles a host... 2025  
Emily Ryo , Ian Peacock , Weston Ley , Christopher Levesque RACIAL DISPARITIES IN CRIME-BASED REMOVAL PROCEEDINGS 109 Minnesota Law Review 1997 (May, 2025) Whether and to what extent racial minorities experience harsher treatment or face worse outcomes in court are questions of fundamental importance for any justice system. Questions of racial inequality are especially salient in the context of removal proceedings that are triggered by immigrants' criminal history. Many individuals in crime-based... 2025  
Justin D. Levinson , G. Ben Cohen , Koichi Hioki RACIALIZING THREE STRIKES 67 Arizona Law Review 919 (Winter 2025) Three Strikes laws sit at the fulcrum of racial disparities and mass incarceration. Despite clarity across decades that such laws have served to disproportionately punish Black Americans, legislatures have blessed them, courts permit them, prosecutors charge them, and juries convict based on them. Although it has long been clear that these laws... 2025  
Guyora Binder , Alexandra Harrington RACIALLY DISPARATE AND DISPROPORTIONATE PUNISHMENT OF FELONY MURDER: EVIDENCE FROM NEW YORK 110 Iowa Law Review 1055 (March, 2025) ABSTRACT: America's peculiar institution of felony murder liability has long been criticized as cruel and pointless, particularly as applied to defendants who did not kill. This study of felony murder arrest and disposition in New York reports large racial disparities, particularly for those convicted who did not kill. It is one of the first to... 2025  
Laura G. Abelson REEVALUATING FELON-IN-POSSESSION LAWS AFTER BRUEN AND THE WAR ON DRUGS 15 UC Irvine Law Review 871 (October, 2025) The legal landscape surrounding firearm possession is evolving rapidly. In 2022, the Supreme Court accelerated its expansion of the individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment in New York Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen. Since Bruen, courts around the country have struck down nearly all types of firearm regulations, with a notable... 2025  
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