pols lecture 35

• Many Issues in Criminal Justice

  • Competing models of policing
  • Racial disparities in policing & sentencing
  • No-knock warrants
  • "Tough on Crime" movement
  • Mass incarceration
  • The "War on Drugs"
  • Private prisons
  • Capital punishment
• Criminal law


  Deals with actions harmful to the state as a whole.

  State is accuser and prosecutor.
• Criminal prosecution process


  • Arrest made
  • Charge(s) filed
  • Evidence presented to grand jury
  • Trial process (e.g. multiple hearings, then trial)
• Justice & redress of criminal wrongs


  Is public, not private
• Basic types of crime

  • Violent crime (against people; homocide)
  • Property crime (against property; burgrlary)
• Basic levels of crime

  • Misdemeanors: More minor wrongs
  • Felony: More serious, usually punishable by >1yr in state prison
• Felony


  Disenfranchises the convicted person in some states
• Only 10% of cases go to trial: most Plea bargain

  Necessary practice for state courts to manage caseload

  Actors in legal system recognize existence of a "trial penalty"
• Standard of guilt


  Beyond a reasonable doubt
• Burden of proof


  Is on the state/prosecutor
• 1960s-1980s characterized by rising crime rate

  
  

  States respond by increasing their punitiveness

  States enact “tough on crime” sentencing laws w/ lengthier sentences & reduced judicial flexibility

  Federal gov’t encouraged adoption of “tough on crime” policies & federal sentencing guidelines via grants-in-aid
• "War on Drugs" added & increased penalties for dealing & possessing illegal substances

  Drug use is criminalized, not just production & distribution
• More recently, approaches to criminal justice reform once attacked as "soft on crime" being tested by states

  In part, due to costs of mass incarceration
• Shifts in the "war on drugs"

  • Early “war” characterized by a tough-on-crime approach
  • More states and communities now approaching substance abuse as a public health problem
  • State-led decriminalization & legalization of marijuana
• Over last few decades, crime rate has fallen
• Five Rationales for Punishment

  • Retribution: Wrong to community must be repaid
  • Incapacitation: Societal Protection
  • Deterrence: Keep other from committing same crime
  • Rehabilitation: Reintegrate offender into society
  • Restoration/reparation: Conceives return to justice and the communal order as restitution and repairing the harm
• Prisons

  • For incapacitation & removal of criminals
  • May also pursue other goals such as rehabilitation
  • Can be very costly & overcrowded
  • ~7% of state budgets
  • Tough on crime policies & that war on drugs have been drivers of mass incarceration
• Conflicting policy goals regarding prisons

  • Less costly systems

  • Some states privatize prisons.

  • In conservative Texas, cost of mass incarceration led the state

  to invest in mental health & rehabilitation

  • Fewer crimes & less recidivism

  • “Tough on crime” shifting to “smart on crime”

  • Humane treatment of felons

  • Must be consistent w/ 8th Amendment prohibition on “cruel & unusual punishment”

  • E.g. Prison overcrowding in CA ruled “degrading to human

  dignity”
• Support for state-sanctioned executions


  Is a common "litmus test" of social conservatives

  • Place high value on social order
  • Ultimate “tough on crime” position
• Common arguments for the death penalty

  • Only punishment severe enough to repay wrong (i.e. retribution)
  • Deterrence effect
• Death Penalty Sentencing


  Sentencing Trial

  •Separate determination of sentence

  •Sentencing guidelines vary by state

  Jury considers both aggravating & mitigating factors

  •These are written into state law

  No death penalty for mentally handicapped, juvenile offenders, mentally ill (Atkins v. VA, 2002)
• Intellectual disability


  States themselves get to define
• Cruel & unusual punishment(Furman v Gerogia 1972)

  4 interrelated principles:

  • degrading to human dignity,
  • inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion,
  • clearly & totally rejected throughout society,
  • patently unnecessary
• Furman v. Georgia (1972) overturned GA death penalty law because it was applied arbitrarily
• Gregg v. Georgia (1976) Court's Answer: No, the death penalty is not inherently cruel
• Capital Punishment & the States Today

  27 "death penalty states" (+ federal gov't & UCMJ)

  6 states w/ official moratoria on executions

  Texas:

  • 1/3 executions nationwide after Furman
  • Currently 192 inmates
• The Decline of the Death Penalty

  
  

  1. Life-without-parole sentencing now available in all 50 states
  2. Growing doubts about deterrence effect on violent crime

  • But many scientific studies find no demonstrable relationship

  • Many conservatives insist it deters

  3. Persistent concerns about unfair application

  • Social, racial, & economic biases
• Police power


  States have police power. Not just policing, but a general power to make laws for the welfare of their communities
• Much of U.S. criminal justice apparatus is state-level
• State asserts an exclusive right to punish crime
• Role of State

  Crime is prosecuted and punished by the state.

  The county pays for all costs of prosecution and incarceration
• Decline of Death Penatly Pt. 2

  4. Delays

  • Average time on death row is ~9 years. Most have been on death row years, even decades longer

  5. Expense

  • Multiple studies find death penalty cases to cost millions more than life imprisonment (~2.3M per case)

  • Housing Death Row inmates is ~2-4 times more expensive

  • Increased difficulty of procuring drugs for executions

  6. Possibility of errors in the form of wrongful convictions
• Punishment for crime sanctions violations of the social order