Reimagining Criminal Justice: What Good Has Come From the \u27Good\u27 Faith Exception?

On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor settled into bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker after she finished working back-to-back shifts as an emergency room technician in Louisville, Kentucky. At around 12:30 a.m., the couple heard banging coming from their front door, they asked who was at the door. They heard no response. Suddenly, the front door “flies off its hinges” and armed men began to enter their apartment. Walker, a licensed gun owner, fired at the intruders, shooting one in the leg, to protect himself and Ms. Taylor from unknown intruders. The intruders returned fire, with around thirty rounds, killing Taylor. Taylor was innocent and only 26 years old when she died. The intruders who killed her were actually police officers in plain clothing executing what investigations are revealing to have been an invalid search warrant in the middle of the night. The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people against unreasonable searches, seizures, and warrantless conduct by government actors, such as police officers. The court has added safeguards to this amendment, with the seminal cases of U.S. v. Weeks and Mapp v. Ohio. The court created the exclusionary rule, which excludes evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment from criminal trials. Initially designed as a multifaceted legal mechanism to uphold judicial integrity, deter police misconduct and serve as a remedy for those who are victims of constitutional violations. The deterrent value was meant to help protect the public at large, especially those who are innocent of any wrongdoing, like Taylor, from being subject to such illegal searches and the deadly consequences they may present

Reimagining Criminal Justice: The Violence of Incarceration in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Six years after the infamous and disturbing elevator video of former NFL player Ray Rice punching his fiancée Janay Palmer in the face, knocking her unconscious and then dragging her out of the elevator, Rice and Palmer remain happily married, both speaking out against domestic violence. Contrast Rice’s story to that of Samuel Lee Scott, a husband charged with murdering his wife hours after a nonprofit group posted his bail in a domestic violence case. The difference in these cases: Rice was given domestic violence counseling in lieu of jail, Scott was incarcerated. Research shows that incarceration actually increases future crime. Criminologists call this the “criminogenic effect” of prison. The criminogenic effect occurs when individuals enter prison and are surrounded by other prisoners who have committed more serious and violent offenses. Couple this with prison conditions such as overcrowding and lack of sanitation, and an environment that breeds violence and anti-social behavior is created. In the year 2020, a year filled with unprecedented violence due to political unrest, police brutality and social isolation from the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of mass incarceration have become increasingly important. The more people we put in prison who do not need to be there, the more this criminogenic effect increases

Reimagining Criminal Justice: Open Source Data Key to Addressing Mental Health Crises

A transparent, cross-functional approach to data sharing and analysis focused on reliability and completeness can help to improve San Francisco\u27s response to the mental health crisis, says Brennan Gamwell, a 2022 JD candidate at the Golden Gate University School of Law