Collateral Damage? Juvenile Snitches in America’s \u27Wars\u27 on Drugs, Crime and Gangs

The government’s use of children as informants in America’s \u27wars\u27 on drugs, crime, and gangs is little recognized and rarely discussed by scholars, policymakers, and the public. As with many governmental practices, only notorious instances make headlines, such as when a child is killed in retaliation for informing. Because public attention rarely is focused on the practice, it has not generated consistent documentation of, regulation of, or accountability for such use of child informants. As a starting point for discussion, this article illuminates the experiences of child informants, describing a facet of the snitching institution that generally operates under the radar. The article then considers the government’s use of child informants in light of its historical child protection function and its contemporary war-like stance regarding the domestic social problems of drugs, crime, and gangs. The article posits that the government’s use of child informants creates discord between the doctrine of parens patriae, which is aimed at protecting children, and the exercise of police power to further public safety. Further, the article observes that the substantial harms posed to child informants are viewed as collateral and bearable consequences in light of the valuable information obtained from child informants. In conclusion, the article asserts that the use of children as informants should be a closely-monitored and limited investigative method and delineates prophylactic measures restricting their use

Criminal Law as Family Law

The criminal justice system has expanded dramatically over the last several decades, extending its reach into family life. This expansion has disproportionately and negatively impacted Black communities and social networks, including Black families. Despite these pervasive shifts, legal scholars have virtually ignored the intersection of criminal, family, and racial justice. This Article explores the gap in literature in two respects. First, the Article weaves together criminal law, family law, and racial justice by cataloging ways in which the modern criminal justice state regulates family life, particularly for Black families. Second, the Article examines the depth of criminal justice interference in family life and autonomy through analysis of the impact of community supervision on families. These explorations reveal that community supervision, and criminal justice more broadly, operate as a de facto family law regime, negatively restructuring Black family autonomy, stability and loyalty, all of which family law seeks to promote. The Article recommends that the practice of community supervision return to its roots in human services and calls on legal scholars to focus critical attention on criminal law’s creation of disparate and unequal family law systems

Talk Don’t Touch? Considerations for Children’s Attorneys on the Physical Touch of Clients

Researchers focused on the representation of children and attorneys for children have taken great pains to explore issues surrounding the attorney-child client relationship and recommend strategies and policies supporting positive development of the relationship. Notwithstanding the breadth of available information, almost no attention has been aimed at whether attorneys should physically touch their clients. This article fills that gap. This Article consists of three parts. Part I describes the literature commanding attorneys for children to develop quality relationships with their clients. These works recognize that young clients seek good relationships with their attorneys, but that barriers to creating quality relationships may exist. Next, Part I summarizes the current state of scientific knowledge regarding touch. Finally, Part I explains the potential benefits when attorneys use touch in their professional role. Part II reveals the glaring lack of guidance offered to children’s attorneys regarding whether it is appropriate to physically touch their clients and the reasons to caution against attorneys doing so. Explaining that neither ethical nor professional standards prevent attorneys from touching their clients in non-sexual, pro-social ways, Part II begins by revealing that the existing literature fails to consider touch as a possible tool for developing a quality relationship. Part II then examines the potential negative outcomes that may occur when an attorney physically touches a child client. Not only may the child or attorney-client relationship be affected negatively, but the attorney may also be negatively influenced. Drawing upon the first two Parts, Part III offers several suggestions for addressing the matter. It begins by reviewing approaches taken by other professionals who work closely with children. These occupations, which embrace different perspectives, offer worthwhile viewpoints for consideration. Part III then proposes that all attorneys for children receive training on whether and how to appropriately touch child clients. Finally, Part III recommends that legal organizations and lawyers for children adopt formal policies governing attorney-client touch

Decriminalizing Childhood

Even though the number of juveniles arrested, tried and detained has recently declined, there are still a large number of delinquency cases, children under supervision by state officials, and children living in state facilities for youth and adults. Additionally, any positive developments in juvenile justice have not been evenly experienced by all youth. Juveniles living in urban areas are more likely to have their cases formally processed in the juvenile justice system rather than informally resolved. Further, the reach of the justice system has a particularly disparate effect on minority youth who tend to live in heavily-policed urban areas. The original concept of the juvenile justice system consisted of a singular, informal juvenile court focused on rehabilitating youthful offenders engaged in criminal and noncriminal conduct to help them become productive citizens. The original system has been replaced by a network of juvenile, criminal, and specialty courts, any one of which may adjudicate a child’s court case. Once juveniles enter this complex system, many negative legal impacts can occur, including lengthy periods of community supervision or incarceration and substantial fines and fees. Socially, court-involved youth are more likely to reoffend, experience physical or mental health problems, have poor educational outcomes, and have difficulty in the job market in the future. This Article considers legislative decriminalization of juvenile misconduct, an underutilized method for juvenile justice reform. Decriminalization can prevent youth from entering the juvenile justice system and the problems that stem from system contact. This Article endeavors to begin a conversation among youth scholars, advocates, and policymakers about decriminalization as a mechanism for reforming the juvenile justice systems in the United States

Black Contemporary Social Movements, Resource Mobilization, and Black Musical Activism

In the last few years a grassroots social movement has emerged from the Black community. This movement aims to eliminate police and vigilante violence against Blacks nationwide. Blacks in America have long been subjected to this violence, and the issue has recently captured the country’s attention. Multiple groups are pressing for change, including Ferguson Action, Black Lives Matter, Say Her Name, and the leaderless social media effort organized by DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, to name a few. These fledgling activist groups have already experienced some success, garnering public attention and government response. As it currently stands, this nascent civil-rights movement has the potential to advance racial justice in twenty-first century America, but its path is not without obstacles. According to social-movement theory, the ability of activists to further marshal support is vital to the continued development of this civil-rights movement. Whether engaging in street-level activism or pursuing formal change through judicial, legislative, or electoral processes, movement organizers will have to think rationally and strategically about resource mobilization and oppositional forces. At a minimum, they must amass money and manpower for their activities, establish group credibility in the eyes of their participants and the public, and remain sensitive to the costs of movement participation imposed by government officials and counter-movements. To address these concerns, social-movement theory and history reveal that Black music and musicians can and should play a key role in Black America’s next-generation battle for criminal justice and civil rights. Social-movement activists should draw Black musicians, especially hip-hop artists, into the movement fold, encouraging Black musicians to initiate a massive wave of cultural activism

Schoolhouse Rap

Rap on Trial, the treatment of rap music as evidence in the American criminal legal process, is well-documented and increasingly scrutinised. Research has shown that – with little restraint – police, prosecutors, probation officers and judges use rap lyrics to investigate, prosecute and punish individuals. Less noticed is that a similar phenomenon is occurring in the American K–12 educational system, which disciplines school-age youth who participate in rap culture and sometimes refers them to the juvenile or criminal legal systems for additional punishment. This article describes and analyses a small set of identified cases of this scenario, demonstrating that rap music is used to funnel youth, including vulnerable Black and Brown youth, into what has been coined the school-to-prison pipeline and exposing the extreme dissonance between hip hop and the educational system

The Music of Mass Incarceration

Intellectual property law reaches every aspect of the world, society, and creativity. Sometimes, creative expression is at the very crux of societal conflict and change. Through its history, rap music has demonstrated passionate creative expression, exploding with emotion and truths. Now the most popular musical genre in America, rap has always shared—and consistently critiqued—disproportionate effects of the criminal legal system on Black communities. The world is increasingly hearing these tunes with special acuity and paying more attention to the lyrics. Virtually every music recording artist would consider the following numbers a major career achievement: 500 percent increase; 222 percent growth; 25 percent market share. But these are not recorded music sales or revenue numbers. Rather, they are statistics that make the U.S. number one in the world in incarceration

Because I am Black, Because I am Woman: Remedying the Sexual Harassment Experience of Black Women

This Note examines the intersection of race and gender in the context of sexual harassment jurisprudence. Since the arrival in this country of the first female African slaves, Black women have experienced sexual harassment on the job. This Note discusses the failure of sexual harassment theory to acknowledge the unique sexual harassment experience of Black women. From the very earliest discussions of sexual harassment, the impact of the race of the victim on the experience and resulting legal claim was ignored. Feminist legal theorists, leaders in issues affecting women, have been slow to acknowledge and integrate the role of race into their analyses

Schools Fail to Get It Right on Rap Music

School officials treat rap music as a serious threat to the school environment. Fear and misunderstanding of, as well as bias against, this highly popular and lucrative musical art form negatively shape their perspectives on this vital aspect of youth culture. As a result, students who express themselves through rap music in a way that challenges the schoolhouse setting risk the possibility of suspension, permanent exclusion and referral to the criminal justice system. The ongoing case of Taylor Bell is the latest and most complex battleground on which this issue is playing out

Poetic (In)Justice? Rap Music Lyrics as Art, Life, and Criminal Evidence

Courts routinely admit defendant-authored rap music lyrics as substantive evidence in the adjudication of criminal cases. In doing so, courts fail to recognize that rap music lyrics are art. Rather, judges view the interpretation of rap music lyrics as a subject of common knowledge, interpret the defendant\u27s lyrics literally, and characterize lyrics as autobiographical depictions of actual events. In making admissibility decisions, courts must give consideration to the social constraints and artistic conventions impacting the composition and interpretation of rap music lyrics. More particularly, they must understand the commercialized nature of the rap music industry, artist claims of authenticity, and the use of poetic devices such as metaphor, boasting, perspective, and narrative. Likewise, jurors must be informed of such information when tasked with evaluating the weight of such lyrical evidence. Factoring this information into the admissibility analysis reveals that courts are admitting artistic evidence masquerading as real-life events, impermissible evidence of character and propensity, and unfairly prejudicial evidence. To avoid these problems, I suggest that courts considering admission of rap music lyrics written by defendants should determine the meaning of the lyrics from the artistic perspective of the defendant-lyricist as well as permit the defense to offer judges and jurors expert testimony respecting the composition of rap music lyrics. This approach can operate within the current system of evidence rules and balances the interests of defendants, the prosecution, and society