The Contradictions of Juvenile Crime & Punishment

Juvenile incarceration in the United States is, at first glance, distinctly different from its adult counterpart. While some juvenile facilities retain the iconic aesthetic of adult incarceration – orange jumpsuits, large cellblocks, uniformed guards, barbed wire, and similar heavy security measures – others have trappings and atmospherics more reminiscent of boarding schools, therapeutic communities, or small college campuses. These compact, benign settings avoid the physical stigmata of institutional life and accord some autonomy of movement and intimacy in relations with staff. They also give primacy to developmentally appropriate and therapeutic interventions

The Decline of the Juvenile Death Penalty: Scientific Evidence of Evolving Norms

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Atkins v. Virginia holding that the execution of mentally retarded persons violated the Eighth Amendment, legal scholars, advocates, and journalists began to speculate that the Court would next turn its attention to the question of the execution of persons who were juveniles – below eighteen years of age – at the time they committed homicide. Following the Atkins decision, four Justices expressed the view that the rationale of Atkins also supported the conclusion that execution of juvenile offenders was unconstitutional. A constitutional test of capital punishment for juveniles was inevitable. The Atkins Court held that capital punishment was an unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment for the mentally retarded for two reasons. First, the Court concluded that the impairments associated with mental retardation both reduced the culpability of the mentally retarded, making death a disproportionate punishment for them, and created a special risk of wrongful execution. Second, the Court found that a national consensus had emerged that death is an excessive punishment for the mentally retarded. As evidence of that national consensus, the Court pointed to the growing number of states that expressly barred the imposition of the death penalty on the mentally retarded: since 1989, when the Court had last considered the constitutionality of executing the mentally retarded, the number of states with such legislation had grown from two to eighteen. In addition, the Court observed that, even in states where the death penalty was theoretically a permissible punishment for the mentally retarded, it was rarely imposed: since 1989, only five states had executed offenders known to be mentally retarded. Like the question of execution of the mentally retarded, the question of the constitutionality of the death penalty for juveniles was last visited by the Supreme Court in 1989. That year, in Stanford v. Kentucky, the Court concluded that the death penalty was not inherently disproportionate to the culpability of adolescents and that individualized assessments could reliably sort out which juveniles were sufficiently morally culpable. And it held that no national consensus barred the imposition of capital punishment on sixteen- or seventeen-year-old juveniles

Understanding Recent Spikes and Longer Trends in American Murders

On September 7, 2016, four of the nation’s newspapers of record weighed in on the connected crises in crime and policing. The New York Times revealed the tensions between the Mayor’s office in Chicago and several community and professional groups over a plan to overhaul Chicago’s police disciplinary board – a plan developed in the wake of the shooting of an unarmed teenager, Laquan McDonald, and the release of a video of that killing. The Wall Street Journal related a vigorous defense of New York City’s “broken windows” policing strategy – a strategy that has been a recurring source of tension between the city’s minority communities and the police, and whose value in crime reduction has been sharply debated. The Washington Post’s lead editorial decried Chicago’s “deadliest month in two decades” that left city officials at odds over the basic elements of public safety policy and strategic responses to the seemingly intractable violence. The Chicago Tribune weighed in as well. In it, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson declared that the crisis is “not a police issue, it’s a society issue,” pointing to the need for stricter gun controls

Following the Script: Narratives of Suspicion in \u3ci\u3eTerry\u3c/i\u3e Stops in Street Policing

Regulation of Terry stops of pedestrians by police requires articulation of the reasonable and individualized bases of suspicion that motivate their actions. Nearly five decades after Terry, courts have found it difficult to articulate the boundaries or parameters of reasonable suspicion. The behavior and appearances of individuals combine with the social and spatial contexts in which police observe them to create an algebra of suspicion. Police can proceed to approach and temporarily detain a person at a threshold of suspicion that courts have been unable and perhaps unwilling to articulate. The result has been sharp tensions within Fourth Amendment doctrine as to what is reasonable, why, and in what circumstances. The jurisprudence of suspicion is no clearer today than it was in the aftermath of Terry. This issue has taken center stage in both litigation and policy debates on the constitutionality of the stop-and-frisk policing regime in New York City. Under this regime, police state the bases of suspicion using a menu of codified stop rationales with supplemental text narratives to record their descriptions of suspicious behaviors or circumstances that produced actionable suspicion. Evidence from 4.4 million stops provides an empirical basis to assess the revealed preferences of police officers as to the bases for these Terry stops. Analyses of this evidence reveal narratives of suspicion beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual case that police use to justify their actions. First, we identify patterns of articulated suspicion. Next, we show the individual factors and social conditions that shape how those patterns are applied. We also show how patterns evolve over time and become clearer and more refined across a wide range of police stops. That refinement seems to follow the capacious interpretative room created by four decades of post-Terry Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Next, we assess the extent of constitutional compliance and examine the neighborhood and individual factors that predict noncompliance. The results suggest that the observed patterns of narratives have evolved into shared narratives or scripts of suspicion, and that these patterns are specific to suspect race and neighborhood factors. We conclude that scripts are expressions of the norms within the everyday organizational exercise of police discretion and that these scripts defeat the requirement of individualization inherent in case law governing Fourth Amendment stops

Street Stops and Broken Windows: \u3ci\u3eTerry\u3c/i\u3e, Race and Disorder in New York City

Patterns of stop and frisk activity by police across New York City neighborhoods reflect competing theories of aggressive policing. Broken Windows theory suggest that neighborhoods with greater concentration of physical and social disorder should evidence higher stop and frisk activity, especially for quality of life crimes. However, although disorder theory informs quality of life policing strategies, patterns of stop and frisk activity suggest that neighborhood characteristics such as racial composition, poverty levels, and extent of social disorganization are stronger predictors of race- and crime-specific stops. Accordingly, neighborhood street stop activity reflects competing assumptions and meanings of policing strategy. Furthermore, looking at the rate at which street stops meet Terry standards of reasonable suspicion in various neighborhoods provides additional perspective on the social and strategic meanings of policing. Our empirical evidence suggests that policing is not about disorderly places, nor about improving the quality of life, but about policing poor people in poor places. This strategy contradicts the policy rationale derived from Broken Windows theory, and deviates from the original emphasis on communities by focusing on people. Racially disparate policing reinforces perceptions by citizens in minority neighborhoods that they are under non-particularized suspicion and are therefore targeted for aggressive stop and frisk policing. Such broad targeting raises concerns about the legitimacy of law, threatens to weaken citizen participation in the co-production of security, and undercuts the broader social norms goals of contemporary policing

Misstatements of Fact in Adam Vangrack\u27s Student Note: A Letter to the Editors of the Washington University Law Quarterly

The Quarterly\u27s Fall 2001 issue published a Note reviewing our report, A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995. That Note has three inaccuracies that are so clear and frequently repeated, and are the result of such clear cite-checking lapses, that remedial steps are required. These matters do not involve differences of opinion, judgment, or interpretation between us and the Note\u27s author. Matters of that sort are appropriately addressed in a response. All instead are misstatements of fact that result from the Quarterly\u27s failure to fulfill its basic obligation to check the accuracy of verifiable factual statements it publishes. By forgoing peer-review, law journals rest their integrity on the care with which they cite-check articles to avoid statements with no credible support or basis. In default of that obligation, corrective action is required

Look Who\u27s Extrapolating: A Reply to Hoffmann

In late March, a reporter called with news of a pirated copy of Professor Joseph Hoffinann\u27s soon-to-be-published attack on our study, A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995. Did we care to comment? Obtaining our own copy revealed that Professor Hoffmann\u27s fusillade missed its mark (he misstates what we did) and boomeranged (his mischaracterizations of our analysis accurately describe his own). We do care to comment, and Hoffmann and the Indiana Law Journal have graciously let us do so. Hoffmann\u27s main claim is that we extrapolated the 68% rate of reversible error we reported for capital verdicts reviewed during the twenty-three-year study period. We did no such thing. But he did. His 40% counterstatistic is an extrapolation in the purest sense, which proceeds from deflationary assumptions that are factually wrong

Vangrack\u27s Explanations: Treating the Truth as a Mere Matter of Form

We welcome criticism by responsible scholars and readers, and the chance to address it in journals that enforce appropriate standards of accuracy and integrity. We have done just that in exchanges in Judicature and the Indiana Law Journal. But the inaccuracies in Adam VanGrack\u27s Note, and new problems with his present explanation, lead us to conclude that it is not useful to exchange views with him in the Washington University Law Quarterly. Beyond all is Mr. VanGrack\u27s dismissal of matters serious enough to trigger an extraordinary instruction to explain himself in print, and to prompt him to rescind statements published only a few months ago, as mere semantic complaints. Although fruitless as dialectic with Mr. VanGrack, this reply does give us a chance to discuss our data-sharing arrangements

Capital Attrition: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995

Americans seem to be of two minds about the death penalty. In the last several years, the overall number of executions has risen steeply, reaching a fifty year high this year. Although two-thirds of the public support the penalty, this figure represents a sharp decline from the four-fifths of the population that endorsed the death penalty only six years ago, leaving support for capital punishment at a twenty year low. When life without parole is offered as an alternative, support for the penalty drops even more – often below a majority. Grants of executive clemency reached a twenty year high in 1999