The Reality of Racial Disparity in Criminal Justice: The Significance of Data Collection

Criminologists have long debated the presence of racial disparity at various places in the criminal justice system, from initial on-the-street encounters between citizens and police officers to the sentencing behavior of judges. What is new is the use of statistics designed to persuade the public, and not just other academics and researchers, that grave racial disparities exist in the system, and that these disparities necessitate significant policy changes

How Accountability-Based Policing Can Reinforce -- Or Replace -- The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule

In Hudson v. Michigan, a knock-and-announce case, Justice Scalia\u27s majority opinion came close to jettisoning the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. The immense costs of the rule, Scalia said, outweigh whatever benefits might come from it. Moreover, police officers and police departments now generally follow the dictates of the Fourth Amendment, so the exclusionary rule has outlived the reasons that the Court adopted it in the first place. This viewpoint did not become the law because Justice Kennedy, one member of the five-vote majority, withheld his support from this section of the opinion. But the closeness of the vote on the rule\u27s survival, and the Court\u27s 2009 opinion in Herring v. U.S., should motivate renewed discussion of what should replace it. But recently published empirical findings cast doubt on the Court\u27s premise in Hudson that the bad old days of search and seizure violations lay behind us. On the contrary, viewing the data conservatively, roughly a third of all search and seizure activity violates the Fourth Amendment. Thus what the situation calls for is a set of proposals that can serve as a substitute for the exclusionary rule if it disappears, but which can also work equally well to brace up the rule if it stays in place. Fortunately, the law, criminology, and technology can combine to provide a viable set of answers for both possibilities. First, a system for tracking police search and seizure activity, based on successful work on early intervention systems now used to head off police misconduct, holds great promise for advancing the ability of supervising officers to assure that those under their commands obey the law. Second, strengthening the ability of members of the public allegedly subjected to police misconduct to bring suit for redress in federal court would create real incentives for better police behavior. This would do much to address the issue of Fourth Amendment violations that uncover no evidence, making the exclusionary rule an inapplicable remedy. Third, new technologies can enable police departments to make video and audio recordings of nearly all police activity. Coupled with appropriate evidentiary presumptions, these devices can change police behavior, including search and seizure activity. The article will examine these three possibilities, explain their superiority to other substitutes for the exclusionary rule, and will also examine their drawbacks

The War on Terror, Local Police, and Immigration Enforcement: A Curious Tale of Police Power in Post-9/11 America

In post-9/11 America, no goal ranks higher for law enforcement than preventing the next terrorist attack. This is as true for local police departments as it is for the FBI, and police in cities. At the same time, many advocates of tightening U.S. immigration enforcement have recast their efforts as national security and anti-terrorism campaigns. Thus, these advocates and their many allies in the current administration and in Congress have called for local police to become involved in enforcing immigration law. Officials in both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government have taken a number of actions designed to make this happen, pushing expanded power and authority on law enforcement in order that these agencies take up the fight. In the past, as national crises over crime have been declared – think, for example, of the war on drugs – state and local police have risen as one to enlist in the struggle, and have both fought for and accepted expanded authority to carry out their duties. Thus it will surprise many to hear that, in this instance – with nothing less than the prevention of terrorist attacks at stake – local law enforcement has, for the most part, vehemently refused to accept the increased authority to enforce immigration law that the federal government has proffered. Various explanations have been tendered for this, but the one that rings truest by far is that police do not wish to become involved in immigration enforcement because doing so constitutes bad police work – that is, poor public safety policy. Becoming adjunct soldiers to federal immigration enforcement agencies will actually make the public not safer, but less safe, from criminals and predators. Ironically, it will also make Americans less safe from the dangers posed by terrorists. The reasons for this have much to do with the building success and popularity of community policing among police officers over the last twenty years. As police officers in departments of all sizes in every region of the U.S. know, making communities safe depends on intelligence gathering – which in turn depends on the very types of relationships between the public and the police that community policing produces. Thus the refusal of state and local law enforcement to become involved in immigration enforcement both illuminates a turning point in American policing, and teaches us important lessons in how we must go forward in the war on terror if we are to succeed

Terry Stops and Frisks: The Troubling Use of Common Sense in a World of Empirical Data

The investigative detention doctrine first announced in Terry v. Ohio and amplified over the past fifty years has been much analyzed, praised, and criticized from a number of perspectives. Significantly, however, over this time period commentators have only occasionally questioned the Supreme Court’s “common sense” judgments regarding the factors sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion for stops and frisks. For years, the Court has provided no empirical basis for its judgments, due in large part to the lack of reliable data. Now, with the emergence of comprehensive data on these police practices, much can be learned about the predictive power of suspect conduct and other predicates for law enforcement interventions. And what has been learned calls into question a number of factors that have been credited over many years. No observer of the legal system can fail to notice the growing role of data and empirical analysis in the courts. A disparate set of cases have turned in large part on rigorously analyzed data. Yet this trend has not taken root in an important set of cases involving the widely used practice of stop-and-frisk. When stop-and-frisk practices become the subject of litigation, courts generally either have no data to review or have failed to engage in empirical analysis of the data that are available and which could be used to test the claims of reasonable suspicion. Rather, the courts invoke the conventional wisdom that as a matter of common sense certain conduct, for example, furtive movement, flight, bulges in clothing, and suspect location, indicates criminal conduct. We have no argument with common sense propositions; we have no aversion to clear, straightforward thinking. But what this phrase often reflects is a set of unexamined (even if widely held) assumptions. The proliferation of data on these basic questions provides the means for empirical analysis, and it is our argument that courts should do so in assessing reasonable suspicion factors in the same manner that they have engaged in empirical judgments, using both big and targeted data, in other areas

Spatial implications of organisational and technological change in Japanese retailing

In 1960 department stores were the sole form of large-scale retailing in Japan. The retail industry was otherwise comprised of a very large number of small firms. Two significant trends have occurred since 1960. First, there was the emergence of new large-scale retail formats and their subsequent growth. Second, there was the development of large organisations operating on a multiple store basis. New organisational forms evolved including superstore and supermarket chains, and speciality chain stores. Geographical and historical factors were first examined that have affected the structure of the modern Japanese retail industry. A framework embodying the concepts of threats and opportunities was then used to identify forces that have influenced organisational and technical change since 1960. The following "Threats and Opportunities" were analysed: The Economic Climate. The Changing Japanese Consumer. Technological Change. Relationships Between Retailers and Wholesalers. Changes in Commercial Land Use. Government Policy and Legislation. Major structural trends within retailing during the period 1972-1985 were then examined, through an analysis of 29 retail categories in the Census of Distribution for the period 1972-1985. A sample of nine categories was chosen for, a more detailed analysis, using thematic maps, to show the geographic distribution of outlets in 1985 and selected changes since 1972. One of these categories was comprised of large stores including superstores and many supermarkets. It figured prominently within the changes described in the analysis. The leading six superstore/supermarket companies, by sales February 1986, formed the subjects of case studies, with the objective of obtaining insights into the spatial implications of organisational and technological change within these examples of large-scale retail companies. Their development was described, including their expansion through diversification. The Chandler Thesis was selected, and found to be an appropriate model, in considering the organisational changes occuring within these companies. Finally, some international comparisons were made