Download or read book Empirical Legal Research in Action written by Willem H. van Boom and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empirical legal research is a growing field of academic expertise, yet lawyers are not always familiar with the possibilities and limitations of the available methods. Empirical Legal Research in Action presents readers with first-hand experiences of empirical research on law and legal issues.

Download or read book Handbook on Punishment Decisions written by Jeffery T. Ulmer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Handbook on Punishment Decisions: Locations of Disparity provides a comprehensive assessment of the current knowledge on sites of disparity in punishment decision-making. This collection of essays and reports of original research defines disparity broadly to include the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, age, citizenship/immigration status, and socioeconomic status, and it examines dimensions such as how pretrial or guilty plea processes shape exposure to punishment, how different types of sentencing decisions and/or policy structures (sentencing guidelines, mandatory minimums, risk assessment tools) might shape and condition disparity, and how post-sentencing decisions involving probation and parole contribute to inequalities. The sixteen contributions pull together what we know and what we don’t about punishment decision-making and plow new ground for further advances in the field. The ASC Division on Corrections & Sentencing Handbook Series publishes volumes on topics ranging from violence risk assessment to specialty courts for drug users, veterans, or people with mental illness. Each thematic volume focuses on a single topical issue that intersects with corrections and sentencing research.

Download or read book How Judges Judge written by Brian M. Barry and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A judge’s role is to make decisions. This book is about how judges undertake this task. It is about forces on the judicial role and their consequences, about empirical research from a variety of academic disciplines that observes and verifies how factors can affect how judges judge. On the one hand, judges decide by interpreting and applying the law, but much more affects judicial decision-making: psychological effects, group dynamics, numerical reasoning, biases, court processes, influences from political and other institutions, and technological advancement. All can have a bearing on judicial outcomes. In How Judges Judge: Empirical Insights into Judicial Decision-Making, Brian M. Barry explores how these factors, beyond the law, affect judges in their role. Case examples, judicial rulings, judges’ own self-reflections on their role and accounts from legal history complement this analysis to contextualise the research, make it more accessible and enrich the reader’s understanding and appreciation of judicial decision-making. Offering research-based insights into how judges make the decisions that can impact daily life and societies around the globe, this book will be of interest to practising and training judges, litigation lawyers and those studying law and related disciplines.

Download or read book Why Are So Many Americans in Prison written by Steven Raphael and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1975 and 2007, the American incarceration rate increased nearly fivefold, a historic increase that puts the United States in a league of its own among advanced economies. We incarcerate more people today than we ever have, and we stand out as the nation that most frequently uses incarceration to punish those who break the law. What factors explain the dramatic rise in incarceration rates in such a short period of time? In Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? Steven Raphael and Michael A. Stoll analyze the shocking expansion of America’s prison system and illustrate the pressing need to rethink mass incarceration in this country. Raphael and Stoll carefully evaluate changes in crime patterns, enforcement practices and sentencing laws to reach a sobering conclusion: So many Americans are in prison today because we have chosen, through our public policies, to put them there. They dispel the notion that a rise in crime rates fueled the incarceration surge; in fact, crime rates have steadily declined to all-time lows. There is also little evidence for other factors commonly offered to explain the prison boom, such as the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill since the 1950s, changing demographics, or the crack-cocaine epidemic. By contrast, Raphael and Stoll demonstrate that legislative changes to a relatively small set of sentencing policies explain nearly all prison growth since the 1980s. So-called tough on crime laws, including mandatory minimum penalties and repeat offender statutes, have increased the propensity to punish more offenders with lengthier prison sentences. Raphael and Stoll argue that the high-incarceration regime has inflicted broad social costs, particularly among minority communities, who form a disproportionate share of the incarcerated population. Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? ends with a powerful plea to consider alternative crime control strategies, such as expanded policing, drug court programs, and sentencing law reform, which together can end our addiction to incarceration and still preserve public safety. As states confront the budgetary and social costs of the incarceration boom, Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? provides a revealing and accessible guide to the policies that created the era of mass incarceration and what we can do now to end it.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Judicial Behaviour written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-18 with total page 1041 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are momentous times for the comparative analysis of judicial behaviour. Once the sole province of U.S. scholars—and mostly political scientists at that—now, researchers throughout the world, drawing on history, economics, law, and psychology, are illuminating how and why judges make the choices they do and what effect those choices have on society. Bringing together leading scholars in the field, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Judicial Behaviour consists of ten sections, each devoted to important subfields: fundamentals—providing overviews designed to identify common trends in courts worldwide; approaches to judging; data, methods, and technologies; staffing the courts; advocacy, litigation, and appellate review; opinions; relations within, between, and among courts; judicial independence; court and society; and frontiers of comparative judicial behaviour—dedicated to expanding on opportunities for advancement. Rather than focusing on particular courts, countries, or regions, the organization of the individual chapters is topical. Each chapter explores an important topic-critically evaluating the state of that topic and identifying opportunities for future work. While the forty-two chapters share a common interest in explaining the causes and effects of judicial choices, the range of approaches to comparative research is wide, inclusive, and interdisciplinary, from contrasts and similarities to sophisticated research agendas reflecting the emerging field of judicial behaviour around the world.

Download or read book Sentencing Matters written by Michael H. Tonry and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-07-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scores of talented and dedicated people serve the forensic science community, performing vitally important work. However, they are often constrained by lack of adequate resources, sound policies, and national support. It is clear that change and advancements, both systematic and scientific, are needed in a number of forensic science disciplines to ensure the reliability of work, establish enforceable standards, and promote best practices with consistent application. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward provides a detailed plan for addressing these needs and suggests the creation of a new government entity, the National Institute of Forensic Science, to establish and enforce standards within the forensic science community. The benefits of improving and regulating the forensic science disciplines are clear: assisting law enforcement officials, enhancing homeland security, and reducing the risk of wrongful conviction and exoneration. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States gives a full account of what is needed to advance the forensic science disciplines, including upgrading of systems and organizational structures, better training, widespread adoption of uniform and enforceable best practices, and mandatory certification and accreditation programs. While this book provides an essential call-to-action for congress and policy makers, it also serves as a vital tool for law enforcement agencies, criminal prosecutors and attorneys, and forensic science educators.

Download or read book Criminal Sentences written by Marvin E. Frankel and published by . This book was released on 1973-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Experimental and Quasi experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference written by William R. Shadish and published by Cengage Learning. This book was released on 2002 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sections include: experiments and generalised causal inference; statistical conclusion validity and internal validity; construct validity and external validity; quasi-experimental designs that either lack a control group or lack pretest observations on the outcome; quasi-experimental designs that use both control groups and pretests; quasi-experiments: interrupted time-series designs; regresssion discontinuity designs; randomised experiments: rationale, designs, and conditions conducive to doing them; practical problems 1: ethics, participation recruitment and random assignment; practical problems 2: treatment implementation and attrition; generalised causal inference: a grounded theory; generalised causal inference: methods for single studies; generalised causal inference: methods for multiple studies; a critical assessment of our assumptions.

Download or read book Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Statutes written by Charles Doyle and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report discusses the federal mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, that limits the discretion of a sentencing court to impose a sentence that does not include a term of imprisonment or the death penalty. The United States Sentencing Commission's Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System (2011) recommends consideration of amendments to several of the statutes under which federal mandatory minimum sentences are most often imposed.

Download or read book Discussion Materials on Organizational Sanctions written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Enhancing Justice written by Sarah E. Redfield and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book helps explain how many who pride themselves on being fair can be part of a system which is widely seen as unfair by those who have historically been victims of bias and prejudice. The central focus of the book is on the different approaches that courts can use to lessen the impact of implicit bias by "breaking the bias habit."

Download or read book Against Prediction written by Bernard E. Harcourt and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From random security checks at airports to the use of risk assessment in sentencing, actuarial methods are being used more than ever to determine whom law enforcement officials target and punish. And with the exception of racial profiling on our highways and streets, most people favor these methods because they believe they’re a more cost-effective way to fight crime. In Against Prediction, Bernard E. Harcourt challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, he demonstrates, may in fact increase the overall amount of crime in society, depending on the relative responsiveness of the profiled populations to heightened security. They may also aggravate the difficulties that minorities already have obtaining work, education, and a better quality of life—thus perpetuating the pattern of criminal behavior. Ultimately, Harcourt shows how the perceived success of actuarial methods has begun to distort our very conception of just punishment and to obscure alternate visions of social order. In place of the actuarial, he proposes instead a turn to randomization in punishment and policing. The presumption, Harcourt concludes, should be against prediction.

Download or read book Prison State written by Bert Useem and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Deterrence and the Death Penalty written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-05-26 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious. Against this backdrop, the National Research Council report Deterrence and the Death Penalty assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. This new report from the Committee on Law and Justice concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates. The key question is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates. The report recommends new avenues of research that may provide broader insight into any deterrent effects from both capital and noncapital punishments.

Download or read book American Exceptionalism in Crime and Punishment written by Kevin R. Reitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- American exceptionalism : perspectives -- American exceptionalism in crime, punishment, and disadvantage : race, federalization, and politicization in the perspective of local autonomy / Nicola Lacey and David Soskice -- The concept of American exceptionalism and the case of capital punishment / David Garland -- Penal optimism : understanding American mass imprisonment from a Canadian perspective / Cheryl Marie Webster and Anthony N. Doob -- The complications of penal federalism : American exceptionalism or fifty different countries? / Franklin E. Zimring -- American exceptionalism in crime -- American exceptionalism in comparative perspective : explaining trends and variation in the use of incarceration / Tapio Lappi-Seppälä -- How exceptional is the history of violence and criminal justice in the United States? : variation across time and space as the keys to understanding homicide and punitiveness / Randolph Roth -- Making the state pay : violence and the politicization of crime in comparative perspective / Lisa L. Miller -- Comparing serious violent crime in the United States and England and Wales : why it matters, and how it can be done / Zelia Gallo, Nicola Lacey, and David Soskice -- American exceptionalism in community supervision : a comparative analysis of probation in the United States, Scotland, and Sweden / Edward E. Rhine and Faye S. Taxman -- American exceptionalism in parole release and supervision : a European perspective / Dirk van Zyl Smit and Alessandro Corda -- Collateral sanctions and American exceptionalism : a comparative perspective / Nora V. Demleitner -- Index

Download or read book The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society written by United States. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice -- established by President Lyndon Johnson on July 23, 1965 -- addresses the causes of crime and delinquency and recommends how to prevent crime and delinquency and improve law enforcement and the administration of criminal justice. In developing its findings and recommendations, the Commission held three national conferences, conducted five national surveys, held hundreds of meetings, and interviewed tens of thousands of individuals. Separate chapters of this report discuss crime in America, juvenile delinquency, the police, the courts, corrections, organized crime, narcotics and drug abuse, drunkenness offenses, gun control, science and technology, and research as an instrument for reform. Significant data were generated by the Commission's National Survey of Criminal Victims, the first of its kind conducted on such a scope. The survey found that not only do Americans experience far more crime than they report to the police, but they talk about crime and the reports of crime engender such fear among citizens that the basic quality of life of many Americans has eroded. The core conclusion of the Commission, however, is that a significant reduction in crime can be achieved if the Commission's recommendations (some 200) are implemented. The recommendations call for a cooperative attack on crime by the Federal Government, the States, the counties, the cities, civic organizations, religious institutions, business groups, and individual citizens. They propose basic changes in the operations of police, schools, prosecutors, employment agencies, defenders, social workers, prisons, housing authorities, and probation and parole officers.