Mary K. Stohr, Dale W. Willits,  David A. Makin,. Nicholas P. Lovrich, Duane L. Stanton Sr., Mikala Meize 

In 2012 the citizens of Washington State, via Initiative 502, legalized possession of a small amount of cannabis by adults. On July 1, 2014 licensed retail outlets in Washington opened with a regulated and monitored product. The effects that this legalization would have on crime and law enforcement in the state were open questions. In this National Institute of Justice-funded study we employed a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches geared toward addressing these questions. Research partners and participants included municipal, county, state and tribal law enforcement agencies representing 14 state, urban, suburban, rural, and tribal organizations in Washington the neighboring state of Idaho, as well as law enforcement professionals from 25 additional agencies and organizations. Focus group, joint, and individual interviews involved 153 justice system officials that included sworn officers from three multi-agency drug task forces and one gang task force. In addition, face-to-face interviews included prosecutorial representatives, officers from the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, and instructors from the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators. We constructed case study profiles and assessed qualitative (focus groups, interviews) and quantitative (Uniform Crime Reporting Program or UCR, calls for service records, and body/dash camera footage) data regarding how police practices and strategies, and crime itself, have been affected by legalization in Washington, and how that watershed decision in Washington has changed policing in adjacent border areas. We engaged a number of doctoral students and more than a dozen undergraduate students in the work of analyzing the data collected from the field and archival records sources. We found that marijuana legalization has not had an overall consistently positive or negative effect on matters of public safety. Instead, legalization has resulted in a varied set of outcomes, including: concern about youth access to marijuana and increased drugged driving, a belief that there is increased cross border transference of legal marijuana to states that have not legalized, reports that training and funding for cannabis-related law enforcement activities have been deficient given the complex and enlarged role the police have been given, and the persistence of the complex black market. On the “positive” front, legalization appears to have coincided with an increase in crime clearance rates in several areas of offending and an overall null effect on rates of serious crime. Importantly, the legalization of marijuana has reduced the number of persons brought into the criminal justice system by non-violent marijuana possession offenses. The police were also greatly concerned about how to best handle the detection and documentation of marijuana-related impairment in both commercial vehicle operations and traffic incidents. The state has adopted the Target Zero goal of no traffic fatalities by 2030 and the legalization of marijuana and the privatization of liquor sales have combined to make accomplishment of this worthy goal extremely difficult. Our research methodology necessarily included a number of limitations that would prevent the wholesale generalization of the results. For instance, most of the data was collected from one state (Washington) which was one of the two “pioneer” states involved in legalization in this country. Furthermore, the calls for service data were obtained from a limited number of agencies and are likely not generalizable to the entire state, much less the country. The crime data is extracted from the UCR database (as not all of Washington was National Incident Based Reporting System [NIBRS] compliant for all years under study) is known to suffer from a number of limitations, including: undercounting of some crimes, a lack of contextual information about criminal activity, and missing incidents not reported to the police. While the calls for service data address some limitations of the UCR database (for instance, calls for service data are better suited for the analysis of minor crimes), these data still do not address the limitation that only incidents reported to the police are analyzed. Put simply, if legalization resulted in a shift in criminal behavior that was not reported to the police, our quantitative analyses would be incapable of detecting it. Similarly, the body-worn camera (BWC) analysis was exploratory in nature and the data represent two agencies that are geographically and organizationally disparate. As an exploratory component, these results are not generalizable. The qualitative findings of this study offer insight into the lived experiences of officers, deputies, troopers, trainers, supervisors, administrators, and prosecutors, and are not without their limitations. Our qualitative data are limited by issues of generalizability (they may not represent the opinions of law enforcement professionals more broadly) and potentially be issues of selection bias (it is possible that those with the strongest opinions were perhaps most likely to volunteer to participate in focus groups and interviews). As with any research design employing purposive sampling, these results are not generalizable. They do not represent the lived experiences of all law enforcement officers or justice system representatives, nor adequately capture the totality of the lived experiences of this study’s participants. While we were able to obtain a large, and diverse sample of participants, we unfortunately were unable to engage officers from all municipalities in Washington, and across all law enforcement domains. These results emphasized and sought to document experiences pre- and post-legalization. While we made every effort to restrain our analysis to issues involving cannabis legalization effects on law enforcement and crime, our participants, as reflected in our findings, often gravitated towards broader frustrations involving police resourcing, training, and prosecutorial practices. Lastly, while our qualitative data is wellsuited for capturing the perceptions of police officers, they are also limited in this regard. Police perceptions of legalization may be skewed and not reflective of the broader process of legalization.     

Pullman, WA: Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology Washington State University , , 2020. 158p.

By Gabriel Weinberger

The nation's reliance on incarceration appears to have reached a peak a few years ago and there is a movement towards a major de-carceration initiative that will be driven by local jurisdictions. Current research must be focused on learning from the early wave of de-carceration experiments, which are mostly associated to drug-related crimes, to provide implications for future policymaking.

This dissertation deals with the implementation, at the local level, of various major changes to California's criminal justice system. These changes include liberalization of marijuana policies, Public Safety Realignment, and Proposition 47. The theme behind these changes has been a change in how the criminal justice system sanctions drug use. This dissertation explores an important question from each policy that can guide future policy. The first chapter explores whether localities that allowed for regulated dispensaries that sell medical marijuana to operate experienced an increase in crime rates. The second chapter describes how Public Safety Realignment changed the landscape for how social services are provided through the criminal justice system, detailing the effect on counties by using Los Angeles as a case study. Finally, the third chapter uses Los Angeles as a case study to answer whether community supervision is an adequate mechanism for engaging individuals with substance use disorder treatment.

Overall, the dissertation suggests that there may be collateral consequences from more liberal policies but that these can be addressed outside of the scope of the criminal justice system. In the context of regulating the supply of marijuana, a formerly illicit drug in California, I find that it did not result in a wave of higher crime rates. Finally, a major implication from this dissertation is that further work is required to serve the population that is affected by policies that reduce the use of incarceration for drug-related crimes. Local governments need to continue to address low-level crime caused by problematic drug use by improving their systems for providing social services without settling for using the lever of the criminal justice system.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2019. 126p.

By Steven Davenport

Cannabis has been legalized for non-medical purposes in Canada, Uruguay, eleven U.S. states and Washington DC, with others likely to follow. The world's first large corporate cannabis producers and retailers are operating in Canada and the United States — with the potential for continued expansions in scale and efficiency in the case of national legalization in the United States. This accelerated rate of policy change prompts novel topics of cannabis policy research, including evaluating past policy changes and identifying feasible policy responses for contemporary or anticipated issues.

This dissertation includes four papers. Three concern issues related to cannabis, with the last investigating a related issue (intoxicated driving) manifesting in alcohol policy. The first chapter identifies U.S. national-level patterns of cannabis acquisition and use and from 2002 to 2013, roughly the decade of policy liberalization that preceded the first non-medical cannabis regimes. The second chapter investigates a surprising fifteen-year trend in self-report of cannabis use disorder symptoms among daily/near-daily cannabis users, who disproportionately bear many of the consequences of cannabis use. The third chapter analyzes Washington State's recreational cannabis traceability dataset (July 2014-October 2017), documenting emerging trends, e.g. declining prices, cannabinoid profiles, and product forms. The final chapter evaluates an intervention relating to reducing alcohol-involved crashes, some lessons of which can be carried over to analogous questions with cannabis-involved crashes. That study evaluated Uruguay's zero blood-alcohol-concentration (BAC) law, exploiting a novel synthetic controls method to estimate reductions in severe and fatal injury crashes, using Chile as a control.

A central theme is the potential for a rising public health risk among adult cannabis users, and which may or may not meet clinical diagnoses for cannabis use disorder. There remain puzzles to solve. As the political-economic landscape regarding cannabis continues to evolve, public health-oriented policymakers would be wise to invest time and research in monitoring use trends in detail, and refining definitions and measurements of problematic cannabis use. It is the hope of this dissertation to support that line of inquiry.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 202o. 100.

By Sujeong Park

My dissertation investigates the unintended consequences of opioid policies, OxyContin reformulation and prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP) on crime, labor supply, and child welfare. The first paper examines the reformulation effects on crime, focusing on murder, by using a difference-in-difference methodology. This study provides evidence that the reformulation policy responding to the opioid epidemic has the unintended effect of increasing murder victims. The second paper evaluates the effects of OxyContin reformulation on labor supply and Social Security Disability Insurance take-up. The analysis results show that the implementation of OxyContin reformulation increased SSDI applications and decreased labor force participation. The last paper analyzes the effects of PDMP on child welfare outcomes. I analyzed whether implementing a PDMP leads to an increase in children living with their grandparents instead of their parents. This change could occur if the PDMP decreases the supply of prescription opioids leading some people to switch to heroin or other illegal opioids and are unable to care for their children. I used a reduced form model, and my results indicate that the implementation of must-access PDMP did increase the proportion of children living with their grandparents.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2021. 137p.

By Wyatt Lutenbacher

Gaps in federal regulation have allowed “privately made firearms,” or “ghost guns,” to proliferate. Until August 2022, “firearm kits,” which allowed for easy assembly of functional firearms without serial numbers, could be purchased without a background check. Federal law and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) have historically regulated assembled weapons rather than firearm components, and as a result, firearm kits have circumvented traditional firearm regulations. As a result, state and federal regulations have now had to try to adapt accordingly. Yet in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the United States Supreme Court unsettled many firearm regulations by creating a new test for the Second Amendment that focuses on history and tradition.

This Note posits that ghost guns are a problem not seriously addressed by federal regulations. To address these regulatory gaps, this Note will analyze proposed and potential administrative and legislative solutions, then defend them under the Bruen test. First, this Note will begin by describing the ghost gun epidemic and the relevant Second Amendment law, specifically the Bruen test. Next, it will present and analyze both current and proposed federal regulations and legislation targeting ghost guns. Finally, this Note will conclude by arguing that these current and proposed solutions are constitutional under Bruen.

42 Minn J. L. & Inequality 253 (2025)

By Andrew Willinger

The Supreme Court is turning to methodologies privileging text, history, and tradition, or THT, to interpret and implement various constitutional provisions. The Court has recently endorsed historically-focused approaches to determine how the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and carry a firearm, how the First Amendment protects the rights to free speech and freedom of religion, and whether the Due Process Clause protects reproductive autonomy, among other questions.

Much scholarship and popular commentary surrounding THT portrays the methodology as sui generis: presenting unique analytical challenges and impervious to direct comparison to existing doctrinal approaches. However, the jurist most frequently credited with deriving THT for Second Amendment cases, then-Circuit-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, offered a prediction about the test’s relative burden at that time. He wrote that “governments appear to have more flexibility and power to impose gun regulations under a test based on text, history, and tradition than .under strict scrutiny.”

The past two-plus years of Second Amendment case law following the Court’s adoption of THT in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen offer the first opportunity to test the accuracy of this prediction and weigh the strictness of THT against strict scrutiny in specific areas. By comparing pre-Bruen decisions that used or speculated about the application of strict scrutiny to decisions applying THT to the same gun laws, I make two major findings for the Second Amendment and other areas where historically-inflected methodologies are on the rise. First, I show that results on the ground deviate from initial predictions and that courts have drifted by applying a stricter test. Second, I argue that the Court’s decision this past Term in United States v. Rahimi is best understood as attempting to slot THT into its intended place on the means-end scrutiny spectrum, demonstrating that some early decisions misapplied the doctrine and suggesting the staying power of tiered scrutiny as a judicial guide across constitutional law.

60 Wake Forest L. Rev. 415 (2025)

By Joseph Blocher,  Reva Siegel

This Article examines the ambitions of history-and-tradition review in and beyond the Second Amendment. In Bruen and Rahimi the Roberts Court rejected means-end review in favor of a historical-analogical approach, claiming to constrain the exercise of judicial discretion, and thus to promote the democratic decisions of the founders. But our examination of these cases shows that the Court has created new opportunities for judges to advance their values in considerably less transparent ways. We identify contexts in which Second Amendment doctrine enables judicial discretion, key among them that it allows judges to reason about gun rights and regulation at disparate levels of generality, extending rights protection to modern guns while requiring gun laws to resemble ancient analogues. When applied in this asymmetric fashion, the historical approach deregulates in ways that are neither acknowledged nor justified. An eight-member majority objected to this strategy in Rahimi and voted to uphold a federal gun law. Yet numerous Justices wrote separately to limit Rahimi’s reach—and, a year later, to suggest that the Court should take a case involving an assault-weapons ban to clarify the method set forth in its earlier cases. Our close reading of the history-and-tradition (HAT) cases shows that there is a persistent gap between what the Court says and does—between the judicial constraint the Roberts Court promises and the actual decisions it delivers. Understanding this dynamic in the Second Amendment cases helps us recognize it in the First Amendment and Substantive Due Process cases as well. We can better appreciate the Court’s reasoning in extending HAT review if we excavate the arguments advanced in the decade between Heller and Bruen for substituting the HAT approach for means-ends review. This retrospective shows us that HAT approaches exhibit the very problems imputed to means-ends review: HAT review is not grounded in original understanding and employs shifts in generality to provide judges discretion to enforce value-based understandings. We can see this dynamic unfolding inside and outside the Second Amendment context. HAT decisions pose distinctive threats to democracy. First, Bruen has implemented HAT through judicial review with a strong presumption of unconstitutionality, a counter-majoritarian practice lacking precedent at the founding. Second, HAT review is not transparent, obscuring reasons for judicial decisions from the people and thus obstructing democratic dialogue. Third, the HAT framework encourages judges to decide the constitutionality of public safety laws on grounds that ignore the public’s most urgent reasons for enacting the laws. This reading of the Court’s Second Amendment cases indicates that the push to adopt HAT approaches in First Amendment, Due Process, and other areas of constitutional law is likely to compound the problems it is supposed to solve, while insulating the Court’s control of the Constitution from the public governed by it.

174 U. PA. L. REV. (forthcoming 2026), Yale Law School, Public Law Research Paper

By Hannah Turner, Moriah Sharpe

This project, executed by the UNC School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab (the Lab) in partnership with the North Carolina Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS), supports stakeholder interest in the expansion of social work services in North Carolina public defender offices by assessing the implementation of the social work function. The project has two components: (1) A workshop for Chief Public Defenders and select staff, held in April 2024, on holistic defense and the use of social workers in public defender offices. (2) An implementation evaluation of social work positions in seven North Carolina public defender offices. This report focuses on findings from the implementation evaluation and provides recommendations for public defender offices seeking to add or expand social work capacity. Key takeaways include: Eight public defender offices currently have social work staff, and many others have expressed interest in adding social work capacity. Of the twenty-seven public defender offices in the state, eight have social work staff members. Seven offices with social work staff participated in the implementation evaluation component of the project. However, representatives from twenty-one offices attended the April 2024 workshop, demonstrating broad interest in the use of social workers in public defender offices. The day-to-day operation of social work staff varies significantly by office. Offices have tailored the role of social work staff to meet their specific needs. For example, some social work staff take on a wide array of referrals, while others focus on a narrower client populationlike clients in custody seeking acceptance to residential substance use treatment programs. The background of the social work staff member, the availability of community resources, and the willingness of other court system actors to agree to social work alternatives as part of case resolutions all impact the day-to-day role of social work staff. Offices have different preferences when hiring social work staff. Offices have hired social work staff members with a variety of professional backgrounds, including capital mitigation work, psychology, county social services, and library science. Chief Public Defenders emphasized that not everyone with a traditional social work background would be an ideal candidate to work in public defense. For example, some offices expressed concerns about people with child welfare experience making the transition to advocate for adult clients who may have been charged with crimes against children. Most offices agreed that professional licensure was not a necessary requirement for their social work staff. Offices create their own procedures for training and onboarding social work staff. There is not a statewide standardized training or onboarding process specific to social work staff. Many offices described this as both a benefit and a challenge. Chief Public Defenders appreciated the flexibility, but they raised concerns about their ability to effectively train social work staff without subject matter expertise in the area. Offices used a variety of techniques to promote successful onboarding, like court observation, finding relevant online trainings, and shadowing current staff to understand different roles. Still, social work staff consistently voiced a desire for more training opportunities. Social work staff offer a range of benefits. Offices expressed that social work staff offer a variety of supports to clients, freeing up attorneys to focus on the person’s legal defense. They said social work staff facilitate  more trusting client relationships, promote a positive working environment, and can increase the community’s confidence in the public defender’s office. There is minimal overlap in data collection among offices with social work staff, which could be a limitation for future evaluation. Social work staff members typically create their own procedures for case documentation and data collection, and those procedures vary widely by office. Some offices use paper files, others use electronic tracking systems, and others do not have separate social work case files at all. The lack of consistency in data collection could present challenges for any future evaluation seeking to determine the impact of social work staff on non-legal client outcomes, like connection to substance abuse treatment. Consistent funding is one of the biggest challenges for retention of social work staff and expansion of the social work function. Offices fund social work positions in several ways, including grants, county government support, and state budget allocations. All of these funding sources have their limitations, and offices described challenges securing stable funding. Limited funding means that offices struggle to expand their social work capacity and that existing social work staff have very minimal opportunities for promotion. However, using interns from Master of Social Work or other similar programs can provide a no-cost option for offices looking for additional social work supporteven for offices that do not currently have dedicated social work staff.

Raleigh:  Criminal Justice Innovation Lab, UNC School of Government

By The Statewide Appearance Project

In North Carolina, about 18% of criminal cases have at least one missed court date, resulting in at least 250,000 missed hearings per year. Most missed appearances occur in low-level cases, with administrative traffic misdemeanor charges accounting for the greatest number of missed court dates. Missed appearances have numerous consequences, including case delays that decrease system efficiency and increase strain on limited court and law enforcement resources. In North Carolina, missed appearances in low-level cases are a significant driver of jail bookings, leading to pressure on jail budgets and jail overcrowding. Additionally, license revocations imposed after a missed appearance prevent one in ten driving-age North Carolinians from legally driving, making it harder for them to appear in court in the future, get to work, and care for themselves and their families. Fortunately, evidence-based solutions can address court appearance issues. In this project, the Statewide Court Appearance Project Committee considered the data and evidence, listened to experts, and robustly evaluated a range of court appearance solutions used in North Carolina and around the nation. Its members unanimously present the following recommendations to both promote court appearance and provide alternative system responses to missed appearances in North Carolina.   

North Carolina Judicial Branch, 2025. 82p.

By Bruce Turcott, Daniel Shortt

This Article examines the process and outcomes of cannabis legalization in Washington State, offering insights for other states and potential federal legalization schemes. It begins with an overview of the campaign that led to the passage of Initiative 502 (I-502), detailing the initiative’s structure, which draws from liquor licensing laws. The Article then explores the establishment of a recreational cannabis market from scratch, focusing on agency structure, federal responses such as the Cole Memorandum, and the state’s regulatory framework aimed at preventing adverse outcomes. Additionally, this Article highlights Washington’s efforts to promote social equity, emphasizing that I-502 was framed as a criminal justice reform measure. It also discusses the influence of Washington’s model on broader nationwide legalization efforts, addressing key aspects such as vertical integration, residency requirements, and the merging of medical and recreational markets. Through this comprehensive analysis, the Article provides a roadmap for policymakers considering cannabis legalization at both state and federal levels.

100 Wash. L. Rev. 125 (2025)

Sexual assault is epidemic in the United States. Recent media reports, public outrage, and activism have been focused on the institutional settings in which these assaults occur. Colleges and universities, as well as the military and athletic programs, have come under increasing scrutiny as settings that not only fail to deter, but possibly foster rape.

viewpoints, 16p.

By J. H. Bogart

A woman awakens surrounded by four men who remove her from her bed and take her to another room.1 Despite protests and physical resistance, the men engage in a series of sexual acts with her. She files a complaint and the men are charged, tried, and convicted.2 They appeal, claiming they believed she was agreeable to their actions.3 They had been told by her husband that she had unusual tastes in sexual matters, and liked simulated gang rape. Because they had thought she was willing, they had not intended to rape her and therefore should not have been convicted.4 A young woman of limited cognitive capacities and an intense desire for acceptance seeks the approval and friendship of her male peers.5 The teenage boys induce her to join them in a basement where they asked her to perform sexual acts with them. No threats were made or implied. The teenage boys claim she was a happy participant.6

39p.

By Gillian C. Mezey

Sexual offences account for just under 1% of all to other life-threatening traumas. There is some notifiable offences and have been increasing over evidence that rape is more pathogenic than any the past decade (Home Office,1993).However, the other form of violent crime (Kilpatrick et al, 1987). The term 'rape trauma syndrome' was first used official statistics on rape prevalence grossly underestimate the extent of the problem; many cases of non-consensual intercourse are not in the 1970s to describe a range of psychological, cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses to reported or prosecuted; about one-third of victims.

Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (1997), vol. 3, pp. 197-203

By Kimberly Ann Puhala

The problems associated with the civil legal system for women who have experienced domestic violence have been persistent over time and still exist today. The current sociopolitical context in this state frames access to civil legal services either through a means-tested (and underfunded) program (Civil Legal Assistance) or as a privately purchased market service. This leaves a limited amount of low- or no-cost alternatives, which creates a gap in services for those women whose income is too high to qualify for Civil Legal Assistance programs, yet too low to afford to hire a private attorney. This study examines this two-tiered system, and reveals that the alternative to full Civil Legal Assistance or individually purchased full-scale legal representation for iv women who fall into the services gap is a system that is confusing, faces a lack of coordination, and may lead to less than optimal outcomes in civil legal cases related to domestic violence. This study explores the workings of this system from the perspective of the women using it and the service providers within it. Through surveys of 18 women seeking civil legal assistance and 11 interviews with legal services advocates and providers, this research identifies the areas that remain problematic for women who experience domestic violence and turn to the civil legal services for help.

Puhala, Kimberly Ann, "Legal Experiences of Women Survivors of Domestic Violence: A Need for Policies that Address the Justice Gap" (2011). Graduate Doctoral Dissertations. Paper 37.

By Annelise Mennicke, MSW Delaney Anderson, MSW Karen Oehme, JD Stephanie Kennedy, MSW

Rape and sexual violence are alarmingly common in our society, demanding a focused and coordinated response among researchers, the justice system, and health and social service providers. According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN; n.d.), a sexual assault occurs every two minutes in the United States, totaling to 207,754 victims of rape and sexual assault each year. Using these inci- dence rates, RAINN estimates that one out of every six women will be raped during her lifetime (RAINN, n.d.). Victims of rape commonly experience a wide range of physical and emotional effects, including posttraumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, depres- sion, anxiety, sleep disorders, eating disorders, and many other negative and long-lasting consequences (RAINN, n.d.).

Springer Publishing Company, 2014, 15p.

By Hayley Stillwell

Despite the foundational principle in the American criminal justice system that it is better to acquit the guilty than to convict the innocent, wrongful convictions remain a persistent issue. Wrongful convictions are sometimes caused by flawed evidence, such as eyewitness misidentifications and unreliable forensic techniques. Researchers and scholars have studied this problem of flawed evidence extensively, leading to many successful reform efforts to address this portion of the wrongful conviction problem. But there is another portion of the wrongful conviction problem that has yet to be the target of reform efforts—wrongful convictions caused by juror error. Implicit biases, forbidden assumptions, and strategic voting are jury errors that can lead to wrongful convictions, yet they are difficult problems to address given the black box of secrecy that surrounds jury deliberations. This Article proposes the use of “placebo trials” as a novel thought experiment that could transform into a real experimental method to identify and address jury error. Placebo trials simulate real trials in every way, but they are not real. As far as jurors know, however, they are sitting on a real trial. Another important characteristic of placebo trials is that the objectively correct verdict outcome is an acquittal. By inserting a variable into a placebo trial, the experiment can show with firsthand jury data whether the variable impacts acquittal rates. If a variable has such an effect, then it may lead to wrongful convictions and should be the focus of reform efforts.

56 Ariz. St. L.J. 1361 (2024 )

By Conor McCormick and Brice Dickson

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This compelling book underscores the significance of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland, making a significant contribution to the literature and proposing recommendations on how it could enhance both its efficiency and its reputation.

Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2024.

By Stina Bergman Blix and Nina Törnqvist

Exploring the rationales behind legal anger, its logic and origins, this book builds on the perspectives of judges and prosecutors in Italy, Sweden, the United States, and Scotland. When do judges and prosecutors become angry in court, what do they become angry about, and which other emotions open up for anger? Anger brings people to court and is essential in evaluating wrongdoing and attributing blame, but at the same time, anger is seen as a threat to well-reasoned and just decision-making. Drawing on observations, interviews, and shadowing of legal professionals, the text demonstrates how anger is entangled with legal thought and comes into play in legal practices. By comparing the workings and displays of anger found in different legal systems and emotional cultures, the book elucidates assumptions about law, morality, truth, and emotions that we commonly take for granted. Rational Anger will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, sociology, law, social psychology, and organisation studies.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2025. 124p.

By Brandon MordueFollow

The idea that one’s punishment should depend on the crime committed rather than which judge happens to do the sentencing strikes most as uncontroversial, if not a requirement for a fair sentencing regime. Forty years ago, the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act promised just that result. Increased data availability allows us to evaluate the project’s success. The results are not encouraging.

Federal defendants are sentenced using guidelines issued by the United States Sentencing Commission that sometimes bear little relation to the underlying wrongdoing. This has created a split among judges, with some following the guidelines and others rejecting them. The consequences are arbitrariness in sentencing and unwarranted disparities across offenders.

In 2007, the Supreme Court permitted appellate courts to presume the reasonableness of guideline sentences, largely insulating those sentences from judicial review. Much has changed since then, and it is time for the presumption to go. The findings of the original data analysis presented in this Article, as well as developments since the Court’s decision, show that the claims made in support of the presumption are unfounded. In fact, some of the related case law rests upon provably false empirical premises.

Today, most sentences are not within the range set by the guidelines. Favoring the minority of sentences that are within the range results in a sentencing regime incompatible with the overriding statutory aim of avoiding unwarranted sentencing disparities. Rather than presuming the reasonableness of within-guideline sentences, the courts can chart a course correction by prioritizing the data on actual sentences from the Sentencing Commission. Such a shift would achieve more consistent sentences across offenders convicted of similar crimes.

115 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 133 (2025), 73p.

By Isis Misdary

Three separate but closely related factors have together produced this nation’s epidemic of mass incarceration. First, the enforcement of criminal law has become wholly dominated by a caste of repeat players. The chasm between this grouping and outsiders has become far more important than the prosecution-defense duality ostensibly dominating the system. Second, the system’s design and policies have become dominated by central authorities sealed in a “tough-on-crime” echo chamber. This leaves local communities largely powerless to check the devastation being visited upon them. And third, the system has ruthlessly suppressed the individuality of those facing charges. They are rarely seen, almost never heard, ignored if they try to contextualize events giving rise to the charges, and punished severely if they attempt to assert their rights, much less their innocence. Robbed of all that makes them human, their fates arouse little sympathy. Devastated communities have mounted various responses to mass incarceration. None is more exciting than the participatory defense movement. This movement seeks to involve the person facing charges as well as that person’s family and community. Together, they meet with defense counsel, gather evidence for the case, and in mitigation, prepare videos or other testimonials to influence charging and plea-bargaining decisions and undertake other efforts to support the person facing charges. Through the movement’s work on individual cases, families and communities have spotted issues within the criminal systems and the criminal laws close to home that must change, that must end. Case by case, they have started to challenge, change, and end them. Yet, for all its promise, participatory defense may face considerable challenges going forward in these areas. As a relatively new movement, it must continue to resolve significant design challenges and overcome formidable institutional and attitudinal buttresses the current system has erected.

25 Nev. L.J. 325 (2025), 92p.