By The New York State Bar Association

"Hate crimes . . . leave deep scars not only on the victims, but on our larger community. They weaken the sense that we are one people with common values and a common future. They tear us apart when we should be moving closer together. They are acts of violence against America itself. . . ." President Clinton made the foregoing speech 16 years ago. Today, the situation has only worsened with antisemitic hate crimes spiking on the heels of years of increased anti-Asian hate crimes. In October 2023, the FBI released data that shows hate crimes in the U.S. at their highest since data collection began in 1991. The Anti-Defamation League reported 2,000 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. through July 2023 and a 337% uptick in incidents after Hamas' October 7th attack on Israel. Similarly, from 2020–21, anti-Asian hate crimes spiked 339%. Almost daily, the headlines are filled with stories like the gunfire in front of an Albany synagogue in December 2023. Despite these dire statistics and reports, bar associations have not systematically studied this problem, a void which led NYSBA President Richard Lewis to convene this task force to examine the problem of hate crimes with a focus on those directed at the Asian American and Jewish communities. As President Lewis stated: “Antisemitic and anti-Asian bias in America is overt and disturbing, and it is increasing exponentially…We have launched this task force because we are at a crossroads, and left unchecked, we can only expect that crimes against these two vulnerable groups will continue to spiral out of control.” The task force has been grappling with the scourge of hate crimes, which present a clear and present danger to many, but most strikingly to New Yorkers. The members of our task force worked hard to put these recommendations together in the last several months. We held dozens of meetings, scoured the available literature, and met with prominent officials in the law enforcement and educational sectors. The dedication and talent of the task force has enabled us to put together the concrete recommendations contained in this report. Like bar associations, society as a whole has devoted insufficient attention to hate crimes despite the gravity of the problem. As a result, the statutory framework governing hate crimes contains gaps in the definition of hate crimes and in the coverage of the hate crime statute – deficiencies that are addressed in our report. Equally problematic are the mechanisms for reporting hate crimes, including the lack of a requirement that law enforcement in New York report hate crimes to a central state authority.

Our report follows the commendable work of the 2020 NYSBA task force on Domestic Terrorism and Hate Crimes. This groundbreaking report was focused on federal laws addressing acts of domestic terrorism.3 Not long after its publication, the wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans and the spike in antisemitic hate crimes ensued, necessitating our task force and this report. This report begins with analyses of antisemitic and anti-Asian hate crimes, including the history of antisemitism and anti-Asian hate – two forms of bias that have deep and disturbing roots. Far from a new phenomenon, antisemitism is as old as civilization itself. And anti-Asian hate crimes in the U.S. span the history of our country. See pages 9-10 below. Our report focuses on the recent waves of hate crimes ignited by exogenous catalysts: the COVID-19 pandemic in the case of anti-Asian hate crimes and the Hamas attacks of October 2023 in the case of antisemitic hate crimes. Our report addresses the disturbing increases in the rates of hate crimes during these recent troubled times.

Albany: The Bar Association 2024. 47p.

By Ian K. Belton and Mandeep K. Dhami

Personal mitigating factors (PMFs) such as good character, remorse and addressing addiction help sentencers evaluate an offender’s past, present and future behavior. We analyzed data from the 2011–2014 Crown Court Sentencing Surveys in England and Wales to examine the relationship between these PMFs and custodial sentences passed on assault and burglary offenses, controlling for other sentencing relevant factors. Beyond revealing the distribution and co-occurrence of the three PMFs, it was found that good character, remorse and addressing addiction all had a significant mitigating effect. The effects of addressing addiction were the strongest of the three across both offense types, while good character had a stronger effect on burglary than assault. In addition, some mitigating factors appear to be underweighted when they occur together. We consider the implications of these findings for sentencing policy and practice.

J Empir Leg Stud. 2024;1–32.

By Clare Anderson & Martin Halliwell

This article considers the intersecting geographical, social, medical and political frameworks necessary to construct an understanding of mental health in Guyanese prisons, historically and in the present day. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to integrate archives, modern records and interviews, it looks first at colonial and independent state management of mental health impacts with respect to sentencing, incarceration and rehabilitation. It moves on to reflect on recent efforts to provide co-ordinated policies and practices at national level to tackle more effectively moderate to severe mental health conditions. Here it shows that, as in the colonial period, prisoners and prison officials are typically neglected. Overall, our appreciation of the importance of what we term the coloniality of incarceration and public health enables us to deepen an understanding of the development and ongoing significance of approaches to mental ill health in the modern state, following Guyana's independence from colonial rule in 1966.

United States, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. 2022, 19pg

By Paul Heaton

Today we know much more about the effects of pretrial detention than we did even five years ago. Multiple empirical studies have emerged that shed new light on the far-reaching impacts of bail decisions made at the earliest stages of the criminal adjudication process.1 This new evidence calls into question longstanding approaches to managing pretrial risk that provide limited due process protection and emphasize cash bail. Making appropriate decisions about who to release pretrial and under what conditions requires an understanding of the impacts of particular bail requirements. For example, for a given defendant, how would their risk of failure to appear (“FTA”) or future criminal activity change if they were subjected to condition A (which might include preventative detention) versus condition B (which might include an alternative to detention, such as text message reminders of scheduled court appearances)? Armed with such information, decisionmakers could appropriately balance society’s dual interest in preserving public safety and holding the accused accountable with defendants’ liberty interests. However, until recently, the actual evidence necessary to analyze the trade-off described above has been virtually nonexistent, leading judges and magistrates to rely on a combination of personal experience (possibly including conscious or unconscious bias), heuristics, and local norms in formulating their bail decisions. One reason it has been so difficult to develop good evidence of the effects of pretrial detention is because the bail system, when operating as intended, sorts defendants in a manner that limits the value of the outcome data it produces for demonstrating whether and how bail conditions matter. In general,  because bail conditions are typically assigned based on perceived defendant risk, if we observe elevated violation rates for defendants with condition A versus condition B, it is difficult to determine empirically whether this reflects an adverse causal effect of condition A or simply the fact that those assigned condition A were different from those assigned condition B to begin with. For example, proponents of cash bail often cite low FTA rates among those released with assistance from commercial bonding agents and argue from such statistics that private bondsmen are a necessary component of the system to manage nonappearance risk.2 However, comparing FTA rates for those with and without commercial sureties is misleading. To maximize profits, commercial operations have an incentive to accept only clients who are at low risk of nonappearance in the same way that an auto insurer would make money by identifying and then insuring only the safest drivers.3 Thus, low FTA rates might simply reflect defendant sorting and tell policymakers little about commercial sureties’ effectiveness. The new generation of pretrial detention studies addresses this difficulty and provides a much stronger footing on which to base legal decisions and criminal justice policy. Recent studies improve upon past work in at least three respects. First, they make use of large administrative datasets, typically involving the near universe of criminal offenses within a particular jurisdiction, allowing researchers to describe the functioning of the criminal justice system as a whole rather than generalizing from a few specific incidents or cases. Second, they carefully consider the problem of differentiating correlation from causation, making use of natural experiments to measure the causal effects of detention and resolving the sorting problem described above. Finally, they consider a broader range of outcomes, focusing not just on the resolution of the case at hand, but on long-term ramifications, such as future criminal activity, earnings, and unemployment. The takeaway from this new generation of studies is that pretrial detention has substantial downstream effects on both the operation of the criminal justice system and on defendants themselves, causally increasing the likelihood of a conviction, the severity of the sentence, and, in some jurisdictions, defendants’ likelihood of future contact with the criminal justice system. Detention also reduces future employment and access to social safety nets. This growing evidence of pretrial detention’s high costs should give impetus to reform efforts that increase due process protections to ensure detention is limited to only those situations where it is truly necessary and identify alternatives to detention that can better promote court appearance and public safety.   

United States, North Carolina Law Review. 2020, 11pg

By Elise White, Basaime Spate, Javonte Alexander, and Rachel Swaner

Our study of more than 100 young gun-carriers in Crown Heights, Brooklyn identifies fear—for their own lives and for their loved ones—as the overwhelming factor behind their decision to carry. In-depth interviews were conducted by researchers with personal connections to the young people’s social networks, opening up levels of trust and honesty rarely found in prior research.

Predominantly young Black men, ages 15 to 24, these gun-carriers talked about experiencing, witnessing, and being threatened with violence at shocking rates. Very few had access to long-term, stable jobs, with most relying on the underground economy to make ends meet. Afraid and distrustful of police, and with few other means to ensure their safety, many young people turned to gun-carrying for self-preservation. For most youth, fear for their own lives and the lives of their families outweighed concerns about going to jail.

The study identifies four types of young gun-carriers in Brooklyn:

• Those who carry for protection due to generalized fear, and are ambivalent about using guns

• Those who carry for image, to intimidate or impress others

• Those who carry defensively as part of street hustles that expose them to danger

• Shooters, who are willing to go on the offensive

These findings highlight the need to meet young gun-carriers where they are, recognizing gangs, crews, and street networks as the main sources of identity, loyalty, and decision-making for many young people. Our recommendations point the way towards a collaborative approach to safety—one that offers an alternative to law enforcement, creates spaces for healing, and respects young gun-carriers’ allegiance to their street networks.

New York: Center for Justice Innovation, 2023. 72p.

By Meressa Kahsu Dessu, Dawit Yohannes and Charles T Hunt

Most contemporary multidimensional peace operations prioritise the protection of civilians (PoC) as one of their primary mandates. This is expected as current conflicts and crises are increasingly marked by high civilian casualties, emanating not least from the deliberate targeting of civilians and the blurred distinction between combatants and non-combatants. As a key element of multidimensional peace operations, the United Nations (UN) Police have assumed diverse roles in implementing the mandate of such missions. Key decision-making entities such as the UN Security Council (UNSC) have increasingly acknowledged such roles. This can be illustrated by the UNSC’s resolution that recognises the police’s ‘invaluable contribution to peacekeeping, post-conflict peacebuilding, security, the rule of law, and the creation of a basis for development.’1 However, the evolving roles of the police have not matched with studies on its effectiveness in mandate implementation, particularly in PoC. 

 This monograph contributes to debates around the role and effectiveness of policing in PoC based on the lessons from the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). The study combines two overarching debates: the effectiveness of peace operations and the role of policing in PoC. While the mission was established in 2011, this monograph pays particular attention since 2014, following the prioritisation of the PoC mandate. The analysis broadly focuses on the effectiveness of different structures of mission headquarters and Field Offices, with a special emphasis on policing at PoC Sites. As one of its key findings, the study recognises the mixed record of the UNMISS police in fulfilling the mission’s PoC mandate. The police component played key roles in supporting the mission to prevent protection challenges from worsening in the face of recurrent crime, violence and conflicts  

Monograph 211. Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2023.   66p.

By  Libor Duˇsek and Christian Traxler

This paper studies how swiftness and delay of punishment affect behavior. We leverage rich data on the enforcement of speed limits by automated speed cameras. The data allow us to track cars’ driving histories over time as well as the exact time when tickets are sent, delivered, and paid. To identify the effect of swift or delayed tickets on payment and driving outcomes, we exploit two sources of (quasi-)experimental variation: (1) at the start of the speed camera systems, administrative issues caused large delays in the time between an offense and the sending of a ticket; (2) in cooperation with the authority, we later introduced a protocol that randomized the sequence at which tickets were processed. We get two sets of results. First, we find significantly negative effects of delays on payment compliance. Relative to tickets sent within 4 weeks after an offense, the rate of timely paid fines drops by 7 to 9% when a ticket is delayed by four or more weeks. We also find evidence that very swift tickets, which are sent within the first day after an offense, increase timely payments. These findings are in line with the expectations of academic economists and criminologists, which we elicited in a survey. Our second set of results shows that tickets cause a strong, immediate, and persistent drop in speeding. However, we do not detect any differential effect from swift or delayed tickets. This conflicts with widely held beliefs about the benefits of swift punishment, which are also mirrored in the responses to our survey.

 CESifo Working Paper No. 10906, 2024

By The Welsh Parliament Equality and Social Justice Committee

Women who commit crime are generally some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society, often with multiple and complex needs. Women now make up around 5 per cent of the prison population, estimated to be twice as many as twenty years ago.

Wales, The Committee. 2023, 56pg

By Nisha Waller and Naima Sakande

In England and Wales, the requirement for a unanimous jury verdict in criminal cases was abolished in 1967, marking a significant departure from a centuries-old legal tradition. Majority verdicts are now common practice, yet no research to date explores the origins of this sudden change to the jury system. In contrast, recent research in the US uncovered a connection between the conception of majority verdicts in Louisiana and Jim Crow era law-making, finding that majority verdicts were strategically introduced to suppress the black juror vote and facilitate quicker convictions to fuel free prison labour. The US Supreme Court later outlawed majority verdicts in a case known as Ramos v. Louisiana, amid recognition of their racist origins. Adopting the critical epistemological position guiding the US research, we consider how race and class underpinned the decision to introduce majority verdicts in England and Wales. Drawing on Home Office files and other archival materials, we find that an increase in eligible jurors from different racial and class backgrounds led to a perceived decline in the ‘calibre’ of jurors – reflective of wider public anxieties about Commonwealth immigration, Black Power and white disenfranchisement. We conclude that a desire to dilute the influence of ‘coloured’ migrants on juries contributed to the introduction of majority verdicts in England and Wales.

Race & Class, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231212992 Online First, 2024.

By Ross Miller, Paul Heaton, Haley Sturges

Presumptive field tests for illicit substances have become an integral part of policing. Inexpensive and fast, these tests have become a tool of choice for law enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, they are notoriously imprecise and are known to produce “false positives,” where innocuous legal substances (e.g., baking soda) provide the same result as an illegal substance (e.g., cocaine) and leading to frequent wrongful arrests and wrongful convictions. Although originally developed as a preliminary-only testing method due to their unreliability, these tests have become de facto and inaccurate determinants of guilt or innocence in thousands of cases, causing considerable negative and undeserved consequences for thousands upon thousands of Americans. In the modern U.S. criminal legal “system of pleas, not...of trials” (Lafler v. Cooper, 2012) where 95% of cases are resolved by plea bargain, the unreliability of these tests undermines public trust in the justice system and creates a liability risk for jurisdictions that rely on them. This research report provides the first-ever comprehensive analysis of presumptive drug field test usage across law enforcement agencies in the United States. Utilizing a nationwide survey of agencies, the report offers national estimates on the frequency of test usage, finding that each year approximately 773,000 drug-related arrests involve the use of presumptive tests. Using the survey data and national estimates of drug arrests, this report examines the impact of the tests on wrongful arrests, racial disparities in their use, and their subsequent impact on drug possession prosecutions and dispositions.

 2023. 68p.

By Akhi Johnson, Stephen Roberts, Erin Ross, et al. 

The reform prosecution movement faces a critical moment. With the nationwide uptick in violent crime, reform prosecutors face unprecedented attacks: legislation to limit their discretion, politicians seeking to remove them from office, and demands for recall elections. The movement has weathered the storm, but reform prosecutors need continued support in pursuing agendas aligned with the communities that elected them, and the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) is well positioned to help them do so. In 2017, Vera launched the Reshaping Prosecution initiative in response to a wave of reform prosecutors winning office across the country. Reform prosecutors ran campaigns promising a systemic approach to pursuing justice, and Reshaping Prosecution sought to help them transform those promises into measurable policy changes. Vera piloted an engagement with St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner and her office from 2017 to 2019 that contributed to significant gains for the city. Gleaning lessons learned from that pilot, Vera launched a request for proposal process to select new partners. Vera selected each office based on a vetting process that included the district attorney’s demonstrated commitment to pursuing reforms, community support for reform efforts, sufficient staff capacity to work with the Vera team, and adequate data systems to allow an analysis of office practices. After receiving 14 applications, Vera selected six partners: Boulder County, Colorado; Contra Costa County, California; DeKalb County, Georgia; Ingham County, Michigan; Ramsey County, Minnesota; and Suffolk County, Massachusetts. This report describes Vera’s partnerships with each jurisdiction to take a systemic approach to justice by examining racial disparities and collaborating with the offices and their communities to develop solutions. These partnerships faced significant challenges, beginning with the pandemic, which halted work in the early stages; the racial justice movement in the summer of 2020 and its unique impacts on each jurisdiction; and pushback from opponents of change.   

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 40p.

By  Alissa Pollitz Worden, Kaitlin Moloney, et al.

New York’s groundbreaking 2019 bail reforms aimed to curtail pretrial detention, diminish the role of finances in release decisions, and tackle racial disparities in pretrial outcomes. This study is the first to examine pretrial decision-making in New York’s under-examined Town & Village Justice Courts, addressing a knowledge gap in public understanding and serving as a companion to related research on the topic. This report was authored by DCJ’s partners at The John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety.

1.     Increased Pretrial Release Under Bail Reform:

• Higher percentage of Justice Court cases released without bail for misdemeanors (82% in 2018 vs. 93% in 2021) and nonviolent felonies (59% in 2018 vs. 71% in 2021).

2.     Absence of Racial Disparities in Release Rates:

• Release rates were similar across racial and ethnic groups throughout the study period (both pre- and post-reform).

3.     No Progress Towards Affordable Bail:

• Bail amounts did not become more affordable, and people did not become more likely to post bail, after the reforms went into effect (echoing prior Data Collaborative for Justice research on City and District Courts across the State).

4.     Justice Courts vs. City Courts from the Same Counties:

• Justice Courts released people at higher rates than City Courts both pre- and post-reform. By 2021, less than 7% of people charged with misdemeanors were detained in the Justice Courts compared to 11% in urban City Courts and 13% in small City Courts from the same counties.

Albany, NY:  John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, Inc., 2024. 41p.

By Julius Yam 

Authoritarianism has significant implications for how judges should discharge their duties. How should judges committed to constitutionalism conduct themselves when under authoritarian pressure? To answer this question,the article proposes a two-step adjudicative framework, documents a variety of judicial strategies, and proposes how principles and strategies can and should be incorporated into the framework in different scenarios. The first step of the adjudicative framework involves judges identifying the ‘formal legal position’ while blindfolding themselves to extra-legal factors (such as potential authoritarian backlash). In the second step, depending on the level of risk incurred by maintaining the formal legal position, judges should lift the blindfold to check whether, and if so how, the formal legal position should be supplemented with or adjusted by judicial strategies. Through this analysis, the article offers a guide to judicial reasoning under authoritarianism 

Modern Law Review Limited.(2023) 00(0) MLR 

By U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance

This article provides details about Louisiana’s Orleans Reentry Court Program (ORCP), which originated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola from a desire to equip inmates with vocational, educational, and other skills that could lead to gainful employment and reduce the likelihood of recidivism. The document describes the requirements of the in-jail portion, which involves participants being mentored by other inmates, typically those who are serving life sentences; it also provides details of the probation portion of ORCP. The document notes that after ORCP had been established, one of the program founders recognized that participants suffering from opioid use disorder were lacking the necessary services to maintain their recovery and successfully complete the program. In order to address that, Orleans Parish Criminal District Court applied for and received a fiscal year 2018 Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program grant, which introduced an enhanced substance abuse treatment aspect, including medication-assisted treatment (MAT) services, and more wraparound case management services into the existing reentry court model. The discussion of lessons learned reviews what Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program (COSSAP) covers, and the importance of strategically leveraging available resources.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2020. 4p.

By Lisa Bailey Vavonese and Alysha Hall

Are public defenders the answer hiding in plain sight? Imagine that you are arrested and charged with a crime. You likely have a picture in your mind of how your first interactions with the police, your attorney, and the judge should go— interactions that are fair and just and protect your rights. The picture we paint next is that story. It is simple yet, to many, unfamiliar. We could have told the version that is true for so many people charged with a crime—a story of injustice and unfairness, a story so familiar it feels unchangeable. Instead, what follows is a thought experiment, a sadly unrepresentative one.  

New York: Center for Justice Innovation, 2023. 34p.

By National Institute of Justice, Office for Access to Justice

"Two-thirds of states (34) do not have full statewide oversight of public defense, meaning they do not set standards or monitor whether people receive counsel in all cases where they have a right to it."

In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Access to Justice (ATJ), the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) sponsored a report on public defense system models in recognition of the 60th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right to counsel to indigent persons charged with felonies in state courts. Researchers conducted a national scan of the public defense service models used in state, local, and tribal adult, trial-level, criminal cases. The report addresses the prevalence of different models, factors contributing to how jurisdictions select models, and variations in outcomes associated with each model. The report found that 16 states have a commission and/or statewide defender program overseeing public defense services, while in 34 there are gaps in state oversight. States need a mechanism for monitoring and supporting access to quality public defense counsel. States also need to ensure that the people overseeing and administering public defense do not have professional conflicts of interest. Finally, defender systems need meaningful input on practice and policy from people who have been represented by public defenders or been impacted by the criminal justice system. Recent reform efforts have resulted in more states creating oversight commissions and shifting to greater use of state funds to provide access to quality counsel and public defense delivery methods. Experts recommend states collect data on the percentage of people who enter uncounseled guilty pleas and on defendant characteristics not limited to race and ethnicity to ascertain whether equitable access to counsel is available. Findings are based on interviews with experts and a review and synthesis of publicly available material; the report is a national and current scan of public defense models and is intended to complement research based on more rigorous statistical surveys and program evaluations that may be dated or limited in coverage of jurisdictions. 

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2023. 87p.

By Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Mission in Kosovo
Since 1999, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (“OSCE”) Mission in Kosovo has held a pivotal role in monitoring the justice system in Kosovo for compliance with fair trial and international human rights standards. Trial monitoring is conducted by OSCE personnel in courts across Kosovo, focusing on identifying systemic issues affecting the justice system. The OSCE is concerned that the Kosovo judicial system is not adequately exercising its criminal calendaring authority. The caseload challenges facing the Basic Courts of Kosovo are staggering. During the first three months of 2023, the Basic Courts presided over 46,852 criminal cases: of those 40,707 were inherited and 6,145 cases were newly filed.1 However, only 5,833 cases were resolved leaving 41,019 pending at the end of the three month reporting period. Despite these circumstances, courts2 regularly fail to schedule criminal trials on consecutive or uninterrupted days. This practice exacerbates court backlogs, is an inefficient use of judicial resources, and ultimately creates a barrier to justice. This report analyzes the issue of criminal case backlogs and delays, which is a widespread problem in Kosovo that negatively affects access to justice and the efficient administration of justice. Specifically, the report focuses on how systemic criminal case management practices relating to scheduling trials over a prolonged period of time aggravate criminal case backlogs. The report is based on the direct field monitoring conducted by OSCE staff of criminal hearings observed in 2023. Its purpose is to make actionable recommendations to the relevant judicial system actors in order to improve criminal case management at the trial stage.
Vienna: OSCE, 2023. 16p.

By Adam I. Biener  

  Introduction The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (APA), a non-profit organization composed of US prosecutors, conducted a survey to understand the prevalence of and factors associated with case backlogs. Backlogs occur when a large number of cases are pending before the court for a longer period than typically experienced and/or a period longer than prescribed by the court. In a survey of 50 of the largest prosecutors’ offices conducted by APA in 2020, 14 responding offices reported just under 9,000 cases awaiting trial on average. 1 Following court disruptions due to COVID-19, there was an average increase of 5,565 cases per office, a 62% increase. Case backlogs can occur when the caseload per individual prosecuting attorney rises holding all other productive capability constant. In practice, the level of staffing (measured by caseload per attorney) is extremely varied.2 Further, models of prosecution vary across offices3 and different models can require a different mix of attorney specialties.4 Despite this complexity, office staffing is very idiosyncratic and not often tied to per attorney caseloads1, which can result in significant and potentially burdensome individual caseloads.3 Excessive caseloads for individual attorneys can result in longer case processing time, a greater risk for decision-making errors, increased plea bargains and dismissals, career burnout, and employee turnover. 6 Funding shocks have likely exacerbated the size of individual attorney caseloads over the past 20 years. The great recession following the financial crisis in 2008 reduced state budgets, employment, and payroll, shrinking the resources available to meet staffing and resource requests from prosecutors’ offices,5 leading to rising prosecutor workloads and stagnating or shrinking budgets.6 The expectations of prosecutors and their obligations when working cases have evolved significantly since 2007 due to changing legal requirements and new technologies. Victims’ rights laws, which require additional engagement with victims, increase the amount of time spent on person-involved cases (e.g. CA Prop 9 in 20087 ). There are presently Open Discovery laws in 46 states, up from roughly a third of states in 2004, 8 that increase the requirements for timely evidence collection. Body-worn cameras have become more commonplace for law enforcement, as nearly 50% of 15,238 general-purpose law enforcement agencies had body-worn cameras in 2016.9 Video evidence generated by body-worn cameras are more labor-intensive to review, extending the amount of labor hours required to prepare a case. Additionally, the demand for specialized attorneys to review cases as part of conviction review/integrity units, 10 while improving the equitable administration of justice, can potentially strain limited staffing resources. All of these staffing and resource constraints were tested during the COVID-19 pandemic, which put unusual demands on offices to continue their essential functions despite health concerns and court closures. While many offices were able to adopt new technologies to maintain their functioning, these pivots did not alleviate the rising caseloads and work burdens on individual prosecutors

Washington, DC: The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (APA) , 2024. 19p.

By Andrew Willinger

Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) are civil court orders that temporarily prohibit gun purchase and possession by people who are behaving dangerously and at risk of committing imminent violence. As of September 2023, ERPOs are available in 21 states and the District of Columbia. This Article presents an overview of ERPO laws, the rationale behind their development, and a review and analysis that considers emerging constitutional challenges to these laws (under both the Second Amendment and due process protections) in the post-Bruen era. This Article notes that the presence of multiple constitutional challenges in many ERPOrelated cases has confused judicial analysis and argues that, especially in light of Bruen’s novel text, history, and tradition test, courts should be especially careful to clarify how cumulative-rights arguments are impacting their analysis. An examination of Second Amendment court decisions concerning another type of civil protection order, Domestic Violence Protection Orders, informs the approach used to further consider ERPO rights deprivation claims and the constitutionally relevant distinctions among different civil dispossession proceedings. The Article further considers the state of ERPO law in the context of the evolving evidence documenting the uptake and impact of ERPOs on gun violence in the United States, including a review of scholarship that seeks to  understand how ERPO statutes are being implemented and to determine whether the laws prevent interpersonal gun violence and suicide. Finally, this Article concludes with a commentary and set of recommendations to inform the practice and future scholarship of ERPO as a tool for preventing gun violence in the United States, in accord with constitutional protections in the post-Bruen age.

United States, Number 1 Public Health, History, and the Future Of Gun Regulation after Bruen. 2023, 64pg

By Rainer Forst

Over the past 15 years, Rainer Forst has developed a fundamental research programme within the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The core of this programme is a moral account of the basic right of justification that humans owe to one another as rational beings. This account is put to work by Forst in articulating - both historically and philosophically - the contexts and form of justice and of toleration. The result is a powerful theoretical framework within which to address issues such as transnational justice and multicultural toleration. In this volume, Forst sets out his ideas in an extended essay, which is responded to be influential interlocutors including: Andrea Sangiovanni, Amy Allen, Kevin Olson, Anthony Laden, Eva Erman and Simon Caney. The volume concludes with Forst's response to his interlocutors.

London: Bloomsbury Academic,  2014.  249p.