By Malcolm M. Feeley

n his important article, Criminal Justice, Inc., Professor John Rappaport identifies the establishment of a new and novel institution: a private company retained by retail stores to dispose of cases involving shoplifting claims. Still in its infancy, this new development has spawned two private for-profit, specialist companies since 2010: the Corrective Education Company (CEC) and Turning Point Justice CEC alone handles thousands of shoplifting cases annually,

and if some legal technicalities are overcome, these companies may be handling signifi­cantly more in the coming years.

Both companies have the same business model, which Rappaport calls “Criminal Justice, Inc.” (CJ Inc.): Store security guards apprehend shoplifters, but instead of handling matters themselves or calling the police, the guards determine program eligibility according to strictly defined criteria and inform those eligible that they will be contacted by representatives of the CJ Inc. companies.In the subsequent call, CJ Inc. promises that the store will not call the police in exchange for a “tuition” payment to enroll in an online class on how to avoid crime.

Retailers, which include large national chains with aggregate annual sales in the billions of dollars, pay nothing for this service.

This new development, Rappaport tells us, may transform the way shoplifting is handled. In this Response, I place CJ Inc. in a broader context, point to other similar developments earlier and elsewhere, and imagine the future of criminal adjudication in a world of “CJ Incs.” After highlighting Rappaport’s central findings, I examine the model from two perspectives. First, I consider CJ Inc. from a historical and comparative perspective to show it is not so new: This sort of self-help is a time-honored practice found across all stratified societies. Second, I explore this phenomenon in light of practices common in many segmented socie­ties. Here, too, there is a substantial body of research on legal plu­ralism, which shows that alternatives to govern­mental systems of social control are common, even in criminal law matters, and even in modern societies. The introduction of CJ Inc. into contemporary American stores is one more instance of creative adap­tation within segmented institu­tions. The examination of social control in stratified and segmented societies reveals a great deal about the nature and the limits of the crimi­nal law, the limits of the state’s ostensible monopoly on the enforcement of criminal law, and the possible future of CJ Inc. and other related developments.

In this Response, I show that Rappaport has identified some­thing of a paradigm case in the amalgamation of stratified and seg­mented struc­tures that facilitate opportunities for expanded forms of private criminal justice administration. If I am correct, the implications for the expansion of CJ Inc. are enormous. Part I examines the social dimension of shoplift­ing and provides a thumbnail sketch of retail jus­tice. Part II examines self-help in stratified and segmented societies and explores the implica­tions of treating department stores as both stratified and seg­mented institutions. Part III identifies other stratified or segmented set­tings and explores the nature of existing CJ Inc.-like institutions and others that may emerge. The list is long, suggesting that CJ Inc. has a bright future. The conclusion addresses some implications stemming from the likely development of CJ Inc., especially as it affects both public law enforce­ment and the expansion of private adjudication in criminal law.

Columbia Law Review Online, Vol. 119, March 2019

By Jackie O'Brien

As American society has reckoned with the harmful effects of mass incarceration, there has been a push to consider alternative forms of achieving justice. Restorative justice is one such method. A transformative approach to conflict resolution inspired by the traditions and practices of indigenous peoples, restorative justice offers a comprehensive means of addressing harm, emphasizing the community, rather than the single act that caused harm. Many jurisdictions and communities have turned to restorative justice to divert cases from the punitive criminal legal system. While there are variations in programs and approaches, many communities integrate restorative justice practices as a means of addressing harm caused by young people. Applying a restorative approach, these initiatives seek to undermine the harmful, life-long effects that interaction with the criminal legal system imposes upon young people.

These restorative alternatives operate against the backdrop of the punitive system, leading scholars, practitioners, and community members to raise concerns about the lack of procedural protections in place for individuals proceeding through these diversionary programs. Because the proceedings are less adversarial in nature, the legal community has sounded the alarm about the potential for self-incrimination, coercion, and less zealous advocacy by counsel. This unease is further compounded by the fact that failure to complete the requirements of these programs can lead to a referral back to the traditional criminal legal system.

The Restorative Justice Community Court of Chicago (RJCC) is one such alternative. Created in 2017, there are now three RJCCs operating in the North Lawndale, Englewood, and Avondale communities. This Comment seeks to analyze the due process concerns raised by members of the legal and restorative justice communities through the lens of the North Lawndale RJCC. Drawing on knowledge gained through my personal observations and interviews, it is clear that due process violations do not present a substantial threat to the success of the RJCC. Programs like the RJCC operate in a gray zone between the legal rigidity of the criminal legal system and the community-oriented approach adopted by the restorative justice community. This framework urges us to evaluate these programs through an alternative lens so that we can better understand their contributions to furthering justice while remaining aware of their shortcomings to create fully restorative spaces.

113 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 685 (2023).

By Anna VanCleave

The death penalty has gained its legitimacy from the belief that capital prosecutions are more procedurally rigorous than noncapi-tal prosecutions. This Article reveals how a project of heightened capital standards, set in motion when the Supreme Court ended and then revived the death penalty, was set up to fail.

In establishing what a constitutional death penalty would look like, the Court in 1976 called for heightened standards of reliability in capital cases. In the late 1970s and early 80s, the Supreme Court laid out specific constitutional procedures that must be applied in capital cases, and left the door open for the Eighth Amendment to do even more. In the decades that followed, state and federal courts have fueled a perception of heightened procedural rigor in capital cases by referring repeatedly to the heightened standards applica-ble in capital cases.

However, a review of courts’ application of a standard of “heightened reliability” reveals that (1) courts routinely use the language of “heightened” standards while simultaneously applying exactly the same constitutional tests that are used in noncapital cas-es and demonstrating no serious effort to tie procedural rigor to the severity of punishment; and (2) even more problematic, some courts have shown a willingness to use the “heightened reliability” lan-guage to justify a lesser procedural protection for capital defend-ants than that applied to noncapital cases—a perverse application of what was clearly intended to be an added measure of assurance that the death penalty is reserved only for those who are truly guilty and who are the most culpable.

This decades-long failure to observe meaningfully heightened constitutional standards calls into question the death penalty’s in-stitutional legitimacy and raises particular concerns in light of cur-rent Supreme Court trends.

University of Illinois Law Review, Forthcoming. 47 Pages Posted: 19 Apr 2023

By Akhi Johnson and Stephen Roberts 

Prosecutors wield tremendous power. They decide whom to charge— and with what offense—whether to ask for bail, when to provide evidence to the defense, and what plea offer to make. For decades, prosecutors have used their discretion in ways that contributed to mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal legal system.1 Yet, despite their immense power, prosecutors had largely not been the focus of criminal legal system reform efforts until relatively recently.2 Starting around 2015, with the help of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Color of Change, communities across the nation have begun to demand that their elected prosecutors adopt a new approach that reflects the communities’ priorities.3 As a result, a wave of reform prosecutors has won elections, and reelections, throughout the country.4 In 2017, the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) launched the Reshaping Prosecution program to help reform prosecutors transform their campaign promises into data-informed policies and practices.5 The program has three goals: (1) to end mass incarceration, (2) to reduce racial disparities in the system, and (3) to help offices be more accountable and transparent to their communities. The program aims to achieve these goals primarily through strategic site engagements during which Vera researchers, former prosecutors, and other programmatic staff assist offices with data analysis, new policy creation, and training on the reforms for line prosecutors. Vera’s review relies primarily on data from the office’s case management system and focuses on key decision points in the life of a case so that prosecutors can gain insights into how their decisions are contributing to mass incarceration and racial disparities. This report provides an overview of Vera’s pilot engagement with the St. Louis City Circuit Attorney’s Office (CAO). It begins by discussing why Vera partnered with CAO and then details the stages of the engagement, initial lessons from the data, and some policy recommendations. The report concludes with some successes and an important lesson learned about the persistence of racial disparities that will inform the program’s future work to reshape how prosecutors do justice.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2020. 26p.

By Jaeok Kim, Cherrell Green, Alex Boldin, Quinn Hood, and Shirin Purkayastha

In April 2019, New York passed historic bail reform that was intended to reduce the use of pretrial detention. The impact was quick and sizable: from April 2019 to March 2020, the number of people incarcerated in New York jails decreased by more than 30 percent. The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic further decreased the number of people in jail. In July 2020, a daily average of 11,000 people were incarcerated in local jails across New York, hitting a two-decade low.1 Two-thirds of these people were incarcerated in jails outside of New York City. This report provides an extensive look at how five counties—Albany, Broome, Erie, Tompkins, and Ulster—implemented key provisions of the bail reform law. The analysis incorporates multiple data sources, including arrest, jail, and pretrial supervision administrative data; court observations; and system actor interviews. The major findings are as follows: 1. Changes in pretrial admissions and likelihood of pretrial detention § Across the counties, pretrial populations decreased more than 35 percent after the implementation of bail reform. § The likelihood of pretrial detention after arrest decreased by more than 35 percent after the implementation of bail reform. 2. Putting policy into practice: Findings from 300 virtual court observations § Mandatory release effectively limited the use of money bail. § Prosecutors and judges relied on money bail where still allowed. Judges set bail in about a quarter of all arraignments and for almost 60 percent of cases with qualifying charges. § When setting bail, judges rarely considered ability to pay and often set bail above defense counsel requests. In more than 70 percent of cases for which judges set bail, discussion about the person’s ability to pay remained absent from their arraignment hearing. § Prosecutors and judges relied on criminal history and severity of charge when assessing bail in more than a quarter of cases in which bail was set. § Although it occurred rarely, the 2020 amendments to bail reform allowed judges to use ambiguity in the statutes to set bail on charges that otherwise required mandatory release. 3. Twenty-six system actors’ perceptions of bail reform § More than 90 percent of system actors interviewed supported the bail reforms. § Virtual arraignments, introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, hampered attorney–client communication. Defendants faced many barriers in returning to court, including substance use, mental health, and financial struggles. § Inconsistent practices in local and county courts created challenges to the successful implementation of the law. 4. Changes in the use of pretrial supervision after bail reform implementation § The number of people admitted to pretrial supervision in Albany, Broome, and Ulster Counties decreased by more than one-third immediately after bail reform went into effect. § COVID-19 resulted in short-term declines in pretrial supervision admissions in Albany, Broome, and Ulster Counties, and a more prolonged effect in Erie County. § The share of new supervision admissions for misdemeanor cases dropped more than 30 percent at the beginning of the pandemic, then returned to prepandemic levels. § Variations in the use of release conditions reveal different court practices across counties. § Less than 15 percent of new pretrial supervision cases ended in revocation within six months, mostly for felony rearrest or failure to appear.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2022. 47p.

By Akhi Johnson, et al.

In 2020, after a request for proposal process, Vera began partnerships with prosecutors’ offices in six jurisdictions: Boulder County, Colorado; Contra Costa County, California; DeKalb County, Georgia; Ingham County, Michigan; Ramsey County, Minnesota; and Suffolk County, Massachusetts. The partnerships were initially slated to run for 12–18 months, but the pandemic and the 2020 racial justice movement required adapting and lengthening those engagements to two years. Three goals guided the partnerships: reducing mass incarceration, addressing racial disparities, and increasing accountability to those most impacted by the criminal legal system. Prosecutors wield tremendous power, as their decisions reach nearly every aspect of the criminal legal system. They decide whom to charge—and with what offense; whether to ask for bail; when to provide evidence to the defense; what plea offer to make; what sentence to recommend; and, in some instances, whether someone should receive parole. However, prosecutors have the greatest influence at charging, when they decide whether someone enters the criminal legal system, and their charging discretion is virtually unchecked. Although Vera helped each office to examine its impact at every discretion point, the primary focus was on how to reduce harms at charging—through who was charged, what crime was charged, and who could be diverted away from traditional prosecution. Vera’s approach to addressing racial disparities focused on systemic issues rather than potential biases of individual actors. Rather than analyze whether similarly situated people received different treatment based on their race, Vera highlighted broader trends to illustrate which communities the criminal legal system impacts most and in what ways. For example, Vera’s analysis revealed that although Black people represent 55 percent of DeKalb County, Georgia’s population, they made up 81 percent of the adult caseload, 79 percent of juvenile cases, and 93 percent of children charged as adults.2 Rather than seeking to determine who was at fault, Vera’s analysis describes trends and starts conversations within communities about the historical and societal factors contributing to disparities and how stakeholders can respond. For each partnership, a key goal was to help prosecutors be more accountable to communities impacted by their decisions. In many areas around the country, people do not know who their elected prosecutors are, let alone how an office’s decisions affect safety in their communities. That gap represents a missed opportunity to learn from people uniquely positioned to inform policy discussions, and it leaves communities ill-equipped to gauge the performance of their elected officials. Vera worked in partnership with each office to facilitate the public sharing of data to inform communities and ground conversations on potential reform efforts. As one community group noted, Vera’s engagement “has made our prosecutor more aware of the need for a greater relationship with the community. . . . [W]e have a lot of systemic issues . . . [and] Vera’s presence has allowed us to continue to push the conversations forward.” Multiple factors impacted each office’s ability to implement reforms during the engagements, but the political climate was most significant. With increased scrutiny of reform prosecutors and false narratives that communities had to choose between safety and reform, some jurisdictions faced unique challenges in announcing changes. Vera worked with each jurisdiction to assess what was feasible in the current moment and adjusted accordingly. Despite the political climate, our partners made significant strides—including a groundbreaking policy in Ramsey County, Minnesota, inspired by Philando Castile’s death, to deter non– public safety (pretextual) traffic stops. However, even when an office did not announce a particular policy, Vera observed shifts in how prosecutors approached cases based on discussions prompted by the engagements. As partner offices noted, Vera’s work prompted new discussions about how to assess cases and revealed problem areas. One prosecutor reflected that the engagement “changed the way I think about my job and my role . . . being more mindful about the decision to charge somebody with a felony, and, you know, even if that case is later dismissed, the impact that can have on them.”

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

by Duren Banks, Lynn Langton, Madison Fann, Michael G. Planty, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Brian A. Jackson, Dulani Woods

The systems that provide counsel for indigent adult and juvenile defendants in the United States vary considerably across states, localities, and judicial jurisdictions. In addition to the challenges associated with the myriad systems for providing indigent defense, there are other inherent challenges to providing effective defense counsel. These challenges include a lack of sufficient resources in general, access to investigators and other support staff, workload standards and other standards to support effective representation, strategies to support the recruitment and retention of quality counsel dedicated to indigent defense, and specialized training and other needs related to the provision of public defense with certain clients or cases.

On behalf of the National Institute of Justice, RTI International and RAND Corporation researchers conducted an environmental scan to develop a set of information gaps or research priorities that, if addressed, could advance knowledge around effective indigent defense strategies. In the scan, the researchers (1) explored the literature around the needs of the indigent defense field, (2) obtained input from leading practitioners through individual interviews, group discussion, and interactive feedback, and (3) reviewed the priorities of federal and private research and practitioner organizations.

Key Findings

• There is a lack of basic descriptive data about indigent defendants (e.g., which defendants have lawyers representing them and which are deprived of lawyers).

• Many jurisdictions are not equipped to provide pre-court or pre-charge representation.

• Excessive caseloads have an impact on the quality of representation, the ability to adhere to professional practice standards, and client-attorney relationships; that impact is not well understood.

• In some jurisdictions, there is limited or no access to attorneys with the qualifications, experience, and desire needed to represent people in criminal cases who are unable to afford counsel.

• In many jurisdictions, particularly rural communities, there is limited or inconsistent access to the nonattorney case support needed to provide quality indigent defense representation.

• It is difficult to hire qualified and diverse indigent defense attorneys.

• Because of the differing systems for assigning counsel across the United States, many defendants who are accused of misdemeanors or other lower-level crimes do not receive the assistance of counsel when facing pretrial detention or fines, fees, or other penalties associated with a guilty plea.

• There is a lack of understanding about the extent to which the racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds of indigent defense attorneys affect the experiences of the clients they serve.

• Emerging research shows that holistic defense strategies, which address co-occurring and collateral factors associated with criminal cases, hold promise for advancing justice and improving outcomes for individuals and communities.

Recommendations

• Require courts to collect descriptive data on which defendants have representation; leverage this information to answer research questions.

• Assess innovative options used in some jurisdictions to provide earlier access to a lawyer.

• Examine areas with different levels of caseloads and examine the differences across a broad variety of outcomes and impacts and for different types of clients and cases.

• Conduct research that offers a more nuanced understanding of the administration of indigent defense in small, rural areas.

• Conduct research to identify the impacts of nonattorney case support on case outcomes.

• Explore strategies for expanding access to paraprofessional expertise.

• Study other systems that are working well.

• Conduct research on the scope of rules, practices, and resource decisions that limit access to counsel.

• Obtain client perspectives on differences in the level and quality of representation received through public defense and noninstitutional representation systems; focus on reducing those differences.

• Conduct research to identify the full scope of issues that make it difficult to recruit qualified and diverse attorneys.

• Develop undergraduate and law school internship programs and defense counsel pipelines.

• Evaluate training opportunities; determine whether training is effective and under what circumstances.

• Conduct research on the complexities that public defense attorneys face and the support and resources needed to successfully manage these complexities.

• Engage with defendants to get their perspectives on what quality counsel means and how it is operationalized.

• Conduct research to connect outcomes with what indigent defense attorneys are doing to understand the types of engagement that are most effective.

• Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 20p.

By Catherine L. Crooke

Research on the temporal dimensions of international migration focuses on how migrants experience time. This study instead turns attention to public interest lawyers, whose work plays a crucial role in ensuring favorable legal outcomes for immigrants, in order to consider time’s salience within the US asylum context. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork with Los Angeles-based public interest asylum attorneys, this article argues that lawyers confront both weaponized efficiency and weaponized inefficiency in the course of representing asylum seekers. Advocates must rush to keep pace, on the one hand, as various state actors accelerate asylum processes and, on the other, find ways to advance clients’ interests even as state agencies selectively slow procedures to a standstill. These findings affirm that temporal contradictions define the US asylum system. Further, they demonstrate that lawyers experience these contradictions not as natural phenomena but, rather, as temporal violence: in a range of contexts, government action mobilizes time— whether actively or passively—in the service of migration control.

Law & Social Inquiry , First View , pp. 1 - 28

By Doron Teichman, Eyal Zamir, Ilana Ritov

Previous studies of judgment and decision-making in adjudication have largely focused on juries and judges. This body of work demonstrated that legal training and professional experience sometimes affect attitudes and mitigate the susceptibility to cognitive biases, but often they do not. Relatively few experimental studies examined the decisions of prosecutors and defense lawyers, although they play a major role, especially in legal systems where prosecutors have a broad discretion in charging decisions, courts' discretion regarding sentencing is constrained, and plea bargains abound. This study directly compares laypersons, law students, and legal practitioners—including prosecutors and defense lawyers—in terms of their attitudes about the criminal justice system and their cognitive biases. It was found that the outcome bias and the anti-inference bias influenced all groups similarly, but an irrelevant anchor only impacted the decisions of laypersons and law students, and not those of legal professionals. Prosecutors were significantly more inclined to judge a behavior as negligent and reach factual conclusions supporting a conviction. However, the hypothesis that the susceptibility of prosecutors and defense lawyers to cognitive biases would be affected by their role was not borne out. The article considers possible explanations for the reported findings, and discusses their policy implications.

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies published by Cornell Law School and Wiley Periodicals

By Maresi Starzmann and Andrew Taylor

The reform prosecution movement faces a critical moment. With the recent uptick in violent crime, reform prosecutors face unprecedented attacks and calls for a return to “tough-on-crime” tactics. Those attacks rest on the false belief that criminal legal system reforms endanger public safety. To sustain the movement, reform prosecutors must build the case that their approach will make communities safer, and the Vera Institute of Justice’s (Vera’s) Reshaping Prosecution initiative is well-positioned to help them do so. Reshaping Prosecution works with prosecutors to build evidence that alternatives to incarceration offer a better path to safer communities. In doing that work, Vera centers race equity and emphasizes collaborating with communities because the path to solutions begins with the voices of those most proximate to the issues. Vera’s partnership with Wyandotte County District Attorney (DA) Mark Dupree’s office from 2019 to 2022 represented a unique pilot to center marginalized voices in prosecution reform efforts. Vera provided its traditional quantitative analysis of racial inequities to highlight

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 38p.

By Liz Komar and Nicole D. Porter

After 50 years of mass incarceration, the United States faces a reckoning. While crime is far below its peak in the early 1990s,1 the country continues to struggle with an unacceptable amount of gun violence.2 Meanwhile, the drug war harms too many Americans and has failed to prevent fatal overdoses from reaching an all-time high.3 A great imbalance in our national approach to public safety, one that relies too heavily on the criminal legal system, has produced excessive levels of punishment and a diversion of resources from investments that would strengthen the capacity of families and communities to address the circumstances that contribute to crime. This report offers five recommendations for policymakers and community members to potentially improve safety without deepening our reliance on extreme sentencing:

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 10p.

By Richard L. Vining Jr. and Teena Wilhelm

Administering Justice examines the leadership role of chief justices in the American states, including how those duties require chief justices to be part of the broader state political environment. Vining and Wilhelm focus extensively on the power of chief justices as public spokespersons, legislative liaisons, and reform leaders. In contrast to much existing research on chief justices in the states, this study weighs their extrajudicial responsibilities rather than intracourt leadership. By assessing the content of State of the Judiciary remarks delivered over a period of sixty years, Vining and Wilhelm are able to analyze the reform agendas advanced by chief justices and determine what factors influence the likelihood of success. These analyses confirm that chief justices engage with state politics in meaningful ways and that reactions to their proposals are influenced by ideological congruence with other political elites and the scope of their requests. Administering Justice also examines the chief justice position as an institution, provides a collective profile of its occupants, and surveys growing diversity among court leaders.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2023. 189p.

Edited by Olaf Halvorsen Rønning and Ole Hammerslev

his edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the differences and similarities between civil legal aid schemes in the Nordic countries whilst outlining recent legal aid transformations in their respective welfare states. Based on in-depth studies of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, the authors compare these cases with legal aid in Europe and the US to examine whether a single, unique Nordic model exists. Contextualizing Nordic legal aid in relation to welfare ideology and human rights, Hammerslev and Halvorsen Rønning consider whether flaws in the welfare state exist, and how legal aid affects disadvantaged citizens. Concluding that the five countries all have very different legal aid schemes, the authors explore an important general trend: welfare states increasingly outsourcing legal aid to the market and the third sector through both membership organizations and smaller voluntary organizations. A methodical and compas sionate text, this book will be of special interest to scholars and students of the criminal justice, the welfare state, and the legal aid system.

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 345p.

By Catrina Denvir, Jacqueline Kinghan, Jessica Mant, Daniel Newman

Legal aid lawyers provide a critical function in supporting individuals to address a range of problems. These are problems that commonly intersect with issues of social justice, including crime, homelessness, domestic violence, family breakdown and educational exclusion. However, the past few decades have seen a clear retreat from the tenets of the welfare state, including, as part of this, the reduced availability of legal aid. This book examines the impact of austerity and related policies on those at the coalface of the legal profession. It documents the current state of the sector as well as the social and economic factors that make working in the legal aid profession more challenging than ever before.

Through data collected via the Legal Aid Census 2021, the book is underpinned by the accounts of over 1000 current and former legal aid lawyers. These accounts offer a detailed demography and insight into the financial, cultural and other pressures forcing lawyers to give up publicly funded work. This book combines a mixture of quantitative and qualitative analysis, allowing readers a broad appreciation of trends in the legal aid profession.

This book will equip readers with a thorough knowledge of legal aid lawyers in England and Wales, and aims to stimulate debate as to the fate of access to justice and legal aid in the future.

London: Bloomsbury Academic/Hart, 2023. 304p.

Edited by Diane Kirkby

This collection brings methods and questions from humanities, law and social sciences disciplines to examine different instances of lawmaking. Contributors explore the problematic of past law in present historical analysis across indigenous Australia and New Zealand, from post-Franco Spain to current international law and maritime regulation, from settler colonial humanitarian debates to efforts to end cruelty to children and animals. They highlight problems both national and international in their implication. From different disciplines and theoretical positions, they illustrate the diverse and complex study of law’s history.

Canberra: Australian National University, 2011. 236p.

By Stina Bergman Blix and Åsa Wettergren

Professional Emotions in Court examines the paramount role of emotions in the legal professions and in the functioning of the democratic judicial system. Based on extensive interview and observation data in Sweden, the authors highlight the silenced background emotions and the tacitly habituated emotion management in the daily work at courts and prosecution offices. Following participants ‘backstage’ – whether at the office or at lunch – in order to observe preparations for and reflections on the performance in court itself, this book sheds light on the emotionality of courtroom interactions, such as professional collaboration, negotiations, and challenges, with the analysis of micro-interactions being situated in the broader structural regime of the legal system – the emotive-cognitive judicial frame – throughout. A demonstration of the false dichotomy between emotion and reason that lies behind the assumption of a judicial system that operates rationally and without emotion, Professional Emotions in Court reveals how this assumption shapes professionals’ perceptions and performance of their work, but hampers emotional reflexivity, and questions whether the judicial system might gain in legitimacy if the role of emotional processes were recognized and reflected upon.

London; New York: Routledge, 2018. 209p.

By The National Institute of Corrections, Justice-Involved Veterans Network.

This white paper is a collaboration between the National Institute of Corrections, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Institute of Corrections-sponsored Justice-Involved Veterans Network. This effort reflects the original Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) that was developed in the early 2000s by Mark Munetz, MD, and Patricia A. Griffin, PhD, along with Henry J. Steadman, PhD, of Policy Research Associates, Inc. The original intent of the Sequential Intercept Model was to “envision a series of ‘points of interception’ or opportunities for an intervention to prevent individuals with mental illness from entering or penetrating deeper into the criminal justice system” (Munetz & Griffin, 2006). The current project builds on prior efforts to adapt (as V-SIM) the original SIM to the justice-involved veterans population challenged by various forms and degrees of mental illness, as well as by substance abuse, and by the trauma from physical injuries (with psychological trauma-overlapping Traumatic Brain Injury of particular note). Each decision point in the criminal justice system represents an opportunity to intercede at the lowest level possible and to minimize the collateral consequences of a veteran getting more deeply involved in the justice system.

Washington, DC: NIC, 2023. 120p.

ByNational Center for State Courts

A mindfulness program offered through a free, mobile app and weekly webinar meetings showed promise for increasing mindfulness and well-being and reducing stress among a convenience sample of individuals who work in and with courts. Because of the high attrition rates, common to these types of studies, the findings are promising but should be interpreted with caution. Additional research to build the evidence on mindfulness programs for the court community is encouraged. Among those who participated, feedback about the program was largely positive. Participants found the mobile app userfriendly and engaging, and the half-hour weekly webinars with a mindfulness instructor useful and engaging. Results suggest that building a judicial education mindfulness program around a mobile app is a cost-effective approach that is flexible to implement and helps some in the court community enhance their mindfulness and well-being and reduce their stress. Future mindfulness programs should include evaluations to further our knowledge on which features of the programs are of greatest benefit to participants and whether the programs are more likely to affect well-being and stress in distinct subsets of the court community

Williamsburg, VA: National Center for State Courts, 2023. 7p.

By Jaeok Kim, Quinn Hood, and Elliot Connors

Over the last decade, thousands of New Yorkers have been held in jail pretrial, largely because they could not afford to pay bail. In April 2019, New York legislators passed bail reform bills updating a set of laws that had remained largely untouched since 1971. The laws, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, made release before trial automatic for most people accused of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. In cases that remained eligible for bail—including violent felonies and some domestic violence- or sex-related charges—the law mandated that the judge consider a person’s ability to pay bail. However, an organized, immediate backlash by the opponents of bail reform led the New York legislature to amend the law in April 2020, only three months after the original reform went into effect. Meanwhile, in March 2020, New York became an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic changed the way the criminal legal system operated. Court hearings, including arraignments, became virtual. Jury trials were cancelled. And, understanding that jails could become COVID-19 hotspots and drive outbreaks outside of the jails, some court actors across the state began working to reduce jail populations. This report by the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) is the first to examine the impact of April 2019’s bail reform in New York State by exploring trends in jail populations and admissions in New York City and a sample of counties

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2021. 44p.

By Brad Lander

The purpose of bail is to ensure that a person who is arrested returns to court for trial. However, in practice, the impact of bail has been to detain tens of thousands of New Yorkers, presumed innocent, before trial and cost low-income families tens of millions of dollars every year. To address these concerns, in April 2019 the New York State Legislature passed sweeping reforms to state bail laws. The guiding principle was that no one should be jailed because they are too poor to pay bail. The law prohibited bail-setting for most misdemeanor and non-violent felony charges, required judges to consider a person’s ability to pay before setting bail, and required that defendants have at least three options for making bail, including less onerous options. In the ramp-up to implementation of bail reform on January 1, 2020, the jail population dropped quickly, falling from about 7,100 on November 1, 2019 to 5,800 on January 1, 2020 and to 5,500 on February 1, 2020. When COVID-19 hit the city in March 2020, the jail population fell further, temporarily falling below 4,000 as arrests dropped and efforts were made to reduce the incarcerated population, including those at greater risk of severe illness, during the pandemic

New York: Office of the City Comptroller, Bureau of Budget and Bureau of Policy and Research 2022. 17p.