By Sigurd S. Arntzen, Jon H. Fiva, Rune J. Sørensen

This paper assesses the effectiveness of democratic systems in preventing individuals with criminal backgrounds from holding political office. Unlike many countries, Norway has no legal restrictions against felons running for office. We analyze local election candidates from 2003 to 2019, paired with administrative records of criminal offenses. We demonstrate that individuals with criminal records are systematically penalized at every stage of their political careers. Candidates are less likely to have criminal records than the general population, with elected officials less likely to have criminal backgrounds than their unelected peers, and mayors being the most lawful. Through a series of counterfactual exercises, we demonstrate that the most significant reduction in criminal involvement occurs at the nomination stage, especially within established local party organizations.

CESifo, Munich, 2024, 49 p.

By Unity Consulting Scotland

Over the course of the past few years PCS has consistently heard from our members about the workload pressures facing them in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) and the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service (SCTS). The growing understanding of the issues facing staff led PCS to commission UNITY Consulting Scotland to conduct research into the experiences of the COPFS and SCTS workforces. This report is based on the voices and viewpoints of workers in COPFS and SCTS. The views of the workers who took part in this research confirm what we already knew about the challenges they are facing and the impact this is having on them and the delivery of justice. They must be listened to and changes must be made to improve their working environment.

Edinburgh: Unity Consulting, 2024. 132p.

By Sean Garcia-Leys, Meigan Thompson, Christyn Richardson

Gang allegations made by law enforcement agents frequently prevent undocumented immigrants from gaining legal status for which they would be otherwise eligible. These allegations, made without any of the hallmarks of due process, also increase the likelihood an undocumented immigrant will be prioritized for deportation or held in immigration detention. Policy makers, elected officials, and even the law enforcement agents who make these gang allegations are often unaware of the immigration effects of these allegations. This report documents the findings of the UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic (IRC) based on the IRC’s legal representation of affected immigrants, collaboration with community organizations and other legal service providers, interviews with law enforcement agents, and review of scholarly literature. First, the IRC found that gang allegations have a high risk of error as they are primarily made based on the subjective beliefs of law enforcement agents in the field and are usually made without any connection to a specific crime. This high risk of error is corroborated by the fact that these allegations are overwhelmingly made against African-Americans and Latinos. Second, the IRC learned that these allegations are stored in computer databases that are networked to other agencies, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Third, the IRC learned that these allegations negatively affect the eligibility of undocumented immigrants for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and other forms of immigration relief. Fourth, the IRC learned that gang allegations also affect the treatment of immigrants held in immigration detention. Considering these findings, the IRC recommends that law enforcement agencies be required to: (1) provide notice to every person who law enforcement agents document as a gang member, (2) improve existing notice practices, and (3) offer neutral review hearings where people erroneously documented as gang members may contest that documentation. By providing these basic hallmarks of due process to those law enforcement agents suspect of gang membership, the risk of unintended immigration harms to people erroneously documented as gang members can be greatly reduced.  

Irvine, CA: UCI School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic , 2016. 30p.

By Kate Weisburd

In virtually all areas of law, the home is the ultimate constitutionally protected area, at least in theory. In practice, a range of modern institutions that target private life—from public housing to child welfare—have turned the home into a routinely surveilled space. Indeed, for the 4.5 million people on criminal court supervision, their home is their prison, or what I call a “carceral home.” Often in the name of decarceration, prison walls are replaced with restrictive rules that govern every aspect of private life and invasive surveillance technology that continuously records intimate information. While prisons have always been treated in the law as sites of punishment and diminished privacy, homes have not. Yet in the carceral home people have little privacy in the place where they presumptively should have the most. If progressive state interventions are to continue, some amount of home surveillance is surely inevitable. But these trends raise a critical, underexplored question: When the home is carceral, what is, or should be, left of the home as a protected area? This Article addresses that question. Descriptively, it draws on a fifty-state analysis of court supervision rules to reveal the extent of targeted invasions of intimate life in the name of rehabilitation or an alternative to prison, rendering the home a highly surveilled space. Normatively, it argues that allowing this state of affairs with no corresponding adaptations in legal doctrine is untenable. With the home no longer sacred and no limiting principle to take its place, millions of people are left with no meaningful protection from government surveillance, even (or especially) in their home. Left unchecked, the carceral home further entrenches the precise racial, economic, disability, and gender inequities that often inspire reform efforts. Instead, as this Article recommends, privacy and security must be recognized as positive entitlements separate from physical homes

103 B.U. L. Rev. 1879 (2023

By Besiki Luka Kutateladze 

Goals & objectives The goal of this study is to enhance public safety and community well-being through effective identification, investigation, and prosecution of antiLGBTQ hate crimes in Miami. This important goal was achieved by examining: victimization experiences, victim and offender characteristics, crime reporting outcomes, victimization consequences, case processing, as well as the criminal justice system’s challenges and opportunities for reform. The project focuses on the hate crime victimization within Miami’s Latine community. Research questions What is the prevalence of the anti-LGBTQ hate crime victimization? What are the victim and offender demographic characteristics? What are the barriers for crime reporting and for victim cooperation with law enforcement? What are the predictors of crime reporting? What are the consequences of victimization? How does the criminal justice system identify, process, and dispose of hate crimes? What are the challenges for reporting and case processing? What type of evidence is used by law enforcement for determining the hate motivation? What are the opportunities for reforming police and prosecutorial capacity for tackling hate crimes? Research design The study employs a mixed-methods design using quantitative and qualitative data from victim interviews, case file reviews, and practitioner interviews. 400 LGBTQ individuals who have been victims of a crime have been interviewed using a three-stage venue-based sampling. Furthermore, all hate crimes disposed of by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office between June 2005 and July 2019 (n = 23) were reviewed to collect data on specific offenses, case processing, and disposition outcomes. Finally, 10 semi-structured in-depth interviews were carried out with prosecutors, police detectives, and service providers to assess the practitioners’ perceptions of the problem and opportunities for reforming the system. Applicability of the research The research yielded significant recommendations for law enforcement, the LGBTQ advocacy groups, and the research and academic community. The findings help police and prosecutors develop more effective internal policies and practices for identifying and investigating hate crimes, processing them accordingly, and providing assistance to crime victims. This increased awareness will likely bolster confidence in the justice system, and have significant justice and public safety implications through increased reporting and cooperation with police and prosecutors.  

Miami: Florida International University, 2020.   157p.