Risk Assessment in Sentencing and Plea Bargaining: The Roles of Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys

Evidence law controls what information will be admissible in court and when, how, and by whom it may be presented. It shapes not only the trial...

On January 1, 2022, the most radical change to the American jury in at least thirty-five years occurred in Arizona: peremptory strikes, long a feature...

Berryessa et al. (2022) consider how prior experience as a criminal prosecutor may influence judicial behaviour, but their concerns about prior...

For several days, former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in a Georgia election interference case trickled into the Fulton County Jail...

Virginia adopted a risk assessment to help determine sentencing for sex offenders. It was incorporated as a one-way ratchet toward higher sentences...

Courts routinely use low cash bail as a financial incentive to ensure that released defendants appear in court and abstain from crime. This can create...

We examined how the presentation of risk assessment results and the race of the person charged affected pretrial court actors’ recommendations to...

In our increasingly polarized society, claims that prosecutions are politically motivated, racially motivated, or just plain arbitrary are more common...

As social scientists seek to communicate research about what works in policing to police executives, they overlook important players in determining...

Across multiple national surveys sampling more than 12,000 people, we have found that a majority of Americans, more than 60 percent, consider false...

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. – Victor Hugo

Analogous to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s critique of his leaders’ decision to use punishment as a...

Sometimes a police officer can only stop a fleeing suspect by striking or shooting him. When is it morally justified to use such force rather than let...

William Blackstone famously expressed the view that convicting the innocent constitutes a much more serious error than acquitting the guilty. This...

This Article aims to reorient the conversation around "failure-to-appear" (FTA) in criminal court. Recent policy and scholarship have addressed FTA...

The practice of assessing and adjudicating competence for criminal adjudication in the United States developed largely without assistance from the U.S...

In 2003, the American Bar Association established a Task Force on Mental Disability and the Death Penalty to further specify and implement the Supreme...

Gun-related violence and suicide in the United States are serious public health problems that are concentrated among young adults, especially those...