The role of victims in the criminal trial has been subject to considerable critique in recent years. This article argues that scholarship and policy governing the treatment of victims and witnesses in ‘ordinary’ criminal trials within ‘settled’ societies may be substantially enriched by drawing lessons from the roles of, and practices affecting, victims within post-conflict societies. There is ...

Background: Advocacy is one of the most important institutions that can play a constructive role in the process of achieving justice. The presence of a lawyer in judicial trials will greatly facilitate the discovery of the truth and the prevention of encroachments and violations of citizens' rights. The necessity and importance of the right of defense have made it possible for advanced legal an...

This Article introduces to legal scholarship the first sustained discussion of prison abolition and what I will call a “prison abolitionist ethic.” Prisons and punitive policing produce tremendous brutality, violence, racial stratification, ideological rigidity, despair, and waste. Meanwhile, incarceration and prison-backed policing neither redress nor repair the very sorts of harms they are su...

The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice is seeking applications for funding evaluations of criminal justice technologies. This program furthers the Department’s mission by sponsoring research to provide objective, independent, evidence-based knowledge and tools to meet the challenges of crime and justice, particularly at the State and local levels.

The focus of this manuscript is on the challenges faced by individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities within the criminal justice system. Prevalence data are cited and these data are interpreted in light of possible rationales for the disproportionate number of individuals with disabilities present within the system. Then the specific challenges faced by individuals with disab...

The criminal justice system has traditionally been seen as in the business of doing justice: punishing offenders for crimes committed. Yet, the past decade has brought a shift from punishing past crimes to preventing future crimes through the incarceration and control of dangerous offenders. Habitual offender statutes, like "three strikes" laws, sentence repeat offenders to life imprisonment. J...

This article examines one-year of publicly available criminal judgments from one basic-level rural county court and one intermediate court in Henan Province in order to better understand trends in routine criminal adjudication in China. I present an account of ordinary criminal justice in China that is both familiar and striking: a system that treats serious crimes, in particular those affectin...

Cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost analyses are tools that have been used by public policy analysts for years. Programs as diverse as environmental and land use regulations, welfare benefits, job training programs, and immunization policies have all been analyzed in this manner. Since the early 1980s, Federal regulatory agencies have been required to conduct benefit-cost analyses on major regu...

This essay provides an analytic synthesis of the contribution by economists to the study of crime and the criminal justice system. We begin by summarizing the distinctive features of the economic approach, namely a focus on rational self-seeking behavior and analysis of the consequences of interactions among groups of actors that create equilibria in a system. We then use a taxonomy suggested b...

Bringing a child into contact with the criminal justice system is an extremely difficult issue. Decisions have to be made that will affect that child's future. The first issue to be decided is whether it is even necessary or wise to bring a child before a justice system. Is there a need for justice designed to cope with wayward children? Is it necessary to establish a separate system of justice...