Criminal Misdemeanor Theory and Practice

Author(s):  
Alexandra Natapoff

The misdemeanor system is a powerful governance tool. Comprising the vast bulk of the U.S. criminal process, it exerts enormous influence over the disadvantaged populations that are its primary clientele, and profoundly shapes the general character of American criminal justice. Characterized largely by speed, informality, and law enforcement discretion, the petty offense process generates millions of criminal convictions and burdensome punishments in ways that depart significantly from the standard due process model of adversarial adjudication, with special implications for the poor and people of color. This article provides a theoretical overview of the petty offense process and its legal and institutional structures, and explains its sociolegal significance for the criminal system as a whole.

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 266-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hagit Lernau

One of the most influential attempts to describe and comprehend the criminal law system is Packer's celebrated notion regarding the “Two Models of the Criminal Justice System.” Packer regards the criminal justice process as an image constantly shifting between two conflicting models — the “Crime Control Model” and the “Due Process Model” of criminal law. The first model strives to create an effective criminal system that will protect society's right to peace and safety. This aim may be achieved by emphasizing the earlier, informal stages in the law enforcement procedure, namely, police investigation and the decision to prosecute. The second model aims to ensure that the law enforcement process, which is one of the most coercive powers of the state, will be conducted in a lawful manner that will protect suspects and defendants from both intentional wrongdoing and from unintentional mistakes.


Author(s):  
Pyotr Ivanov

In this article, based on the study and analysis of operational-search legislation, scientific publications, law enforcement practice and the criminal situation in the field of legalization, the operationalsearch counteraction to the legalization of income received from the Commission of tax crimes is considered. The paper focuses on the stages (stages) of laundering, the existing points of view on this account, as well as on the methods of illegal withdrawal of funds abroad. The author of the article aimed to develop scientifically based proposals and recommendations for improving the effectiveness of this type of activity by the territorial bodies of internal Affairs and their divisions of economic security and anti-corruption. It is proposed to put forward and work out operational search versions within the subject of study, as well as to develop, taking into account the methods (schemes) used by criminals to launder criminal proceeds and illegally withdraw funds abroad for the purpose of their subsequent legalization, operational search measures to document their criminal actions. In addition, the author recommends constant monitoring of money laundering methods based on operational and investigative practices. The results and key conclusions formulated in this article can be used in the theory and practice of operational investigative activities of internal Affairs bodies to counteract the legalization of income received from tax crimes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1037969X2110072
Author(s):  
Rhanee Rego ◽  
John Anderson

Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) has opened up new frontiers in the search for the perpetrators of serious crimes. The pool of data held by consumer DNA databases has enabled law enforcement agencies to undertake database matching to find biological relatives of an unknown perpetrator. This relatively new forensic practice is not, however, without concerns when benchmarked against established norms of investigative practice and criminal procedure. The critical questions emerge: how should IGG be used and in what circumstances? In this article, we contend that the current laws in Australia are not capable of regulating IGG appropriately and legislative reform is required.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (S4) ◽  
pp. 126-132
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Delaney ◽  
Jacob D. Charles

In response to the continued expansion of “red flag” laws allowing broader classes of people to petition a court for the removal of firearms from individuals who exhibit dangerous conduct, this paper argues that state laws should adopt a double-filter provision that balances individual rights and government public safety interests. The main component of such a provision is a special statutory category — “reporting party” — that enables a broader social network, such as co-workers or school administrators, to request that a law enforcement officer file a petition for an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO). A double-filter provision would not give reporting parties a right to file a court petition directly. Instead, parties would file a request for petition with law enforcement officers (first filter), who must seek an ERPO from the court if they find the reporting party's information credible. That information is then transmitted to the court (second filter) as a sworn affidavit of the reporting party. The goal is to facilitate a balanced policy model that (1) widens the reporting circle in order to feed more potentially life-saving information into the system, (2) mitigates the risk of erroneous deprivation of constitutionally protected due process and Second Amendment rights.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-124
Author(s):  
Aleksey Grin'ko

Allocation of the burden of proof is a key issue of criminal procedure that is affected by multiple legal and social factors. Under due process principles, the defendant’s right to a fair and impartial trial is deemed to be the epicenter of the whole structure. However, efficient law enforcement is a prominent public interest that must be considered. This article explores the correlation between public and private interest in proving insanity under the law of New York, which provides great empirical background due to its long history of legal disputes and legislative changes. Considering the nature and structure of the burden of proof, the author concludes that there are several principles for its fair allocation: the due party that bears both the burden and the risk of its nonperformance; the feasibility of the burden; the adequate opportunity for the other party to rebut; the concentration of resources upon needs that are not presumed but in fact exist. All the mentioned principles lay the ground for the harmonization of constitutional guaranties for the defendant as well as the successful enforcement of criminal law. The current New York approach to insanity defense as an affirmative one along with the history of its implementation tends to prove its compliance with such requirements. This finding suggests that bearing the burden shall not be treated as impairment by default, but can protect both the interest of this party and the integrity of the whole process.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachid Laajaj ◽  
Duncan Webb ◽  
Danilo Aristizabal ◽  
Eduardo Behrentz ◽  
Raquel Bernal ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected economically disadvantaged groups. This differential impact has numerous possible explanations, each with significantly different policy implications. We examine, for the first time in a low- or middle-income country, which mechanisms best explain the disproportionate impact of the virus on the poor. Methods: We use primary data from the CoVIDA project, including the results of 59,770 RT-PCR tests in Bogotá, targeted on a mostly asymptomatic adult population June 2020 to March 3rd, 2021. This is combined with administrative data that covers all reported cases in Bogotá. We estimate a number of parameters that are likely to drive inequality in COVID-19 infection rates across socioeconomic groups, then use these estimates in an individual-level branching process model of the epidemic. We use counterfactual scenarios to estimate the relative importance of different channels for explaining inequality in infection rates. Findings: Total infections and inequalities in infections are largely driven by inequalities in the ability to work remotely and in within-home secondary attack rates. Inequalities in isolation behavior are less important but non-negligible, while access to testing and contract-tracing plays practically no role. Interventions that mitigate transmission are found to be more effective when targeted on socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.Interpretation: Socioeconomically disadvantaged groups are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 infections, and this appears to be primarily driven by the need to work out of home, higher transmission within home, and to some extent, the ability to isolate when needed. Policies that can successfully reduce these channels of transmission among the poor are likely to have large benefits.


2021 ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Viktor N. Borkov

The article examines the criminal-legal aspects of the actual problem of protecting the inviolability of the individual from the unacceptable activity of state representatives in the exercise of law enforcement functions. Topical issues for theory and practice of the legal nature of the provocation of crime and the falsification of criminals remain debatable. There are no unified approaches to the qualification of provocative and inflammatory actions and cases of "throwing" objects to citizens, for the turnover of which criminal responsibility arises, there is no theoretical justification for the criminal legal status of persons provoked to commit a crime. The article shows that the qualification of common cases of provocation of crimes and falsification of criminals according to the norms providing for liability for abuse of official authority, falsification of evidence or the results of operational investigative activities should be recognized as not accurate. At the same time, responsibility for these actions committed by subjects who are not officials, and without the participation of the latter, has not been established at all. The author proposes a draft criminal law provision providing for liability for inducing to commit a crime or its staging in order to illegally create grounds for criminal prosecution. The paper questions the approach according to which a person provoked by law enforcement officers to commit a crime is not subject to criminal liability regardless of the specifics of the encroachment.


Author(s):  
Sean L. Malloy

This chapter argues that the key to the theory and practice of the Black Panther Party (BPP) during its early years was an understanding of urban black neighborhoods as colonized spaces that needed to be liberated before African Americans could truly be free. Drawing from Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and pioneering black internationalists such as Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams, the Panthers embraced a form of revolutionary nationalism that posited the dire conditions facing black Oaklanders as part of a worldwide system of oppression linked to capitalism and white supremacy. In doing so, the BPP's founders built directly on their experiences with other organizations, particularly the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), as well as lessons drawn from the daily lives of people of color in the Bay Area.


Author(s):  
Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan

Laws regulating the movement, residence, employment, and labor of the poor, and especially of poor African Americans in states with burgeoning free populations, demonstrate how mobility, when enacted by the poor and by non-whites, was classified as a criminal action in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century United States. In the Upper South especially, these laws had the express goal of attaching to all people of color the potential consequences of enslavement. This essay will link these ideas by tracing mobility and its construction as a classed and raced activity, as threats to existing labor regimes and social systems. This was most commonly and notoriously done through the policing of vagrancy, which allowed authorities to punish the poor, most punitively, in the South, African Americans, for unemployment or a reluctance to enter into a particular labor contract. This essay argues that the power dynamics of the South can be read clearly in the classed and raced regulation of vagrancy and geographical mobility in the antebellum era.


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