scholarly journals Crime, Immigration, and Ad hoc Instrumentalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Alan Sklansky
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Local Law ◽  
State And Local

Criminal law and immigration law, once separate fields of governance in the United States, are rapidly growing less distinct. Immigration crimes now account for a majority of all federal prosecutions; deportation is widely seen as a key tool of crime control; immigration authorities run the nation’s largest prison system; and state and local law enforcement officers work hand-in-hand with federal immigration officials. This article traces these trends and assesses their significance. The rise of an intertwined regime of “crimmigration” law has generally been attributed to some combination of nativism, overcriminalization, and a cultural obsession with security, but it also exemplifies, and has helped to reinforce, a crucial and underappreciated development in U.S. legal culture—a rising tendency to treat legal rules and legal procedures as interchangeable tools, to be brought to bear pragmatically and instrumentally on an ad hoc basis. Ad hoc instrumentalism of this kind has genuine strengths, but it also raises significant concerns about the rule of law and political accountability. The accountability concerns, in particular, are exacerbated by two other features of our newly merged system of immigration enforcement and criminal justice: its bureaucratic opacity and its selective application.

scholarly journals The enforcement of statewide mask wearing mandates to prevent COVID-19 in the US: an overview

F1000Research ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 1100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jacobs ◽  
Arvi P. Ohinmaa
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Legal Remedies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Local Law ◽  
State And Local

Face masks have become the bulwark of COVID-19 prevention in the US.  Between 10 April and 1 August, 2020, 33 state governors issued orders requiring businesses to require their customers and employees to wear face masks, and persons outdoors who could not social distance  to do the same. We documented the policies and enforcement actions for these policies in each of the states.  We used governors’ orders and journalists’ news reports as our sources. Our results show that the states used a variety of state and local (county and municipality) agencies to enforce business prevention behaviors and primarily local  law enforcement agencies to enforce outside mask-wearing behaviours. In particular, law enforcement officers demonstrated a strong preference for educating non-mask wearers, and indicated a reluctance to resort to civil penalties that were enacted in the state orders.  Businesses expressed a preference to have government agencies enforce non-mask wearing behaviours.  But there was also a widespread reluctance on the part of local law enforcement  to resort to legal remedies.

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

1998 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-272
Author(s):  
Marian Nash (Leich)
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Foreign Nationals ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Local Law ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
State And Local

In January 1998, the Department of State released its Publication 10518, Consular Notification and Access: Instructions for Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement and Other Officials Regarding Foreign Nationals in the United States and the Rights of Consular Officials to Assist Them. Prepared in the Office of the Legal Adviser, the booklet contains “instructions and guidance relating to the arrest and detention of foreign nationals, deaths of foreign nationals, the appointment of guardians for minors or incompetent adults who are foreign nationals, and related issues pertaining to the provision of consular services to foreign nationals in the United States.” The foreword points out that cooperation of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in ensuring treatment of foreign nationals in accordance with the instructions not only will permit the United States to comply with its consular legal obligations domestically, but also will help ensure that the United States can insist upon “rigorous compliance by foreign governments with respect to United States citizens abroad.”

Racializing Crimmigration

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amada Armenta
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Local Jail ◽  
Colorblind Ideology ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Local Law

Deporting “criminal aliens” has become the highest priority in American immigration enforcement. Today, most deportations are achieved through the “crimmigration” system, a term that describes the convergence of the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems. Emerging research argues that U.S. immigration enforcement is a “racial project” that subordinates and racializes Latino residents in the United States. This article examines the role of local law enforcement agencies in the racialization process by focusing on the techniques and logics that drive law enforcement practices across two agencies, I argue that local law enforcement agents racialize Latinos by punishing illegality through their daily, and sometimes mundane, practices. Investigatory traffic stops put Latinos at disproportionate risk of arrest and citation, and processing at the local jail subjects unauthorized immigrants to deportation. Although a variety of local actors sustain the deportation system, most do not see themselves as active participants in immigrant removal and they explain their behavior through a colorblind ideology. This colorblind ideology obscures and naturalizes how organizational practices and laws converge to systematically criminalize and punish Latinos in the United States.

Study Methods

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean A. Dabney ◽  
Richard Tewksbury
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Street Crime ◽  
Local Law Enforcement ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Local Law ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Homicide Investigation

Chapter 2 presents the methods of the current study. Three fieldwork projects in two cities are explained, including one researcher’s embeddedness with a plain-clothes, street crime unit, one researcher’s 10 month inclusion with a narcotics investigation unit, and one author’s 18 months of participant observation with a major city’s homicide investigation unit. Additionally, in-depth interviews with 15 federal, state and local law enforcement authorities were conducted. These three sources of data are integrated and triangulate the data used for the analysis.

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