By R. Barry Ruback. Full text here. A consideration of economic sanctions must distinguish between the types and purposes of the different sanctions.  Costs and fees refer to charges the offender must pay to reimburse the state for the administrative costs of operating the criminal justice system, although there is some variance in how the terms…

By Kevin R. Reitz. Full text here.  It is well known that the United States. is the most punitive society in the world in the use of incarceration, and is in the “upper” tier of worldwide severity in use of the death penalty. Very recently, awareness has been growing that the United States, is equally exceptional…

By Ronald P. Corbett, Jr. Full text here. Since its inception in the mid-1800s, probation has been the sentence of choice in America’s criminal courts, accounting for approximately two-thirds of those under state correctional control, the balance of offenders incarcerated. As such, probation has been widely conceived of as a grant of leniency, a humane alternative…

By Judge Steven S. Alm. Full text here. Traditional felony probation programs in the United States often suffer from poor probationer compliance. In spite of dedicated and skilled probation officers using Evidence Based Principles, many probationers fail to successfully complete probation nationwide. Part of this systemic problem is an inability of Probation Officers and the Court…

By Cecelia Klingele. Full text here. One of the most popular program models in criminal justice today is that popularized by Hawaii Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE). HOPE and other programs like it grow out of research suggesting that the most effective way to prevent violations of conditions of supervision is to more accurately detect them,…

By Mark A.R. Kleiman. Full text here. Community supervision systems—chiefly probation and parole—handle many more offenders than do the prisons and the jails. Typically, offenders subject to community supervision face only unsystematic attempts to monitor their compliance with probation or parole conditions, and are subject to sporadic and delayed, but occasionally severe, sanctions for non-compliance: a…

By Carla J. Virlee. Full text here.

By Jay Tidmarsh. Full text here. “Trial by statistics” was a means by which a court could resolve a large number of aggregated claims: a court could try a random sample of claims and extrapolate the average result to the remainder. In Wal-Mart, Inc. v. Dukes, the Supreme Court seemingly ended the practice at the federal…

By Mark Seidenfeld & Murat C. Mungan. Full text here. The doctrine of duress allows a party to avoid its contractual obligations when that party was induced to enter the contract by a wrongful threat while in a dire position that left it no choice but to enter the contract. Although threats of criminal or tortious…

By Stephen Rushin. Full text here. In 1994, Congress passed 42 U.S.C. § 14141, a statute authorizing the Attorney General to seek equitable relief against local and state police agencies that are engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional misconduct. Although police departments in some of the nation’s largest cities have now undergone this sort…