Bostock, LGBT Discrimination, and the Subtractive Moves
By Andrew Koppelman. Full Text. Abstract: In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in employment, covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The dissenting Justices, following the reasoning of several Court of Appeals judges, embraced…
Continue ReadingFrank Zimring Responds
By Franklin Zimring. Full Text. This short Essay is a summary of my reply to the presentations at the Minnesota Law Review’s symposium in November of 2019 in Minneapolis, titled “Mass Incarceration as a Chronic Condition: Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Treatment.” I outline the four principal sections of my forthcoming book’s analysis and then discuss and…
Continue ReadingCan Sentencing Guidelines Commissions Help States Substantially Reduce Mass Incarceration?
By Richard S. Frase. Full Text. In his forthcoming book, The Insidious Momentum of Mass Incarceration, Franklin Zimring argues that sentencing guidelines commissions, of the kind that exist in Minnesota and several other states, could help states roll back the massive increases in prison populations that began in the mid-1970s. Professor Zimring proposes to achieve…
Continue ReadingPrison-Release Reform and American Decarceration
By Kevin Reitz. Full Text. Parole boards and other officials with prison-release discretion have enormous statutory power over the size of prison populations in their jurisdictions. In discussions of American mass incarceration and potential decarceration strategies for the future, however, these officials are rarely mentioned. Indeed, little is known about how they do their work…
Continue ReadingThe Categorical Imperative as a Decarceral Agenda
By Jessica M. Eaglin. Full Text. Despite recent modest reductions in state prison populations, Franklin Zimring argues in his forthcoming book that mass incarceration remains persistent and intractable. As a path forward, Zimring urges states to adopt pragmatic, structural reforms that incentivize the reduction of prison populations through a “categorical imperative,” meaning, by identifying subcategories…
Continue ReadingZimring on Mass Incarceration: Empirical Pessimism and Cautious Reformist Optimism
By Robert Weisberg. Full Text. This Article places Professor Zimring’s treatment of the boom in imprisonment that led to mass incarceration in the wider context of his decades-long contemplation of our ability to understated changes in crime and punishment. His earlier studies of the great crime decline that began in the 1990s provides a revealing,…
Continue ReadingWhy the Policy Failures of Mass Incarceration Are Really Political Failures
By John F. Pfaff. Full Text. In his forthcoming book, The Insidious Momentum of Mass Incarceration, Franklin Zimring argues that the most effective way to end mass incarceration is to target the policy failures that drive it. He focuses in particular on the “prosecutorial free lunch”: prosecutors are county-funded officials who can send as many…
Continue ReadingDealing with Mass Incarceration
By Alfred Blumstein. Full Text. In today’s highly polarized political environment, one of the few issues which garners widespread agreement is the desire to reduce prison populations. Thus, it is rather disconcerting to see the recent stability of the incarceration rate since 2000. This raises the concern that this could be a reflection of a…
Continue ReadingPrisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration
By Rachel E. Barkow. Full text.
Continue Reading“Wreaking Extraordinary Destruction”: Defendant’s Irreplaceability as Presumptively Reasonable Grounds for Downward Departure in Sentencing
By Jackie Fielding. Full Text Despite the media attention afforded to the recent family separation crisis at the southern border of the United States, there is a much more prevalent and common form of family separation: parental incarceration. The United States is the largest incarcerator worldwide, and the surge in the incarceration of women has…
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