Malcolm M Feeley

Court Reform on Trial: Why Simple Solutions Fail

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Entrepreneurs of punishment The legacy of privatization

Privatization of corrections is problematic in large part because advocates claim that private contractors can provide the same or better services at less cost than public agencies. This article argues that there is another, even more important issue: privatization is fostered by entrepreneurs who do much more than provide alternative sources of services; they create demand for and then supply new forms of social control. Indeed, the history of modern criminal justice is to some extent the history of the success of entrepreneurs in generating new or significantly expanded forms of social control. The article examines the history of entrepreneurs in establishing transportation in the 18th century and the modern prison in the 19th, and then draws parallels to contemporary efforts to provide private prisons, ‘community-based’ juvenile facilities, and electronic monitoring programs.

Pleading Guilty in Lower Courts

The simple logic of plea bargaining is so compelling that it is now often taken for granted, with the result that its value as an explanation is diminished. Differences among a host of distinct practices may be obscured or ignored when they are lumped together under this single term. This comment examines the practice of pleading guilty to petty offenses in lower courts and questions some of the long-standing assumptions about the dynamics of that process. It shows that though plea bargaining of the classical type rarely occurs, the term itself and certain aspects of bargaining continue to serve important symbolic functions. In the conventional view of plea bargaining, the defendant extracts concessions, either the reduction of charges or sentence recommendation, in exchange for pleading guilty. This view is based on the assumption that, in the absence of such concessions, the defendant will go to trial. However, many defendants in lower criminal courts never seriously contemplate trial, although they do plead guilty. The question is why? The virtual absence of trials in lower courts is no doubt partially attributable to the concessions just mentioned, but this is an incomplete answer for such a widespread phenomenon. A more important reason for the absence of trials in the lower courts lies in the economics of the process. If the states case is weak, the prosecutor is quite likely to drop the charges-contrary to myth-and in many jurisdictions about as many arrests are disposed of in this manner as are handled through guilty pleas. Of those convicted on original misdemeanor charges, few end up serving time in jail. The typical outcome is a suspended jail sentence together with probation or a fine. By comparison, the time, effort, and expense of going to trial are overwhelming. To illustrate, a private attorney may charge

Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony: The Politics of the Legal Complex

200 or more per day to conduct a trial, yet few fines exceed

Three Voices of Socio-Legal Studies

50. Prosecutors are aware of this; they know that, for all practical purposes, defendant threats to go to trial are usually hollow and will only rarely be carried out. In fact, trials in the lower courts are so infrequent that some prosecutors and judges regard them as a welcome change of pace, an unusual

The Significance of Prison Conditions Cases: Budgets and Regions

What explains divergences in political liberalism in new nations that shared the same colonial heritage? This book assembles exciting original essays on former colonies of the British Empire in South Asia, Africa, and South East Asia that gained independence after World War II. The inter-disciplinary country specialists reveal how inherent contradictions within British colonial rule were resolved after independence in contrasting liberal-legal, despotic, and volatile political orders. Through studies of the longue duree and particular events, this book presents a theory of political liberalism in the post-colony and develops rich hypotheses on the conditions under which the legal complex, civil society, and the state shape alternative post-colonial trajectories around political freedom. This provocative volume presents new perspectives for scholars and students of post-colonialism, political development, and the politics of the legal complex, as well as for policy makers and publics who struggle to construct and defend basic legal freedoms.

Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony

The connection between law and contemporary social science emerged as a consequence of the quest for social reform. As law became more instrumental, it also became more empirical, more concerned with policy. For this process, it turned to social science. Social science complied and has become an adjunct to law in the quest for solving social problems. As this partnership has developed, the relationship between law and social science has matured. Not only has social science sought to educate and influence law, it has also incorporated law into its own disciplinary concerns. Furthermore, the field of socio-legal studies may be on the verge of establishing itself as a separate and distinct discipline, independent of the practical concerns of law. The scholarly intersection of law and social science — or socio-legal studies, as I shall call it — now speaks with at least three voices addressed to at least three audiences. It speaks as policy analysis, a handmaiden to law. It also speaks in the traditional language of the social sciences. Thirdly, it may be gaining a voice of its own, reflecting a belief that law is a distinct form of ordering that merits its own position among the scholarly disciplines, separate from both scholarly fields and the professional concerns of law. At their core, each of these enterprises entails a distinct voice, a distinct audience, and a distinct agenda.

Albert W. Dzur,Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury

This paper examines William Taggarts article on the judicial power of the purse as it affects American prisons and jails. It argues that the central concerns in this area have involved issues of judicial propriety and judicial capacity rather than, as Taggart argues, whether judicially mandated expenditures disrupt normal budget processes. It then takes issue with Taggarts conclusions that the courts have had little impact on prisons and jails. Using his evidence, this paper argues that the courts have had a significant effect in transforming prisons and jails in at least one region of the country, the South.

Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony: Acknowledgments

What explains divergences in political liberalism in new nations that shared the same colonial heritage? This book assembles exciting original essays on former colonies of the British Empire in South Asia, Africa, and South East Asia that gained independence after World War II. The inter-disciplinary country specialists reveal how inherent contradictions within British colonial rule were resolved after independence in contrasting liberal-legal, despotic, and volatile political orders. Through studies of the longue duree and particular events, this book presents a theory of political liberalism in the post-colony and develops rich hypotheses on the conditions under which the legal complex, civil society, and the state shape alternative post-colonial trajectories around political freedom. This provocative volume presents new perspectives for scholars and students of post-colonialism, political development, and the politics of the legal complex, as well as for policy makers and publics who struggle to construct and defend basic legal freedoms.

Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony: Contributors

interactions, instead of presenting them more in the form of field notes with some examples of dialogue, which might have enhanced the reporting and made it come alive. Perhaps the liveliness also suffers as the ethnography is not presented by writing with a present tense. I also missed some more detailed analysis and an exploration of negative cases, of deviations from the common picture. As it is, the text is repetitive at times. There is no doubt that the book was written from a normative perspective; small wonder, given the author’s field experiences – and an indignation that must have reached fever pitch when his own son, calmly waiting for the bus, was the victim in one of those disproportionate deployments of resources: four vehicles, 15 officers, and the use of methods otherwise devoted to riot control. The critique, not only of the police but of a society which breeds such unequal treatment, colors the book, and you may well find the author’s questions pertinent: how is it that in a rich country with democratic principles, segregation and discrimination are allowed to flourish to the extent that some categories of citizens become virtually unprotected by the law? And why have the police come to play the role of maintaining a social order based on ethnic distinctions, rather than on keeping general public order? These issues are compelling and important (in more countries than France), but raising them in the form of a social critique, as here, is not without its problems. For one thing, the reader may well wonder how much the author’s analyses are influenced by his moral indignation. To be sure, Fassin knows his social science police studies, and he has done his field work thoroughly – yet you still miss the ‘sociological eye’ which would increase your understanding, excite and surprise you.