« What Makes an Odd Clause Odd? | Main | Classroom Debates on Sensitive Topics »

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Fugitive Justice

Last week, I had the chance  to revisit some of the empirically oriented policy arguments advanced in Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties, the book Ethan Leib and Jennifer Collins and I wrote a couple years ago. I've been meaning to find some time to write up those those thoughts and the reactions they generated at NYU's Goldstock Criminal Justice luncheon series, but I haven't yet succeeded.  But on the subject of criminal justice and the family more generally, I wanted to point your attention to a really cool series of articles on fugitives that is appearing this week in the Chicago Tribune by Pulitizer-winner David Jackson and Gary Marx.

One of the most interesting things we discussed in our book, and which Jackson and Marx used to great effect in their reporting, is the fact that in about 14 states (including Illinois), harboring or aiding fugitives is not a crime if the fugitive is a close family member. (In four other states, it's downgraded from felony to misdemeanor.) Pointing to the costs of this policy, from a criminal justice perspective, is not easy. But this recent story by Jackson and Marx is able to give at least a decent picture of the human dimensions of this conflict between family loyalty and criminal justice. You can read more of their important work on the failures of pretrial release and fugitives over here

Posted by Administrators on November 1, 2011 at 03:03 PM in Article Spotlight, Criminal Law | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c6a7953ef0154369004aa970c

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Fugitive Justice:

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.