On Thursday, October 18, at 12:15 pm, the UCLA Law Review will host its first Scholar Forum for the 2012–13 academic year. The Scholar Forum will feature a public lecture by Professor Kate Weisburd of U.C. Berkeley School of Law. The title of the lecture is “Prosecutors Hide, Defendants Seek: The Erosion of Brady Through the Defendant Due Diligence Rule.” This is also the title of Professor...
Unlocking the Gates of Desolation Row
The U.S. criminal justice system is striking in its severity. Developments in criminal sentencing practices over the past several decades make the criminal justice system not only harsher than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century, but significantly more punitive than any other Western criminal justice system. Mandatory minimums, recidivist statutes, and the war on drugs, among other...
“In an Avalanche Every Snowflake Pleads Not Guilty”: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Incarceration and Impediments to Women’s Fair Housing Rights
In our society, individual acts of intentional discrimination function in concert with historically created vulnerabilities; these vulnerabilities are based on disfavored identity categories and amplify each injustice and injury. Although anyone can be a victim of housing discrimination, women of color suffer distinct collateral injuries from barriers to housing that are collective and cumulative...
Uncomfortable Places, Close Spaces: Female Correctional Workers’ Sexual Interactions With Men and Boys in Custody
It is well known that sexual abuse occurs within the correctional system. That female correctional staff commit a significant proportion of that sexual abuse is met with discomfort bordering on disbelief. This discomfort has limited the discourse about female correctional workers who abuse men or boys under their care. Scant scholarship exists that addresses the appropriate response to sexual...
Engendering Rape
This Article highlights a systematic bias in the academic, correctional, and human rights discourse that constitutes the basis for prison rape policy reform. This discourse focuses almost exclusively on sexual abuse perpetrated by men: sexual abuse of male prisoners by fellow inmates, and sexual abuse of women prisoners by male staff. But since 2007, survey and correctional data have indicated...
Justice for Girls: Are We Making Progress?
Over the course of more than a century, structural gender bias has been a remarkably durable feature of U.S. juvenile justice systems. Consequently, as these systems have developed over the years, reducing gender bias and addressing girls in helpful, rather than harmful, ways has required specific and concerted efforts on the part of federal and state governments. Currently, there are a number of...
The New Racially Restrictive Covenant: Race, Welfare, and the Policing of Black Women in Subsidized Housing
This Article explores the race, gender, and class dynamics that render poor Black women vulnerable to racial surveillance and harassment in predominately white communities. In particular, this Article interrogates the recent phenomenon of police officers and public officials enforcing private citizens’ discriminatory complaints, which ultimately excludes Black women and their children from...
Blind Discretion: Girls of Color & Delinquency in the Juvenile Justice System
The juvenile justice system was designed to empower its decisionmakers with a wide grant of discretion in hopes of better addressing youth in a more individualistic and holistic, and therefore more effective, manner. Unfortunately for girls of color in the system, this discretionary charter given to police, probation officers, and especially judges has operated without sufficiently acknowledging...