SU Law Blogs Network

Social Justice Monday: Racial (In)Equity and Policing
September 26, 2016

The long-smoldering issue of racial bias in policing and the criminal justice system is finally front and center in America’s consciousness. LLSA and ATJI presented a panel of nationally-recognized experts on how conscious and unconscious bias can manifest in police and prosecutorial interactions and how such bias may influence outcomes throughout various stages of the criminal justice system and particularly impact Latinx people and other communities of color.

In addition to a scholarly perspective, panelists also offered insight as to how these issues are arising and being addressed in real-time through United States v. City of Seattle, in which the U.S. Department of Justice alleged excessive use of force violations by the Seattle Police Department.

Panelists included:

J. Michael (“Mike”) Diaz is the Civil Rights Program Coordinator for the Civil Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington, as well as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. He has investigated and/or prosecuted a wide variety of civil rights matters, from “classic” civil rights cases such as housing, employment and educational matters to more “modern” matters, including rights violated by police misconduct. Due to his expertise, Mike is a faculty member of the DOJ’s National Advocacy (Training) Center teaching on civil rights enforcement. Mike has been the lead line attorney on the investigation, lawsuit, and consent decree in United States v. City of Seattle (SPD) since its inception in 2010. In addition to other volunteer work, Mike, in his individual capacity, currently serves on the Washington State Minority and Justice Commission. Mike received his JD from Cornell Law School in 2002.

Taki V. Flevaris is a Faculty Affiliate at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law and an attorney at Pacifica Law Group, LLP, with a practice focused on constitutional and governmental litigation. He has a background in psychological study and research, and he writes and presents regularly on equal access and equal treatment in the justice system, with special emphasis on race and the use of psychological science to inform legal rules and procedures. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Northwestern University.

Dr. William Parkin, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Seattle University, focuses his research on ideological violence, bias crimes, and the media’s relationship with the criminal justice system. Dr. Parkin has worked on research projects related to domestic terrorism, the nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, and community public safety in Seattle. He received his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the City University of New York, Graduate Center in 2012.

Interested in learning more? Here are some related books available from the Law Library:

Punishing Race: A Continuing American Dilemma

Michael Tonry

Full Text Online

How can it be, in a nation that elected Barack Obama, that one third of African American males born in 2001 will spend time in a state or federal prison, and that black men are seven times likelier than white men to be in prison? Blacks are much more likely than whites to be stopped by the police, arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned, and are much less likely to have confidence in justice system officials, especially the police.

In Punishing Race, Michael Tonry demonstrates in lucid, accessible language that these patterns result not from racial differences in crime or drug use but primarily from drug and crime control policies that disproportionately affect black Americans. These policies in turn stem from a lack of white empathy for black people, and from racial stereotypes and resentments provoked partly by the Republican Southern Strategy of using coded “law and order” appeals to race to gain support from white voters. White Americans, Tonry observes, have a remarkable capacity to endure the suffering of disadvantaged black and, increasingly, Hispanic men. Crime policies are among a set of social policies enacted since the 1960s that have maintained white dominance over black people despite the end of legal discrimination. To redress these injustices, Tonry offers a number of proposals: stop racial profiling by the police, shift the emphasis of drug law enforcement to treatment and prevention, eliminate mandatory sentencing laws, and change sentencing guidelines to allow judges discretion to take account of offenders’ life circumstances. Those proposals are all attainable and would all reduce unjustifiable racial disparities and the collateral human and social harms they cause.

A damning indictment of decades of misguided criminal justice policy, Punishing Race takes a crucial look at persisting racial injustice in America. – From the Publisher

Critical Race Realism: Intersections of Psychology, Race, and Law

Edited by:
Gregory S. Parks
Shayne Jones
W. Jonathan Cardi

LAW-4th Floor (KF4755.C749 2008)

A new way of looking at our legal system—focused on the nexus of social science, race, and the law—that takes the field of critical legal studies into the twenty-first century.

Building on the field of critical race theory, which took a theoretical approach to questions of race and the law, Critical Race Realism offers a practical look at the way racial bias plays out at every level of the legal system, from witness identification and jury selection to prosecutorial behavior, defense decisions, and the way expert witnesses are regarded.

Using cutting-edge research from across the social sciences and, in particular, new understandings from psychology of the way prejudice functions in the brain, this new book—the first overview of the topic—includes many of the seminal writings to date along with newly commissioned pieces filling in gaps in the literature. The authors are part of a rising generation of legal scholars and social scientists intent on using the latest insights from their respective fields to understand the racial biases built into our legal system and to offer concrete measures to overcome them. – From the Publisher

If you were unable to attend this presentation, it is available via video recording here: Social Justice Mondays Recordings.

Social Justice Monday: Mobilizing for Refugee Rights
September 19, 2016

We are in the midst of the largest refugee crisis since the aftermath of World War II. Over 1 million people made the decision to cross the Mediterranean in 2015, fleeing inhumane and deeply troublesome conflicts in their home countries. They are running into barriers both systemic and drawn from the darkest fears of human nature as they struggle to find peace and security.

The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) was sparked as a way of helping those swept up in the crisis. IRAP staff and volunteers have spent the past 8 years resettling as many individuals as possible, working with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to ensure that refugees receive legal assistance during some of the most trying times in their lives. More recently, as countries face an overwhelming influx of refugees resulting from the Syrian Civil War, IRAP is also working to confront xenophobic rhetoric and a toxic social reality by engaging in policy work and continuing to offer legal aid to the most vulnerable populations.

Students from Seattle University’s IRAP Chapter, including Emily Wright (2L), Whitney Wootton (2L), and Stephen Anderson (2L), discussed ways to get involved through case work and policy research. For more information about getting involved, email Whitney Wootton, Director of Seattle University’s IRAP Chapter.

If you were unable to attend this presentation, it is available via video recording here: Social Justice Mondays Recordings.

Interested in learning more? Here are some related books available from the Law Library:

City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp

Ben Rawlence

LAW-McNaughton Collection-2nd Floor (HV640.4.K4R39 2016)

To the charity workers, Dadaab refugee camp is a humanitarian crisis; to the Kenyan government, it is a ‘nursery for terrorists’; to the western media, it is a dangerous no-go area; but to its half a million residents, it is their last resort.

Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks or plastic, its entire economy is grey, and its citizens survive on rations and luck. Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have come there seeking sanctuary. Among them are Guled, a former child soldier who lives for football; Nisho, who scrapes an existence by pushing a wheelbarrow and dreaming of riches; Tawane, the indomitable youth leader; and schoolgirl Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her education.

In City of Thorns, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there. Rawlence combines intimate storytelling with broad socio-political investigative journalism, doing for Dadaab what Katherinee Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers did for the Mumbai slums. Lucid, vivid and illuminating, City of Thorns is an urgent human story with deep international repercussions, brought to life through the people who call Dadaab home. – From the Publisher

Gender in Refugee Law: From the Margins to the Centre

Edited by Efrat Arbel, Catherine Dauvergne, and Jenni Millbank

LAW-3rd Floor (K3230.R45G46 2014)

Questions of gender have strongly influenced the development of international refugee law over the last few decades. This volume assesses the progress toward appropriate recognition of gender-related persecution in refugee law. It documents the advances made following intense advocacy around the world in the 1990s, and evaluates the extent to which gender has been successfully integrated into refugee law.

Evaluating the research and advocacy agendas for gender in refugee law ten years beyond the 2002 UNHCR Gender Guidelines, the book investigates the current status of gender in refugee law. It examines gender-related persecution claims of both women and men, including those based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and explores how the development of an anti-refugee agenda in many Western states exponentially increases vulnerability for refugees making gendered claims. The volume includes contributions from scholars and members of the advocacy community that allow the book to examine conceptual and doctrinal themes arising at the intersection of gender and refugee law, and specific case studies across major Western refugee-receiving nations. The book will be of great interest and value to researchers and students of asylum and immigration law, international politics, and gender studies. – From the Publisher

Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony

Edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Galya Ruffer

LAW-3rd Floor (K3268.3.A93 2015 )

In this book, an array of legal, biomedical, psychosocial, and social science scholars and practitioners offer the first comparative account of the increasing dependence on expertise in the asylum and refugee status determination process. This volume presents a comprehensive study of the relevance of experts, as mediators of culture, who are called upon to corroborate, substantiate credibility, and serve as translators in the face of confusing legal standards that require proof of new forms and reasons for persecution around the globe. The authors draw upon their interactions with expertise and the immigration process to provide insights into the evidentiary burdens on asylum seekers and the expanding role of expertise in the forms of country-conditions reports, biomedical and psychiatric evaluations, and the emerging field of forensic linguistic analysis in response to emerging forms of persecution, such as gender-based or sexuality-based persecution. This book is essential reading for both scholars interested in the production of knowledge and clinicians considering the role of experts as mediators of asylum claims. – From the Publisher

Social Justice Monday: Washington in the Era of Mass Incarceration
September 12, 2016

Did you know that more than 18,000 Washington residents were incarcerated in prisons in 2015? Over thirty years ago, Washington enacted a comprehensive Sentencing Reform Act that dramatically impacted sentencing in our state. Many changes in sentencing law and policy have come and gone since then, often in response to shifting public policy toward crime and punishment.

Professor Emeritus and sentencing and ethics expert David Boerner presented an analysis of Washington’s prison population and sentencing over the past third of a century. He presented information about who is imprisoned in Washington, why, and how we have gotten to the point of mass incarceration today.

If you were unable to attend this presentation, it is available via video recording here: Social Justice Mondays Recordings.

Interested in learning more? Here are some related books available from the Law Library:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Michelle Alexander

LAW – 3rd Floor (HV9950.A437 2010)

Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as “brave and bold,” this book directly challenges the notion that the presidency of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a “call to action.”

Called “stunning” by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, “invaluable” by the Daily Kos, “explosive” by Kirkus, and “profoundly necessary” by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience. – From the Publisher