This article examines whether it might be possible to craft a comprehensive strategy designed to dramatically reduce crime by using advances in GPS technology to effectively eliminate the recidivist criminal’s ability to relapse into prior criminal conduct. Such a long-term strategic approach would implicate a number of constitutional and legal issues. However, if the legal hurdles can be overcome, such an innovative crime-reduction strategy might well be successful, particularly if it could integrate a number of other time-tested crime reduction strategies that criminal justice advocates have successfully employed. These strategies would support long-term, active GPS monitoring, and would include: crime scene correlation, active supervision, and community-oriented behavioral modification techniques such as restorative justice, a powerful program requiring criminals to interact with their victims and immediate social communities. [Read now!]

The mail fraud statute of 1872 may be regarded as the progenitor of what we now call white collar crimes. Originating with the Postmaster General’s concern that the mail system was being used to facilitate fraudulent schemes, the mail fraud statute has evolved into a powerful prosecutorial weapon. The core prohibition in the statute, first amended in 1909, punishes “any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.” Not only does the statute reach far and wide in its own right, it is also a predicate crime for RICO and money laundering prosecutions... [Read more!]

The Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group hosted this panel on "Prisoner Releases and the Role of the Courts" on Friday, November 11, 2011, during the 2011 National Lawyers Convention. The panel featured Dr. Richard A. Berk of the University of Pennsylvania; Hon. Deborah J. Daniels of Krieg DeVault LLP; Hon. Sarah V. Hart of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office; Mr. Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office; Attorney General Luther Strange of Alabama; and JudgeEdith Brown Clement of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Recently, an Ohio jury recommended a death sentence for Mr. Anthony Sowell, who lured 11 women to his property over a two year period, killed them, and secreted the bodies in his house. About three weeks before that, on an island in Norway, Anders Breivik shot and killed 76 unarmed teenagers and children. He will not face the death penalty, however, because Norwegian law limits the punishment for any offense to 21 years. To some, the death penalty seems like the only just punishment for particularly sadistic or merciless murder. To others, problems of expense, delay, uneven application and possible innocence mean the United States should follow what some believe to be the more enlightened sentencing practices of Europe. On this previously recorded conference call, two experts discussed capital punishment and took questions from callers. Featuring Ms. Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project; Prof. William Otis of the Georgetown Law Center; and Mr. Dean Reuter of the The Federalist Society as the moderator.