Criminal Law Reform – LPE Project https://lpeproject.org The Law and Political Economy Project Sun, 13 Apr 2025 20:03:59 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 https://lpeproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-LPE_Favicon_512px_BlackBG-450x450.png Criminal Law Reform – LPE Project https://lpeproject.org 32 32 When Freedom is Illegal: Black Queer Solidarity, Poverty & Gang Policing https://lpeproject.org/blog/when-freedom-is-illegal-black-queer-solidarity-poverty-gang-policing/ Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11480 “I’ve been stabbed ten times, I’ve been shot.” “You get beat the fuck up. You will have no chance.” “Until you start hanging around us.” These are snippets of conversations featured in a documentary about members of Check It, one of the first Black LGBTQ+ “gangs” in Washington, D.C. Check It’s experiences illustrate how systemic oppression, rooted in American slavery, adapts through new technology...

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]]> Between Slavery and Incarceration: an Interview with Christopher Muller https://lpeproject.org/blog/between-slavery-and-incarceration-an-interview-with-christopher-muller/ Tue, 03 Dec 2024 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=11038 Mass incarceration is one of the great injustices of our time. For decades, small numbers of committed activists have protested this practice. More recently, however, the issue has gained wider public traction, with even some mainstream politicians and conservative organizations suggesting that it is something we should not tolerate. Despite this, it remains a subject whose history is often poorly...

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]]> The Role of Coercion in the Neoliberal Economy https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-role-of-coercion-in-the-neoliberal-economy/ Mon, 21 Oct 2024 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=10870 This post concludes a symposium on Melinda Cooper’s Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. Read the rest of the symposium here. ** ** ** In Melinda Cooper’s narrative of extravagance and austerity in public finance, one of the most powerful organizing forces on austerity-side of the ledger were the taxpayers who rebelled against the U.S. government’s rather modest efforts...

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]]> Carceral Surveillance and the Dangers of “Better-than-Incarceration” Reasoning https://lpeproject.org/blog/carceral-surveillance-and-the-dangers-of-better-than-incarceration-reasoning/ Thu, 27 Jun 2024 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=10463 Scholars and advocates have long argued that the use of electronic monitoring in the criminal and immigration systems is unjustified, inequitable, and excessively punitive. The response to these arguments is almost always the same: monitoring, even with its drawbacks and punitive features, is better than incarceration. To be sure, one day spent on a monitor may be preferable to one day spent...

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]]> A Hidden Source of Labor Extraction in Prisons https://lpeproject.org/blog/a-hidden-source-of-labor-extraction-in-prisons/ Thu, 13 Jun 2024 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=10429 Prisons are full of associations, even as, by design, prisons control and limit the relationships of the people forced to live within them. The associations, or groups “pursuing a common purpose . . . by a course of collective action,” include affinity groups, peer education groups, lifers’ associations, prison reform organizations, and other collectives. Vital as these associations are to...

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]]> Insurance Risk and Democratic Police Reform https://lpeproject.org/blog/insurance-risk-and-democratic-police-reform/ Thu, 23 May 2024 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=10363 This post is part of a symposium on the law and political economy of insurance. Read the rest of the posts here. ** ** ** Culver City, California was one of the many cities during the summer of 2020 where local organizers mobilized to reimagine policing. A grassroots coalition in Culver City called for the city’s police department budget to be cut by 50%, with the money reallocated toward non...

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]]> A Crisis of Purpose in Public Defense https://lpeproject.org/blog/a-crisis-of-purpose-in-public-defense/ Wed, 10 Apr 2024 11:30:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=10220 Radical Acts of Justice, identifies a deeper, more existential crisis facing public defense — not one of funding, but of purpose.]]> This post concludes our symposium on Jocelyn Simonson’s Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration. Read the rest of the posts here. *** That public defense is in a state of crisis is far from controversial. Crushing caseloads and rampant underfunding have created untenable working conditions under which even the most well-meaning defenders often struggle to...

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]]> (Some of) The Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-best-new-lpe-and-lpe-adjacent-scholarship-2024/ Mon, 08 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=10198 Today, many in the United States will witness that rare cosmic coincidence known as a total solar eclipse. Yet even as blackness sweeps across the sky, one source of illumination will remain undiminished: the hottest forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent scholarship, which we’ve gathered together from the most recent submission cycle. There is, of course, more excellent work being done than any...

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]]> Popular Justice Reborn?  https://lpeproject.org/blog/popular-justice-reborn/ Thu, 04 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=10137 Radical Acts of Justice challenge the idea that criminal prosecutors represent "the People." But where did that idea come from in the first place? By tracing the long shift in American history from informal, non-professional law enforcement to our current system of formal, bureaucratized law enforcement, we can better understand the terrain on which contemporary popular justice movements are waging their struggles.]]> This post is part of a symposium on Jocelyn Simonson’s Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration. Read the rest of the posts here. *** Jocelyn Simonson opens Radical Acts of Justice by reflecting on a vexing linguistic practice in contemporary criminal courts: the habit of referring to individual prosecuting attorneys as “the People” (“as in ‘Would the People...

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]]> Radical Constitutionalism and a Critique of Nonviolence https://lpeproject.org/blog/radical-constitutionalism-and-a-critique-of-nonviolence/ Tue, 12 Mar 2024 11:30:00 +0000 https://lpeproject.org/?p=10004 This post is part of a symposium on Jocelyn Simonson’s Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration. Read the rest of the posts here. *** Four years after police killings of Black people catalyzed some of the largest mass uprisings in the history of the United States, not a few liberals would prefer that “criminal justice reform” again be left to the liberal...

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