T Supplement – FFPSVV – Wave 1

Enact
 Not Immediate
Enact doesn’t have to be immediate
Congressional Record house 1905 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1905-pt2-
v39/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1905-pt2-v39-13-2.pdf

The action of the Commission is a legislative action. Some railroad attorneys have taken the position that
it is an unheard of undertaking to deprive them of their property without first having the right to a
judicial review. That you first hang a man and then try him afterwards. I do not think that is a fair
statement. The legislature may and usually does make its enactments immediately effective, and it is the
exception where it permits a suspension pending a review of the legality of its action. The question of
the wisdom of giving immediate effect to the Commission's act is another thing. Congress has got the
right to say that their act shall take effect at such and such a time. Do not forget the action of your
Commission is a legislative action. Therefore there is no constitutional reason, there is nothing radical in
method, though there may be some- thing very radical -in action, in connection with the Commission's
order fixing a rate, being enforced pending review.
 Includes Courts
Courts can enact
Adam Wright, 13 - University of Michigan Law School, J.D. candidate, May 2014. Adam Wright is the
Executive Notes Editor for the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Volume 19 (“Federal Constraints on
States’ Ability to License an Undocumented Immigrant to Practice Law” 19 MICH. J. RACE & L. 177
(2013). https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=mjrl//DH

In its opening brief, the Committee briefly addresses the possibility that even if § 1621 were applicable,
the state supreme court could enact a court rule allowing for the eligibility of undocumented immigrants
for admission to the State Bar.47 This would invoke the savings clause— § 1621(d)—and permit
undocumented immigrants to become eligible for admission to the bar through an enactment of state
law.48 In its reply brief, the Committee further argues that because the state supreme court has the
inherent power of regulating the legal profession, it serves in a quasi-legislative capacity when exercising
that power.49 In this way, the Committee suggests, the California Supreme Court may enact a state law
providing for the admission of undocumented immigrants to the state bar.
C. Summary of Arguments The DOJ’s principal argument is that a law license is granted by a state supreme court through use of appropriated funds; thus, undocumented immigrants are rendered ineligible for bar admission by §
1621. The Committee argues that § 1621 is not implicated because a law license is funded only through applicant fees and a state supreme court order granting admission does not amount to a use of “appropriated funds.”
Although these arguments are specific to the California case, they will apply broadly as bar admission procedures are similar throughout the country.50

II. A LAW LICENSE IS A “PUBLIC BENEFIT” UNDER § 1621 The most obvious reading of § 1621 seems to include law licenses within its broad proscription of undocumented immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits. Part A argues that
courts are likely to determine that a law license is provided by state-appropriated funds. Part B briefly notes that even if a court concludes that a law license is not a public benefit, advocates still face another problem, albeit one
they are more likely to overcome: a court could determine that state Boards of Bar Examiners function as state agencies in providing law licenses and thus § 1621 would prohibit states from providing law licenses to undocumented
immigrants. A. A Law License is Provided by State-Appropriated Funds On October 2, 2012, the Florida Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding whether an undocumented immigrant could be admitted to the Florida State
Bar.51 When considering whether a state supreme court order issuing a law license constitutes a use of appropriated state funds, one justice remarked, “I think we’re using appropriated fund [sic] as we sit here this morning,
wouldn’t you agree?”52 Of course, this justice’s initial reaction will not be determinative of the legal question, but his response is likely indicative of the presumption from which judges will approach their analysis. The simplicity of
the logic is enticingly persuasive: state appropriations fund the court; the court uses those funds to issue the final order granting a law license; therefore, appropriated state funds are utilized to provide a law license.53

The Committee makes three arguments to refute this interpretation.54 First, it argues for a narrow construction of the word “appropriated.”55 Second, it asserts that bar applicant fees are the sole source of funding for law
licenses, and thus appropriated funds are not utilized in providing licenses.56 Third, the Committee points to absurd consequences that would result if bar licenses were considered public benefits.57 I argue that each of these is
ultimately unpersuasive. 1. The Committee’s Narrow Interpretation of “Appropriated” is Unwarranted The Committee relies on a dictionary definition of “appropriated” that requires funds to be set aside for a particular use—here,
the granting of a law license.58 The conclusion of this argument, therefore, is that because no appropriated state funds are specifically earmarked for the issuance of law licenses, appropriated state funds are not used to provide
law licenses.59 This argument, however, fails to point to anything in the language or legislative history of § 1621 that explains why such a particular level of specificity would be required. It is not evident why funds set aside by a
state legislature specifically for use by a state supreme court should not be considered an “appropriation” within the meaning of the statute. The legislature presumably knew when setting aside these funds that a certain amount
of them would be used to provide law licenses. The Committee presents no evidence that suggests Congress intended to use the word “appropriated” as a legal term of art with such a circumscribed meaning. Under Federal
Appropriations Law, funds that Congress sets aside for an agency may be used, under certain circumstances, for expenditures not specifically authorized in an appropriations act.60 Spending agencies are afforded discretion in
deciding “how to carry out the objects of the appropriation.”61 However, using appropriated funds in a discretionary manner not specifically designated by the legislature does not “un-appropriate” those funds.

Therefore, to fall within the ambit of § 1621’s prohibitions, it is not necessary that a state legislature appropriate funds expressly for the purpose of providing bar licenses. The language of the statute makes no requirement that
appropriations attain a certain level of specificity of purpose.62 Additionally, it is inconsequential that the majority of the bar admission process is carried out by the Committee because it is not the Committee, but rather the court,
that ultimately provides bar licenses to applicants.63 Even though the amount of appropriated funds used by state supreme courts to issue law licenses may be minimal, appropriated funds are nevertheless put to use to provide
the license. “Prohibitions on the use of appropriated funds for a particular purpose prohibit the use of any appropriated funds for that purpose.”64 Section 1621 does not distinguish between different amounts of appropriated
funds utilized. It is a clear proscription of using appropriated funds, whether one dollar or one billion dollars, to provide public benefits to undocumented immigrants. 2. Bar Applicant Fees Do Not Provide Law Licenses The
Committee also argues that because applicant fees alone fund the state bar’s functions of administering the state bar exam and certifying applicants for licensure, no appropriated funds are used to provide the license.65 The
Committee recognizes that the state supreme court issues the final order granting the license, but says that this “does not change the fact that the license is not provided by appropriated state funds.”66 The Committee cites
Campos v. Anderson to support the proposition that government involvement does not convert private funds into public benefits, but fails to note important distinctions between Campos and the case at hand.67 In Campos, the
court determined whether child support enforcement services provided by the District Attorney’s (D.A.) Office constituted “aid” to needy persons under a public social services statute. The court held that these services did not
amount to “aid” because “[a]ny payments recovered by [the D.A. Office] are not provided by the [office] but by the errant parent.” The Committee’s reliance on Campos is unpersuasive; focusing on the plain meaning of the word
“provide” distinguishes Campos from the issue at hand. In Campos, that Court was correct to note that the “errant parent,” not the D.A. Office, provides the child support payments recovered by the Office. The payment originates
with the parent. Similarly, a law license originates with the state supreme court’s order issuing the license, and therefore a state supreme court is more analogous to the parent than the D.A. Office. Thus, a court plays a much more
direct role in providing a law license than the D.A. Office played in providing the child support payment. A court functions as more than a conduit; its role is more than a mere formality, as the Sergio Garcia case plainly shows: if the
California Supreme Court just passed along a license provided by the Committee, Mr. Garcia would already be a member of the California bar.68 The Committee also fails to appreciate the fact that funding for the bar admission
process can come from multiple sources—here, bar applicant fees and appropriated funds utilized by the state supreme court. Bar applicant fees are undeniably used in the bar admission process, and the Committee is right to
argue that the process of granting law licenses does not convert those funds into public benefits. But this misses the point. Although non-appropriated state funds may finance the majority of the licensing process, it is the state
supreme court, operating through appropriated state funds, that ultimately provides bar licenses. 3. The Committee’s Warnings of Absurd Practical Consequences are Unfounded The Committee next warns of the practical
consequences that would follow if the use of the state supreme court’s time were considered a use of appropriated funds under the statute.69 Taken to its extreme, the Committee cautions, counting such action as a use of state-
appropriated funds would mean that a court could not adjudicate a private contract matter in which an undocumented immigrant was the beneficiary.70 However, this argument is unpersuasive. This argument sets up a false
analogy by equating a court’s action in enforcing the terms of a private contract with issuing the final order to grant a law license. In the former, a court is not using appropriated funds to provide a contract; it is this providing that §
1621 expressly prohibits.71 Enforcing the terms of a contract is distinct from providing a contract. A private contract is provided by the parties who exchange promises, and the contract exists before a court ever becomes
involved.72 Conversely, the court plays a direct role in providing a law license. Unlike a contract, the law license does not exist without the court’s involvement. Therefore, under § 1621 a court could enforce the terms of a contract
to which an undocumented individual is a party even if it cannot provide a law license to the same person. Other cases that demonstrate the importance of the word “provide” in the statute support the conclusion that the absurd
consequences that the Committee points to are unlikely to follow. For example, in City Plan Development, Inc. v. Office of Labor Commissioner, the Nevada Supreme Court held that while a public works contract between the
county and an employer may have amounted to a “public benefit,” payment of the prevailing wage under that contract by the employer to undocumented public works employees did not amount to a “public benefit.”73 The court
enforced the contract and reasoned that the employer “is simply not the entity ‘providing’ the public benefit contract . . . .”74 The court in that case thus rightly focused their analysis on the word “providing.” The Committee cites
City Plan as authority for the proposition that the issuance of a court order cannot constitute a use of appropriated state funds.75 If this were the case, the Committee implies, the court in City Plan could not have enforced the
contract between an employer and undocumented public works employees since § 1621 prohibits providing contracts to undocumented immigrants.76 In a strained reading of the opinion, the Committee attributes this reasoning
to the court. The City Plan court, however, had no reason to visit the question of whether use of its time amounted to use of appropriated funds because the court did not provide the contract. As the court noted, the prevailing
wage clause was part of the contract provided by the two contracting parties: the employer and employees.77 Whether the court used appropriated funds to enforce the contract was immaterial. To be sure, the court in City Plan
was using appropriated funds when it heard the case and made its decision, but the decisive factor is that the use of those appropriated funds played no role in providing the contract between the employer and employees. It is
entirely consistent for a court, under § 1621, to be permitted to enforce a contract in favor of an undocumented immigrant while being prohibited to provide a law license to the same person. B. A Law License Might be Provided by
a State Agency Even if advocates can successfully convince a court that appropriated funds are not used to provide bar licenses, they still risk running into the “state agency” prohibition of § 1621, which renders undocumented
immigrants ineligible to receive professional licenses provided by state agencies.78 In some contexts, courts have found that state bar associations, as administrative arms of state supreme courts, function as state agencies.79 The
Committee’s argument may counter this problem by emphasizing that bar licenses are provided by applicant fees utilized by the Committee of Bar Examiners, an arm of the State Bar. However, this is unlikely to pose an
insurmountable challenge to advocates, as even the DOJ concedes that “absent contextual indications to the contrary, statutory references to a federal ‘agency’ are generally interpreted to exclude the federal courts.”80 The same
interpretation can be applied to state agencies and courts, and thus, while possible, it is unlikely that a court providing a bar license would be considered a state agency under § 1621’s proscriptions. III. A STATE SUPREME COURT
CAN INVOKE THE SAVINGS CLAUSE OF § 1621 TO RENDER UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS ELIGIBLE FOR BAR ADMISSION Section 1621(d), the savings clause, provides: A State may provide that an alien who is not lawfully present
in the United States is eligible for any State or local public benefit for which such alien would otherwise be ineligible under subsection (a) of this section only through the enactment of a State law . . . which affirmatively provides for
such eligibility.81
Absent an enactment of state law to the contrary, federal law leaves undocumented immigrants
ineligible for bar licenses, as argued above. The typical understanding is that only a legislative enactment
of state law triggers the savings clause, meaning that only a state legislature may permit the granting of
public benefits to undocumented immigrants. This understanding unnecessarily circumscribes the
statute.82 A court rule allowing for eligibility for admission to a state bar should suffice as “an
enactment of state law” under § 1621(d), and advocates have failed to fully explore this as a viable
option for Mr. Garcia and similarly situated individuals.83 Indeed, this may be the only practical option
available to gain admission under federal law.84

First, I note that this interpretation is fully consistent with the text of the statute. Second, I argue that it
was Congress’s intent to leave states with some autonomy to provide public benefits for undocumented
immigrants. To carry out that intent, a judicial enactment should be treated as a legislative enactment in
the context of bar membership. I then argue that contrary legislative history does not justify reading a
limitation on state autonomy into the savings clause. Lastly, I address courts’ tendency to interpret the
savings clause broadly. I argue that these points, taken together, establish that a state supreme court
may provide eligibility for undocumented immigrants under § 1621’s savings clause.

Courts can enact

Adam Wright, 13 - University of Michigan Law School, J.D. candidate, May 2014. Adam Wright is the
Executive Notes Editor for the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Volume 19 (“Federal Constraints on
States’ Ability to License an Undocumented Immigrant to Practice Law” 19 MICH. J. RACE & L. 177
(2013). https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=mjrl//DH

Congress carefully crafted § 1621 to honor state sovereignty, and in keeping with this intent, a judicial
enactment should be treated like a legislative enactment in the realm of bar admissions. A strict
requirement that the savings clause be triggered only by a legislative enactment would fail to grant
states adequate autonomy to regulate bar admission. State legislatures do not traditionally play a role in
setting bar admission rules.108 As the California Committee of Bar Examiners noted, “[T]he Supreme
Court is the authority within the State responsible for enacting laws in this area.”109 In order for the
savings clause to preserve state autonomy in regulating bar admission in the way it does for the other
prohibited benefits, a judicial enactment must be sufficient to allow for bar eligibility of undocumented
immigrants.
The interpretive presumption that the U.S. Supreme Court adopted in Gregory v. Ashcroft is protective of federalism interests and serves to
bolster the argument that a court rule is sufficient to trigger the savings clause.110 Justice O’Connor, writing for the majority, states, “‘[I]t is
incumbent upon the federal courts to be certain of Congress’ intent before finding that federal law overrides’ [the usual constitutional balance
of federal and state powers].”111 Giving “state-displacing weight [to] federal law” must not be based on “mere congressional ambiguity.”112
Rather, Congress must give a “plain statement” indicating its intention to override state law.113 To understand what a “plain statement” looks
like, it is helpful to examine the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).114 The ADA applies to, among other groups, “public entities,” which
are defined to include “any State or local government” and “any department, agency, special purpose district or other instrumentality of a State
or States or local government.”115 There has been no dispute that the definition of “public entities” amounts to a clear statement from
Congress that the ADA was intended to reach state court action.116 Therefore, courts hold that the ADA requirements properly apply to the
traditional state judicial function of setting fitness requirements for the bar.117 No equivalent clear statement is present in § 1621’s saving
clause. It is axiomatic to say that traditional state-federal balancing requires states to have the freedom to set their own bar admission
regulations.118 The Second Circuit has stated that federal courts are “particularly chary of intrusion into the relationship between the state and
those who seek license to practice in its courts.”119 Within states, it is the judiciary that exercises the power to regulate bar admission.120
Section 1621(d) indicates no express intent to require unprecedented state legislative involvement in bar admission by demanding legislative
enactments to override the statute’s prohibitions. Because Congress provided no clear statement to the contrary, the savings clause should not
be construed to require an interference with a basic tenet of state sovereignty—state courts should retain their traditional power of setting bar
admission standards. C. A Conference Committee Report on the Statute is Not Conclusive
Opponents of admission are likely to point to legislative history to argue that judicial enactments are
insufficient to provide bar eligibility for undocumented immigrants. In particular, a conference
committee report on § 1621 states, “Only the affirmative enactment of a law by a State legislature and
signed by the Governor after the date of enactment of this Act, that references this provision, will meet
the requirements of this section.”121 However, the California Supreme Court has stated that this
committee report “cannot change plain statutory language [of § 1621(d)].”122 In Martinez, the court
held that to trigger the savings clause, a law did not have to explicitly reference § 1621(d), despite the
fact that the conference committee report explicitly stated that a reference to the provision is
required.123 The committee report cannot trump the plain language of the savings clause, which leaves
open the possibility that a judicial enactment could provide bar admission eligibility to undocumented
immigrants.
 Excludes the President
Excludes the President
Supreme Court Reporter 1915- Supreme Court Reporter: U.S. Reports. Cases Argued and
Determined in the Supreme Court of the United States, October term 1914; December 1914-August
1915; Volume 35, West publishing Company, 1915

‘The constitutional authority of the President of the United States (art. 2, §§ 1, 3) Includes the executive
power of the nation and the duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed. “The President ‘shall take
care that the laws be faithfully executed” Under this clause his duty is not limited to the enforcement of
acts of Congress according to their express terms. It includes ‘the rights and obligations growing out of
the Constitution itself, our inter- national relations, and all the protection implied by the nature of the
government under the Constitution. " Cooley, Const. Law, p. 121; Re Neagle, 135 U. 8. 1, 34 L. ed. 55, 10
Sup. Ct. Rep. 058. The Constitution does not confer upon him any power to enact laws or to suspend or
repeal such as the Congress enacts, Kendall v. United States, 12 Pet. 524, 613, 9 L. ed. 1181, 1216, ‘The
President's powers are defined by the Constitution of the United States, and the government does not
contend that he has ‘any general authority in the disposition of the public and which the Constitution
has ‘committed to Congress, and freely concedes the general proposition as to the lack of authority in
the President to deal with the laws otherwise than to see that they are faithfully executed.
 Only Congress
Enact is Congress only
Congressional Record house 1905 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1905-pt2-
v39/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1905-pt2-v39-13-2.pdf

Now, my criticism of the form of that section lies in the !all- ure to use the words " to enact and declare
" in place of " to declare and order," because I think it important, if the act is to be rightly construed, to
make it clear that we are conferring legislative powers, and the word "enact" would clearly, carry that
idea. I think the words .. in the future" carries the idea also, but the change suggested would leave no
room for doubt. In line with this suggestion would be the change of the phrase " order of the
Commission" to "enactment of the Commission." Then, in the last two lines, the words " justness or
reasonable- ness " should be stricken out. Then you would remove all doubt as to the courts' ability to
nullify the Commission's power to fix rates. It would give drastic power, but the President's
recommendation calls for that, though he may not have so fully intended it You will have then left no
doubt of the intent of Congress, and the wisdom of your action can be fairly tested in the bitter school of
experience. These suggestions are, as I say, to make your legislation clean cut. I want the power you give
to be plainly shown, and if you are going to confer the power that section means to confer, say it, so no
construction of the act can make futile your effort. For myself, while I would strengthen the section as to
clearness of power given, I would limit the power equally plainly by providing that no rate fixed by a
railroad should be raised by the Commission and no enactment of the Commission should prevent the
lowering of a rate in the future. These latter provisions would prevent the Commission leveling rates,
while at the same time giving it power to prevent unreasonable rates. It ties the hands of the
Commission, it is true, but in that particular I am quite con- vinced they should be tied.

Only Congress has the power to enact legislation

The White House, ND (The White House, No Date, accessed on 6-25-2020, The White House, "The
Legislative Branch | The White House", https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/the-
legislative-branch/)

Established by Article I of the Constitution, the Legislative Branch consists of the House of
Representatives and the Senate, which together form the United States Congress. The Constitution
grants Congress the sole authority to enact legislation and declare war, the right to confirm or reject
many Presidential appointments, and substantial investigative powers.
The House of Representatives is made up of 435 elected members, divided among the 50 states in proportion to their total population. In addition, there are 6 non-
voting members, representing the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and four other territories of the United States. The presiding officer of
the chamber is the Speaker of the House, elected by the Representatives. He or she is third in the line of succession to the Presidency.

Members of the House are elected every two years and must be 25 years of age, a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, and a resident of the state (but not
necessarily the district) they represent.

The House has several powers assigned exclusively to it, including the power to initiate revenue bills, impeach federal officials, and elect the President in the case of
an electoral college tie.

The Senate is composed of 100 Senators, 2 for each state. Until the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not by
popular vote. Since then, they have been elected to six-year terms by the people of each state. Senator’s terms are staggered so that about one-third of the Senate
is up for reelection every two years. Senators must be 30 years of age, U.S. citizens for at least nine years, and residents of the state they represent.

The Vice President of the United States serves as President of the Senate and may cast the decisive vote in the event of a tie in the Senate.
The Senate has the sole power to confirm those of the President’s appointments that require consent, and to ratify treaties. There are, however, two exceptions to
this rule: the House must also approve appointments to the Vice Presidency and any treaty that involves foreign trade. The Senate also tries impeachment cases for
federal officials referred to it by the House.

In order to pass legislation and send it to the President for his signature, both the House and the Senate must pass the same bill by majority vote. If the President
vetoes a bill, they may override his veto by passing the bill again in each chamber with at least two-thirds of each body voting in favor.

The Legislative Process

The first step in the legislative process is the introduction of a bill to Congress. Anyone can write it, but only members of Congress can introduce legislation. Some
important bills are traditionally introduced at the request of the President, such as the annual federal budget. During the legislative process, however, the initial bill
can undergo drastic changes.

After being introduced, a bill is referred to the appropriate committee for review. There are 17 Senate committees, with 70 subcommittees, and 23 House
committees, with 104 subcommittees. The committees are not set in stone, but change in number and form with each new Congress as required for the efficient
consideration of legislation. Each committee oversees a specific policy area, and the subcommittees take on more specialized policy areas. For example, the House
Committee on Ways and Means includes subcommittees on Social Security and Trade.

A bill is first considered in a subcommittee, where it may be accepted, amended, or rejected entirely. If the members of the subcommittee agree to move a bill
forward, it is reported to the full committee, where the process is repeated again. Throughout this stage of the process, the committees and subcommittees call
hearings to investigate the merits and flaws of the bill. They invite experts, advocates, and opponents to appear before the committee and provide testimony, and
can compel people to appear using subpoena power if necessary.

If the full committee votes to approve the bill, it is reported to the floor of the House or Senate, and the majority party leadership decides when to place the bill on
the calendar for consideration. If a bill is particularly pressing, it may be considered right away. Others may wait for months or never be scheduled at all.

When the bill comes up for consideration, the House has a very structured debate process. Each member who wishes to speak only has a few minutes, and the
number and kind of amendments are usually limited. In the Senate, debate on most bills is unlimited — Senators may speak to issues other than the bill under
consideration during their speeches, and any amendment can be introduced. Senators can use this to filibuster bills under consideration, a procedure by which a
Senator delays a vote on a bill — and by extension its passage — by refusing to stand down. A supermajority of 60 Senators can break a filibuster by invoking
cloture, or the cession of debate on the bill, and forcing a vote. Once debate is over, the votes of a simple majority passes the bill.

A bill must pass both houses of Congress before it goes to the President for consideration. Though the Constitution requires that the two bills have the exact same
wording, this rarely happens in practice. To bring the bills into alignment, a Conference Committee is convened, consisting of members from both chambers. The
members of the committee produce a conference report, intended as the final version of the bill. Each chamber then votes again to approve the conference report.
Depending on where the bill originated, the final text is then enrolled by either the Clerk of the House or the Secretary of the Senate, and presented to the Speaker
of the House and the President of the Senate for their signatures. The bill is then sent to the President.

When receiving a bill from Congress, the President has several options. If the President agrees substantially with the bill, he or she may sign it into law, and the bill is
then printed in the Statutes at Large. If the President believes the law to be bad policy, he may veto it and send it back to Congress. Congress may override the veto
with a two-thirds vote of each chamber, at which point the bill becomes law and is printed.

There are two other options that the President may exercise. If Congress is in session and the President takes no action within 10 days, the bill becomes law. If
Congress adjourns before 10 days are up and the President takes no action, then the bill dies and Congress may not vote to override. This is called a pocket veto,
and if Congress still wants to pass the legislation, they must begin the entire process anew.

Powers of Congress

Congress, as one of the three coequal branches of government, is ascribed significant powers by the
Constitution. All legislative power in the government is vested in Congress, meaning that it is the only
part of the government that can make new laws or change existing laws. Executive Branch agencies
issue regulations with the full force of law, but these are only under the authority of laws enacted by
Congress. The President may veto bills Congress passes, but Congress may also override a veto by a two-
thirds vote in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Article I of the Constitution enumerates the powers of Congress and the specific areas in which it may
legislate. Congress is also empowered to enact laws deemed “necessary and proper” for the execution
of the powers given to any part of the government under the Constitution.
Criminal Justice
 Includes Qualified Immunity
Qualified immunity is criminal justice reform
Millhiser, 6-9 (Ian Millhiser, Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he
focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the
United States. Before joining Vox, Ian was a columnist at ThinkProgress. Among other things,
he clerked for Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and
served as a Teach For America corps member in the Mississippi Delta. He received a B.A. in
philosophy from Kenyon College and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke University, where he
served as senior note editor on the Duke Law Journal and was elected to the Order of the Coif.
He is the author of Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and
Afflicting the Afflicted. His reporting is partially supported by a grant from the New Venture
Fund., 6-9-2020, accessed on 6-30-2020, Vox, "Qualified immunity fix: 3 ways to ensure bad
cops aren’t above the law", https://www.vox.com/2020/6/9/21284270/qualified-immunity-
rogue-cops-justin-amash-8-cant-wait-supreme-court-justice-in-policing ) – ICW-AZL

Amid a national outcry over police brutality, qualified immunity, a once-obscure doctrine
protecting government officials from being sued in federal court, is having a moment of infamy.

Qualified immunity is supposed to shield public officials from suits involving novel legal claims.
But it can also protect police officers faced with rather shocking allegations of misconduct.

There are now two separate proposals in Congress and a raft of court cases hoping to alter or
abolish qualified immunity. Though the full implications of these efforts to limit the doctrine
vary, all of them would leave police with much less legal protection when officers violate the
Constitution.

After two weeks of protests catalyzed by the death of George Floyd during an encounter with
Minneapolis police officers, one of whom has been charged with his murder and three of whom
have been charged as accomplices to murder, House Democrats united around a proposal to end
qualified immunity for police officers. On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and
several other top Democrats unveiled a detailed criminal justice reform bill called the
“Justice in Policing Act.”

Among other things, this bill would prevent state and local law enforcement and
correctional officers from raising a qualified immunity defense in civil rights suits.

Qualified immunity is CJR

Ciaramella, 6-25 (C.j. Ciaramella, C.J. Ciaramella is a reporter at Reason.He was
previously a politics editor at BuzzFeed, and a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon. His
writing has also appeared in Vanity Fair, Vice, The Weekly Standard, High Times, Salon, The
Federalist, Pacific Standard, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the San Diego Union-
Tribune, and Street Sense., 6-25-2020, accessed on 6-30-2020, Reason, "House Passes Policing
Reform Package, Including Provision That Would End Qualified Immunity",
https://reason.com/2020/06/25/house-passes-policing-reform-package-including-provision-
that-would-end-qualified-immunity/) ICW-AZL
The Democrat-led House of Representatives passed a package of criminal justice legislation
Thursday night, largely along party lines, to address nationwide protests and demands for policing reforms following the
killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last month.

By a 236-181 vote, with only three Republicans voting in favor of it, the House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The
legislation would end qualified immunity—a legal doctrine that shields cops from liability in civil rights
lawsuits—establish a national registry for police misconduct, ban police chokeholds and no-knock raids in some circumstances, and
limit the transfer of military equipment to state and local police departments. It would also require federal law enforcement officers
to wear body cameras and to have dashboard cameras installed in their vehicles.

Ending qualified immunity has long been on criminal justice reform advocates and
libertarians' wish lists.

"Qualified immunity is a failure as a matter of policy, as a matter of law, and as a matter of basic
morality," said Robert McNamara, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm.
"For too long, qualified immunity has denied victims a remedy for violations of their
constitutional rights. It's encouraging to see Congress is finally taking steps to fix this pernicious
mistake by the Supreme Court."

Although civil liberties groups say the bill is far from perfect—they criticized provisions that would increase federal funding for state
and local law enforcement—Kanya Bennett, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a press
release that tonight's vote is still "the
most significant action that Congress has taken on police reform in
the six years that have transpired between the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson and George Floyd in Minneapolis."

"Given this significant and historic moment we are in, though, Congress can and must do more," she continued. "We can't band-aid
police with more federal dollars or take away just some of the military weapons. Congress must divest entirely from an institution
that has brutalized Black people for centuries."

However, the fate of any comprehensive policing reform, at least at the federal level, seems doomed, at least for the
moment. The White House and congressional Republicans have made it clear that ending qualified immunity is off the table.

Meanwhile in the Senate, Democrats have blocked Republican's more modest policing reform bill, the Just and Unifying Solutions to
Invigorate Communities Everywhere (JUSTICE) Act, introduced by Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.).

The JUSTICE Act would, among other things, increase the penalties for filing a false police report and incentivize departments to
create systems to share disciplinary records with each other to stop problem officers from being rehired. Another section, the
Breonna Taylor Notification Act—named after a Louisville woman who was killed in a botched no-knock raid in March—would
require states to collect and report data on the use of no-knock raids.

Democrats and civil liberties groups like the ACLU say Scott's legislation doesn't go nearly far enough in addressing systemic
problems in American policing. Republicans, however, say their bill balances the need to address problematic policing while still
supporting police overall.

"The American people know you do not really want progress on an issue if you block the Senate from taking it up," Senate majority
leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) said in a floor speech Thursday night. "They know that most police officers are brave and honorable
and that most protesters are peaceful. And they know our country needs both."
For the moment, both parties are at an impasse. In a press release after tonight's vote, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a member of the
House Judiciary Committee, said Democrats' legislation is "just another thinly veiled Democrat attempt to look like they are getting
something done when we all know this bill will never become law."

Qualified immunity is a central issue to criminal justice reform advocates

Polumbo, 6-8 (Brad Polumbo, Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-
conservative journalist and fellow at the Washington Examiner., 6-8-2020, accessed on 6-30-
2020, The Dispatch, "There’s Never Been a Better Time to Abolish Qualified Immunity",
https://thedispatch.com/p/theres-never-been-a-better-time-to) – ICW-AZL

George Floyd’s death has outraged the public and received near-universal condemnation across
the political spectrum. The riots and looting that have broken out in the aftermath have
commanded much of our immediate attention, but right-of-center criminal justice reform
activists and sympathetic policymakers are hoping the time is finally right to abolish
“qualified immunity,” one of the justice system’s most pernicious legal provisions that acts
as a de facto liability shield for bad cops and other reckless government officials.

In perhaps a high-water mark for the movement against qualified immunity, Rep. Justin Amash,
will formally introduce a bill co-sponsored with Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna
Pressley to abolish the practice. The Supreme Court may also soon take up cases to reconsider
the doctrine.

Amash called on his colleagues to co-sponsor the “Ending Qualified Immunity Act,” which the
congressman says will “eliminate qualified immunity and restore Americans’ ability to obtain
relief when police officers violate their constitutionally secured rights.”

“The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police is merely the latest in a long line of
incidents of egregious police misconduct,” Amash and Pressley write. “This pattern continues
because police are legally, politically, and culturally insulated from consequences for violating
the rights of the people they have sworn to serve.”

Of course, “qualified immunity” is a term that many are not familiar with.

Cornell Law defines qualified immunity as “a type of legal immunity… [that] protects a
government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff's rights, only
allowing suits where officials violated a ‘clearly established’ statutory or constitutional right.” In
practice, this requirement for exact prior cases makes it impossible in most cases to sue a
government official who violates your rights in civil court.

This provision is a creation of the judicial branch and is not in line with what Congress intended
to set up. As Amash notes, the Civil Rights Act of 1871 specifically permitted Americans to sue
officials who violated their rights, and qualified immunity later emerged through judicial
invention. The Supreme Court created the doctrine of qualified immunity in the landmark 1982
decision Harlow v. Fitzgerald, citing “the need to protect officials who are required to exercise
discretion and the related public interest in encouraging the vigorous exercise of official
authority.”
It has resulted in too many such horror stories and unjust anecdotes to count.

Criminal justice reform analyst Molly Davis tells the story of former inmate Larry Hope, who
was “forced to spend seven hours chained in burning hot metal to a hitching post outside [under
the Alabama sun]” and “had no bathroom breaks… guards taunted him about his thirst, only
offering him water twice throughout the day.”

When Hope tried to sue his jailers after his release, qualified immunity shielded the guards from
what seems to be a clearcut violation of Hope’s Eighth Amendment rights. Qualified immunity
could also make it difficult for George Floyd’s family in any civil proceeding.

“As things currently stand, George Floyd's family may be denied justice in a civil suit unless they
can show a substantially similar case where the courts have already agreed that a person's rights
were violated,” Libertas Institute President Connor Boyack told me. “Justice shouldn't be denied
merely because it wasn't granted to someone else first; the current precedent is extremely
problematic and closes the door to the courts for people with legitimate claims of wrongdoing.”

“It’s hard to say for sure whether [officer] Derek Chauvin would be protected by qualified
immunity if George Floyd’s family brought a civil suit,” the Cato Institute’s Jay Schweikert said.
“But either way, this incident absolutely reinforces the need to abolish qualified immunity.”

Criminal justice reformers like Boyack and Schweikert argue that the pernicious effects of
qualified immunity extend far beyond the denial of justice in specific cases. The experts both
agreed that the general existence of a liability shield gives government officials, specifically
police officers, a sense of impunity that increases recklessness and abuse.

“Whether or not Chauvin himself would be covered by it, the senseless violence we saw here is a
product of our culture of near-zero accountability for law enforcement — and qualified
immunity is one of the biggest drivers of that culture,” Schweikert said.

“People naturally respond to incentives, so if officers know that they might be accountable
should they use excessive force, they'll be incentivized to restrain themselves more than they are
under the status quo,” said Boyack.

Both experts support allowing liability-driven market forces to, in absence of qualified
immunity, help drive bad actors out of the police force.

“Consider the interesting idea of requiring officers to obtain liability insurance to financially
cover cases where they have [been found] responsible for misconduct. If a certain officer has
repeated offenses, they may be uninsurable to a point where they could no longer be employed,
thus helping weed out the ‘bad cops’ everyone agrees do exist.”

“Abolishing qualified immunity does raise the question of policies we should put into place to
actually fund judgments against police officers,” Schweikert concurred. “One proposal that we
think is especially promising is requiring police to carry liability insurance, the same way we do
with other professionals, like doctors and lawyers. That would mean that, over time, police who
routinely commit misconduct would simply be priced out of the market, because their premiums
would get too high.”

It’s, of course, true that no single reform can eliminate racism or repair the structural flaws in
our justice system. But within the right-leaning criminal justice reform community, a
consensus has formed that eliminating qualified immunity is a great place to start.

Recent criminal justice reforms focus on qualified immunity

Baker, 6-15 (Christina Baker, Reporter for Daily Collegian, 6-15-2020, accessed on 6-30-
2020, The Daily Collegian, "Penn State criminal justice experts weigh in on police reform",
https://www.collegian.psu.edu/news/campus/article_76b74ebe-ae98-11ea-bccc-
93db918e0647.html)

If police officers aren’t fired or charged with crimes, sometimes the victims of excessive force
can sue to hold the officer accountable in court. However, this has become more and more
difficult in recent years due to qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity originates from 1983 lawsuits and is named for section 1983 of the U.S. legal
code, which was passed in 1871.

According to Kinports, Section 1983 established that “if a state official violates your
constitutional rights, you can sue that person in federal courts to recover damages.”

Over the years, courts have created immunity doctrines, which exempt certain types of
government officials — like state legislators, judges and prosecutors — from being sued under a
1983 suit. In 1973, the courts created qualified immunity to protect officials like police officers
and governors.

“If you have qualified immunity, even if you violate my constitutional rights, the standard is,
‘Were the constitutional rights that were violated… clearly established constitutional rights of
which a reasonable officer would have known?’” Kinports said.

Therefore, according to Kinports, even if an officer uses excessive force — unless it was clear at
the time that the amount of force used was excessive — the officer cannot be sued, and the case
is dismissed before trial.

Qualified immunity has come under renewed scrutiny in the current push for
criminal justice reform, and there is currently a congressional proposal to eliminate
qualified immunity, although Kinports said she doubts it will actually pass.

Qualified immunity has been subjected to similar scrutiny lately in the courts, with some
Supreme Court justices voicing a desire to reconsider the doctrine. Kinports was similarly
skeptical that these desires will lead to action, but noted that qualified immunity stood on
shakier legal ground than absolute immunity for legislators and judges.

A more probable reform, Kinports said, is that courts will be less likely to grant qualified
immunity to officers.
This week, Kinports said, a Court of Appeals overturned a qualified immunity decision made by
a lower court. The officers in the case had shot Wayne Jones, a homeless black man, 22 times.

In its opinion, the Court of Appeals referenced the Michael Brown and George Floyd cases and
said officers must “act with respect for the dignity and worth of black lives.”

Those calling for criminal justice reform hope that if courts are less likely to grant qualified
immunity, officers might be less likely to use excessive force.

“People might think a little more when they do something,” Gabbidon said. “Like, ‘You know
what? I could actually be charged in this case, or something significant could happen because I
don’t have that protection.’”
 Includes Qualified Immunity – We Meet
Qualified immunity protects from criminal prosecution
Legal Information Institute no date -- We are a small research, engineering, and editorial group
housed at the Cornell Law School in Ithaca, NY. Our collaborators include publishers, legal scholars,
computer scientists, government agencies, and other groups and individuals that promote open access
to law, worldwide. We are supported by private donations, corporate sponsorships, and our parent
institution, the Cornell Law School. (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, “Qualified
Immunity”, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/qualified_immunity) – ICW-AZL

In Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982), the Supreme Court held that federal government officials
are entitled to qualified immunity. The Court reasoned that "the need to protect officials who are
required to exercise discretion and the related public interest in encouraging the vigorous exercise of
official authority." With regard to certain government officials, including the President, prosecutors, and
similar officials, the Court upheld absolute immunity. This doctrine shields those individuals from
criminal prosecution and lawsuits, as long as their actions in question were within the scope of their
jobs. For all other federal officials, the Court also held that federal officials who are trying to qualify for
absolute immunity have the burden to prove "that public policy requires an exemption of that scope."
For government officials trying to qualify for absolute immunity, the Court also established a 2-part test
that the official must satisfy:

First, the official must show that his position's responsibilities had such a sensitive function that it
requires absolute immunity

Second, the official must demonstrate that he was discharging the protected function of the position
when performing the in question
 Excludes Qualified Immunity
Violation – qualified immunity is civil, not criminal
Miller no date -- Tim Miller, JD, (Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, DHS, Part IX, Qualified
Immunity, https://www.fletc.gov/sites/default/files/PartIXQualifiedImmunity.pdf) – ICW-AZL

Qualified Immunity If sued by a plaintiff for a constitutional violation, the officer may request qualified
immunity. Qualified immunity is a defense to standing civil trial. It’s raised by the officer well in advance
of the actual trial on the merits. If granted, the plaintiff’s claim of excessive force against the officer is
dismissed. But dismissal is qualified, however, by the officer’s use of force being objectively reasonable.

Qualified immunity is only civil law

Institute for Justice no date -- The Institute for Justice is the National Law Firm for Liberty. IJ files
lawsuits to fight on behalf of those individuals who are denied their constitutional rights. In addition to
fighting in court on behalf of small business owners, educational choice advocates, property owners and
free speech issues, the Institute for Justice has a legislative team working to make changes at the local
and state government levels. (“Frequently Asked Questions About Ending Qualified Immunity”, Institute
for Justice, https://ij.org/frequently-asked-questions-about-ending-qualified-immunity/) – ICW-AZL

Does qualified immunity apply in criminal cases?

No. Qualified immunity applies only in civil lawsuits, not criminal prosecutions. Yet such civil suits are
the only means by which individuals or families can get compensation for the violation of their
constitutional or civil rights. And in practice, civil lawsuits are often the only means to seek justice at all
because prosecutors—themselves government officials—are typically reluctant to bring criminal charges
against their government colleagues, especially police officers who are crucial to the work prosecutors
do on a daily basis.

Qualified immunity only applies in civil suits, not criminal

Kramer 6-3 -- Vice President for Communications. Since joining the Institute for Justice in 1992,
Kramer’s strategic media relations work—coupled with IJ’s litigation—has protected homes and small
businesses nationwide from eminent domain abuse, and secured the rights of entrepreneurs to earn an
honest living when the government sought to shut them out. Kramer’s work in the court of public
opinion helped ensure that First Amendment protections were extended to the Internet and he directed
the successful PR effort to strike down a federal law that made it a felony to compensate bone marrow
donors—a victory that has the potential to save thousands of American lives each year. (“George Floyd
and Beyond: How “Qualified Immunity” Enables Bad Policing”, June 3, 2020, Institute for Justice,
https://ij.org/press-release/beyond-george-floyd-how-qualified-immunity-enables-bad-policing/) ICW-
AZL

Qualified immunity means that government officials cannot be held accountable for violating the
Constitution unless they violate a “clearly established” constitutional rule. In practice, that means that
government officials can only be held liable if a federal court of appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court has
already held that someone violated the Constitution by engaging in precisely the same conduct under
precisely the same circumstances.
How precisely must the violation match? Officers were recently granted qualified immunity when they
let their police dog attack a suspect who was seated with his hands raised because the court found that
an earlier case in which police let loose their dog on a suspect who was lying down wasn’t a close
enough match.

“Qualified immunity means that government officials can get away with violating your rights as long as
they violated them in a way nobody thought of before,” explained Institute for Justice (IJ) Attorney Anya
Bidwell. “And that means that the most egregious abuses are frequently the ones for which no one can
be held to account.”

Qualified immunity applies only in civil lawsuits—not criminal ones. But such civil suits are the only
means by which individuals or their surviving family members can get compensation for the violation of
constitutional rights. And prosecutors often resist bringing criminal charges against government
colleagues, especially police officers who are crucial to the daily work of prosecutors.
 Includes Decarceration
Criminal justice reform means decarceration and towards the direction of resolving
mass incarceration
Aherns 20 (Deborah M., professor of criminal law at the Seattle University School of Law, 5-14-2020,
"RETROACTIVE LEGALITY: MARIJUANA CONVICTIONS AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN AN ERA OF
CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM", https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol110/iss3/1/, JRB)
**footnotes omitted

The common wisdom for decades has been that criminal law is a “oneway ratchet,” turning only in the
direction of criminalizing more conduct and punishing existing offenses more harshly.9 This narrative
has been problematized by a mild trend towards decarceration in the past decade, pushed in part by a
substantive desire for criminal justice reform and in part by the reality of overburdened state budgets and declining faith in
the ability of criminal justice to combat social problems, particularly substance use.10 7 In 2009, the Obama Administration declared an end to
the War on Drugs that President Nixon had announced in the 1970s, signaling that the administration planned to reorient towards treatment
and away from incarceration. To the extent that the Administration has tried to roll back legalization efforts, it has encountered a bipartisan
Congressional barrier, as legislators have highlighted the disconnect between a Republican states’ rights platform and efforts to crack down on
legal marijuana use and pointed out that candidate Donald Trump had campaigned on a platform that left marijuana laws to states. See Matt
Laslo, Pot Showdown: How Congress Is Uniting to Stop Jeff Sessions’ War on Drugs, ROLLING STONE, The traditional narrative was further
undermined by the trend toward decriminalizing and/or legalizing the use of marijuana for medical and recreational purposes. Marijuana, once
characterized at best as a gateway drug to harder substances,11 and at worst a drug that transformed users into violent criminals,12 is in
several states now legalized and available in suburban strip malls and hipster downtown pot shops, complete with twee signage and tasting
bars.13 Some additional jurisdictions that continue to formally criminalize marijuana possession have effectively decriminalized its use through
no-prosecution policies.14 Marijuana has gone mainstream, viewed in many states as a reasonable recreational option and an engine of
potential economic growth.15 This social and legal transformation has, however, left people behind. Even as the pace of legalization quickens,
people remain incarcerated for marijuana offenses within jurisdictions that have legalized recreational marijuana.16 Other people are still on
probation or parole for marijuana. While the number of incarcerated Americans peaked at 2,310,300 in 2008, by the end of 2016, the Bureau of
Justice Statistics estimates that 2,162,400 people were incarcerated. See id. at 1–2. This decline did not reflect that people who formerly might
have been incarcerated were all simply shunted to various forms of correction supervision, such as parole and probation (although even such a
shift would be notable); the population of persons under correctional supervision also declined during this period, from a high of 5,119,000 in
2007 to 4,650,900 in 2016 (the number of persons on parole did increase, suggesting that at least some of the decline in incarceration may
attributable to increased use of parole; jurisdictions may simply be placing fewer newlyconvicted persons under various forms of correctional
control). For a discussion of some of the ways in which marijuana has been integrated into the commercial and communal life of the
jurisdictions who have legalized its use and sale, including some genuinely amusing examples, see infra notes 110–117 and accompanying text.
16 See infra notes 53–56 (discussing prosecution and incarceration of marijuana users, sellers, and growers during the War on Drugs). offenses
that preceded legalization.17 Many more people have criminal records that reflect marijuana offenses, and those criminal histories impede the
ability of convicted persons to enjoy full participation in civic life.18 The extent to which criminal convictions constrain people’s lives has been
documented thoroughly.19 The direct consequences of criminal convictions—generally, fines, incarceration, and community supervision— are
included in the governing criminal statutes.20 Additional civil laws impose formal legal consequences for criminal convictions, including voter
disenfranchisement, disqualification from jury service, and exclusion from some public benefits.21 Less formally, persons convicted of crimes
also face consequences in employment, private housing, professional licensing, and social interactions.22 These consequences have existed to
varying degrees for some time, but they have intensified in an era where information is readily available on the internet and employment,
housing, and other life requirements require identification processes that often include background checks.23 A criminal conviction marks a
person fundamentally and indelibly.24 Such a mark is unfair when the essence of the underlying conduct is now viewed as acceptable.
Marijuana sales and purchases in several states enjoy governing laws that affirmatively support such activity; legislatures generally crafted
these laws in response to public referenda or propositions that supported legalization and reflected that citizens believed the behavior should
no longer be prosecuted.25 There is a disconnect between the formalization of and favor for the legal cannabis industry and the ongoing
consequences faced by persons previously convicted. That disconnect is particularly troubling when the communities harmed by the past
excesses of the War on Drugs are not the same communities enjoying the benefit of legalization.26 The continuing constraints lack justification
and fail to honor many of the reasons why the legalization movement has succeeded. As this Article explains, the movement to legalize
marijuana is grounded not only in forward-thinking interest in raising revenue and reducing government spending but also in retrospective
regret over the racial disparities that resulted from and perhaps fueled the War on Drugs, as well as the broader cultural violence wrought by
mass incarceration.27 This Article argues that the particular confluence of these factors— particularly the disparities in demographics and
fortunes between people prosecuted in the past under criminal law and people currently cashing in on legal cannabis—suggests a paradigm
shift in how we should deal with existing marijuana convictions, one grounded in the principle of retroactive legalization. On a conceptual level,
our goal ought to be to restore to full civic equality (and full entrepreneurial opportunity) all those prosecuted in the past for activity that would
be legal in the present. In addition, we ought to do so through mechanisms that put the onus for implementation on the state, as the collective
representative of the forces that imposed an unjustifiable and imbalanced coercive regime, rather than on the individual already operating
under the weight of these cumulative sanctions and disadvantages. Under this paradigm, all marijuana convictions in jurisdictions that have
legalized marijuana should be effectively expunged and sealed. Some jurisdictions have already started doing this to a limited extent for
misdemeanor marijuana convictions—prosecutors voluntarily are clearing records and expunging convictions where the convictions are minor
and where convicted persons meet other eligibility criteria.28 Jurisdictions vary in whether they require the person convicted of an offense to
come forward or whether they are willing to do the work to identify and expunge convictions, regardless of whether or not the person
convicted is aware that the conviction is eligible for erasure.29 This Article argues, first, that all jurisdictions where marijuana has been legalized
should expunge prior misdemeanor convictions and should do so through automatic mechanisms that do not rely on the individuals convicted
of these offenses to come forward, make motions, meet additional criteria, or pay fees for the privilege of regaining their civic equality.30 In
addition, this Article suggests that universalizing the clearance of misdemeanors is insufficient. True retroactive legalization requires
jurisdictions that have fully legalized the marijuana industry to treat felony marijuana convictions—convictions that may be for distribution,
possession with intent to distribute, or trafficking—in the same manner.31 Mass expungement for felony convictions is likely to be met with
more resistance than forgiving misdemeanor possession convictions,32 but according to the analysis presented here, the broad embrace of the
cannabis industry as an engine of economic development and the construction of a regime of laws and government institutions supporting that
industry requires such a step. In some ways, this proposal does not go nearly far enough—there is a large body of people who would not have
been convicted of other offenses or would not have been sentenced as seriously as they were for other offenses 29 For a discussion of the
diversity of approaches employed, see infra notes 93–105 and accompanying text. 30 Even some of the better designed programs, like Denver’s
“Turn Over a New Leaf” Program, impose significant obligations on those carrying convictions, including meetings with prosecutors that impose
psychic costs and potentially expose those individuals to additional scrutiny and legal jeopardy. See Bobbi Sheldon, You Can Apply to Have
Marijuana Convictions Expunged Under New Denver Program, 9NEWS, Jan. 9, 2019, https://www.9new s.com/article/news/local/you-can-
apply-to-have-marijuana-convictions-expunged-under-new -denver-program/73-613378e0-0a68-4e64-a2a3-dda0bb04b297
[https://perma.cc/LJ8Q-9CN H].31 While the majority of states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use have also enacted legislation
to regulate a legal production and distribution industry in-state, two jurisdictions—Vermont and the District of Columbia—have only legalized
personal marijuana possession. See infra note 107. In states that do not yet permit legal marijuana businesses, there is not the same imperative
to ensure that persons convicted of offenses involving marijuana sales and cultivation enjoy the benefit of having those past convictions
cleared. This Article leaves for another day the question whether it is theoretically appropriate and practically possible to extend the principle
of retroactive legality to situations in which an individual came under police suspicion for conduct that is now legal (such as smoking marijuana)
but was ultimately convicted of an unrelated crime. For an argument that, whatever lines we choose, retroactive legalization will inevitably be
both over- and under-inclusive, see infra Part V. if they did not have marijuana convictions, 33 and we might productively debate whether some
or all of those people are due some relief from the lifelong consequences of their convictions. But eliminating both misdemeanor and felony
convictions for marijuana offenses is a concrete first step towards a form of restorative justice34 for the War on Drugs. In
the long term,
criminal justice reform—the response to decades of mass incarceration that has positioned the United
States as the world’s foremost incarcerator—is going to need to involve structural changes in criminal
processes as well as substantive changes in criminal law . Academics and activists alike have noted the
tendency to treat all social problems as criminal justice problems and to address issues like mental
health, homelessness, and substance use disorders through convictions and sentencing, rather than
through less expensive civil and community processes that leave less of a permanent mark on
individuals and better meet their needs.36

Prison reform same as criminal justice reform

Morgan 19 (Robert D., John G. Skelton, Jr. Regents Endowed Professor in Psychology at Texas Tech
University. In addition to numerous contributions to the journal literature, he is most recently the co-
author of Stepping Up, Stepping Out: A Mental Health Treatment Program for Inmates in Restrictive
Housing?, 4-25-2019, "The SAGE Encyclopedia of Criminal Psychology, 1st Edition", JRB)

Prison reform–in its narrowest sense–is the attempt to ameliorate conditions for those incarcerated (i.e.,
reform prison conditions), develop a more effective and fair penal system, or implement alternatives to
prison. Sometimes the term is used interchangeably with criminal justice reform, although the latter is
more an umbrella term that includes reform at the front end of the criminal justice system (law
enforcement) and back end as well (reentry). Thus, prison reform is the attempt to address one of
several parts of the criminal justice system.
 Decreasing Punitiveness
Criminal justice reform means decreasing punitiveness – includes rehab, mental health,
mandatory minimums, bail reform
Wolf 19 (Tom Wolf, serving his second term as Governor of Pennsylvania, focusing his term on reform
of the criminal justice system, 2-22-2019, "Fix the criminal justice system to open up our economy",
TheHill, https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/431055-fix-the-criminal-justice-system-to-open-up-
our-economy, JRB)

Breaking laws must have consequences, but our criminal

justice system needs to provide a pathway to individual
justice through the opportunity to earn a second chance in our economy. Anything less is a failure. And failing
means more people reentering the criminal justice system and less stability for their families and our communities. Given the stakes,
criminal justice reform is a topic looked at through this pragmatic lens rather than a partisan one. Pennsylvania
is leading the nation with a steady advancement of bipartisan criminal justice reforms focused on removing barriers that prevent advancement
in the workforce: the nation’s first ‘Clean Slate’ law; creating a fair-chance hiring policy for state government; and eliminating driver’s license
suspensions for non-driving infractions; all while seeing consecutive annual decreases in our prison population and a drop in crime. Our
Clean Slate legislation is really a jobs bill. With this new law, a person’s misdemeanor record will not
shut them out the possibilities for a good job, career advancement, obtaining housing or getting into
college. According to Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, since the law went into effect in late December 2018, more than 7,500
Pennsylvanians have requested help from attorneys offering their services free of charge via the My Clean Slate PA initiative; and 25,000 have
visited mycleanslatepa.com to see how they might benefit from wiping their record clean. In
the land of the free, a criminal
record should not mean a lifetime disqualification from opportunity — opportunity to build a better life
after a mistake, for oneself and one’s family. A criminal justice leader in our legislature, Rep. Jordan Harris, says, “We shouldn’t
judge any person by only their worst day.” He’s right. Our government shouldn’t. And neither should our economy. Tens of millions of
Americans face a lifetime of economic stagnation due to a past conviction. This isn’t right. And it is not smart. Government at all levels, and
businesses and institutions across sectors must embrace common sense solutions to help the previously incarcerated through access to
opportunity. Smart criminal justice reforms will put more people to work and make our communities safer
and more prosperous. It also will save taxpayers millions, if not billions, of dollars by reducing the cost of
mass incarceration and the trail of social problems that follows it. Criminal justice reform means
making lives better by ensuring rehabilitation is available for those who have paid for their
mistakes. It means providing job or skills training, so people can move back into their communities and
succeed. It means access to services, including mental health and substance use treatment, so they can
have a future that doesn’t involve returning to prison. We have a lot of work to do. We need to reform excessive
sentencing guidelines, mandatory minimums, and probation and parole terms that trap people in the
criminal justice system for too long. We need true bail reform — an end to our modern-day debtors’
prisons — and better access to legal counsel. We need a nationwide clean slate program that speeds up
record-sealing, and expansion of fair-chance hiring that removes the lifetime stigma of a past failure.
State and local governments need to step up. The federal government must enact more smart criminal justice
reforms, including more funding for specialty courts and diversion programs . Businesses, nonprofits and
institutions must commit to giving qualified people with a past conviction a fair shot at jobs.
 Increasing Punitiveness
Criminal justice reform means increasing punitiveness, not the other way around
Rizer 16 (Arthur, Director, Criminal Justice & Civil Liberties; Resident Senior Fellow, 9-16-2016,
"Criminal justice reform doesn’t have to mean ‘soft on crime’", The SAGE Encyclopedia of Criminal
Psychology, JRB)

The phrase “criminal justice reform” is loaded with emotional impact. To some, the words translate to “soft on
crime,” which has been a political mantra and damning epithet for more than 30 years. To others, it represents subjugation of the poor and
minorities. Laws passed during the 1980s under the label of “reform” created vast sentencing disparities
between powder and crack cocaine offenses, with crack crimes receiving sentences up to 100 times longer than those associated with powder
cocaine crimes. It was not missed that crack addicts were largely economically bereft, disproportionately black, and living in the inner cities of
America.
 Includes Decriminalizing
Decriminalizing is criminal justice reform
Estelle 18 (Sarah Estelle, PhD, Professor of Economics at Hope College, research fellow at Acton
Institute, 12-20-2018, "Criminal justice reform: What is it and why does it matter?",
https://blog.acton.org/archives/105399-criminal-justice-reform-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter.html,
JRB)

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted 87-12 to pass the First Step Act. If enacted, the legislation would provide some reform
of prisons and
sentencing at the federal level . The most significant changes would be the implementation of incentives for prisoners to engage in “evidence-based
recidivism reduction programs” and increased judicial discretion in sentencing. The bill now goes to the House for a vote, where it is expected to pass, and President
Donald Trump said he would sign it into law. The political demand for criminal justice reform are remarkable for its time in that is nearly uniformly supported, at
least in theory. In this three-part blog series I will outline the impetus for criminal justice reform and the variety of reforms that could include, consider what we
know about the effectiveness of criminal justice policy based on sound economics, and finally consider the particular reforms contained in the largely bipartisan-
supported First Step Act. The United States is an international outlier when it comes to incarceration. According to the London-based Institute for Criminal Policy
Research,the incarceration rate in the United State is 655 incarcerated individuals per 100,000 residents, the highest in the world. That is more than one-and-a-half
times the rate of incarceration in Russia and over five times the rate in China. The country from which we inherited much of our legal understanding, England, when
combined with Wales incarcerates relatively few: 140 people for every 100,000 population. For more than three decades, the incarceration rate in the United States
had been increasing. Despite more recent declines (and the boon of contemporaneously decreasing crime rates), efforts toward criminal justice reform remain
politically popular. Concerns about the portion of the population incarcerated as well as racial and socioeconomic disparities in criminal convictions and sentencing
have kept reforms at the forefront and provided largely bipartisan appeal. Crime and incarceration both are costly for society. Most noticeably, criminal activity and
punishment burden public budgets and many crimes have victims whose costs must be fully accounted for. Punishment, especially incarceration, is also costly to
offenders – to some degree as intended – but can impose costs beyond the term of a sentence. Incarceration can reduce an individual’s attachment to family and
community as well as diminish his skills and attachment to labor market options. All of these consequences make for less flourishing for the former offender and,
other things held constant, a higher probability of re-offense, or recidivism. Citizens who care about public safety should be concerned about the ways that criminal
justice can in fact increase recidivism and how criminal sentences, properly applied, might be used to reduce re-offense. One extreme method for reducing
recidivism is to keep offenders incarcerated for life, reducing crime by what criminologists call incapacitation. This approach is obviously costly (to public budgets,
family well-being, and labor market productivity) and, if universally applied, unjust as it is not warranted in most cases. In reality, 90
percent of those
currently incarcerated in the U.S. will someday be released and re-enter our neighborhoods and
hopefully, if we care about flourishing, our workplaces and churches. Note that the costs to society, to a
former offender’s family, and himself (well over 90 percent of criminal offenders are men) will be that
much more if reentry and reintegration go poorly . Economic theory (to be addressed in the next installment of this blog series,
“Criminal Justice Reform: What Does Economics Have to Say?”) makes clear the role of family, community, and employment in recidivism prevention. How long an
offender remains incarcerated and his experience in prison also influence recidivism risk. Sentencing
and prison reform are two
dimensions of criminal justice reform that reflect this understanding. In particular, the longer a criminal sentence, the
greater the detachment from family, community, and work, the greater the opportunity for picking up skills that make one a more likely to attempt or succeed at
committing a crime. Alternatively, if a sentence encourages high quality recidivism prevention programs, behavioral or substance abuse rehabilitation, or job
training it can reduce criminal activity upon release. Taken all together, it is not clear that longer sentences will uniformly reduce crime, an observation borne out in
empirical economic research. This is just one complexity of effective criminal justice, the awareness of which has shifted the pressures on elected officials from
demonstrating one’s tough-on-crime chops to a bipartisan call for what advocates of “smart justice”are demanding. Another observation driving some of the smart
justice discussion is that almost half of federal inmates are incarcerated for a drug offense. This has motivated public debate surrounding the criminalization of
drugs and sentencing related to non-violent drug offenses. Some would consider these non-violent offenses to be victimless crimes. Another argument is that drug
offenses, particularly personal possession or consumption, might not be remedied by incarceration but rather rehabilitation outside of the criminal justice system. In
general, the smart justice movement has placed a particular interest in non-violent offenders, though the First Step Act does provide incentives for violent
offenders, too, to engage in recidivism reduction programs. Criminal justice reform isn’t just about conviction and
sentencing, though. The criminal justice system has an impact even before a crime is committed by
policing that can deter or prevent crime. If a crime is committed, the pipeline of justice proceeds
through crime reporting, criminal investigation, prosecution and criminal trial, the court’s decision,
sentencing and then the corrections system including prison or jail, parole, probation and other
punishment. Criminal justice reforms have been suggested for all these stages of the legal process,
though the reforms most often associated with the idea tend to be prison reform and sentencing
reform, both of which are addressed in the First Step Act (and the third post in this series.) For now, I will conclude with two aspects of reform
that are perhaps less well-known, but no less relevant to the outcomes of criminal justice or a concern
for human flourishing. Perhaps the earliest decision in the criminal justice process is to define what
activities are criminal. Supporters of drug legalization often decry the “overcriminalization” of a “victimless crime.” While this is controversial, there are
other behaviors, far less risky or costly to society that are or have been defined as criminal. Watching a neighbor’s child before school, selling bread out of a home
kitchen, or allowing your car to warm up in the driveway during the winter can, in some situations, lead to criminal charges. This type of overcriminalization means
that some crimes can be a surprise to the offender, such that the sheer number of laws on the books can be a justice issue. If the scope of criminal activity is too
vast or commonplace for an individual to be aware of, then laws can be broken without any criminal intent, which traditionally has been a necessary element of
establishing an act as criminal. Reforms
targeted at overcriminalization, then, aim to change the legal treatment of
particular activities (like warming up a cold car) and/or reduce the overall number of acts deemed illegal.

Marijuana decriminalization is criminal justice reform

Aherns 20 (Deborah M., professor of criminal law at the Seattle University School of Law, 5-14-2020,
"RETROACTIVE LEGALITY: MARIJUANA CONVICTIONS AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN AN ERA OF
CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM", https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol110/iss3/1/, JRB)
**footnotes omitted

A CLIMATE OF REFORM The movement to legalize marijuana and expunge or pardon marijuana
convictions is only one part of a broader, recent trend towards incremental criminal justice reform.
While incarceration rates increased at a steady pace since the early 1970s, they have levelled and modestly receded in the 2010s,
in part because of changes in criminal law .123 Voters in the November 2018 election approved not just
marijuana legalization propositions, but a number of other criminal justice reforms . Florida voters
overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to re-enfranchise persons convicted of felony offenses,124 and voters across the
country approved other ballot propositions designed to reduce the imprint of mass incarceration or to combat perceived excesses of police.125
State legislatures continued to enact criminal justice reforms,126 and new reform proposals have already featured in 2019.127 Congress passed
the FIRST STEP Act (which, among other things, retroactively applies the Fair Sentencing Act that had addressed sentencing disparities between
powder and crack forms of cocaine) by bipartisan majorities with support from the president.128 Openness to reform may reflect a variety of
inputs, including declining state budgets, growing awareness of the racial impacts of policing and prosecution, and concern about the effects of
criminal justice.129 Whatever the sources and motivations, government
actors and voters alike appear poised to
consider how to transform criminal justice at the present crossroads . Marijuana convictions offer an
excellent opportunity to think through how to deal with the pervasive effects of mass incarceration.
 Excludes Decriminalization – Limits
There’s over 4400 federal crimes which an aff could decriminalize AND they’re
growing every year
Baker 8 (John, the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law at the Louisiana State University Law Center, 6-16-
2008, "Revisiting the Explosive Growth of Federal Crimes", https://www.heritage.org/report/revisiting-
the-explosive-growth-federal-crimes, note: this whole report is actually super interesting and he has a
lot of justifications for his numbers but didn’t seem super relevant, JRB)

This report follows from other attempts to count the number of federal criminal offenses or to measure their growth. Themost
complete count of federal crimes, done by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in the early 1980s, put
the number at 3,000. A 1998 report by a task force of the American Bar Association relied on the DOJ
figure and other data to measure the growth of federal criminal law but did not itself actu ally provide a
count of federal crimes.[1] In a 2004 Federalist Society monograph building on the DOJ and ABA reports, I counted new federal crimes
enacted following the point at which the ABA report finished its data collection at the close of 1996. That report estimates that
there were 4,000 federal crimes at the start of 2000 .[2] This report updates that total through 2007,
finding 452 additional crimes created since 2007, for a total of at least 4,450 federal crimes.[3] The
growth of federal crimes continues unabated. The increase of 452 over the eight-year period between
2000 and 2007 averages 56.5 crimes per year-roughly the same rate at which Congress cre ated new
crimes in the 1980s and 1990s. So for the past twenty-five years, a period over which the growth of the
federal criminal law has come under increasing scrutiny, Congress has been creating over 500 new
crimes per decade. That pace is not steady from year to year, however; the data indicate that Congress
creates more criminal offenses in election years.

There’s over 3000 federal criminal offenses which an aff could decriminalize
Cali 13 (Jeanine Cali, librarian at the Library of Congress, teaching legal research training courses, 3-12-
2013, "Frequent Reference Question: How Many Federal Laws Are There?", Library of Congress,
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/,
JRB)

In an example of a failed attempt to tally up the number of laws on a specific subject area, in 1982 the
Justice Department tried to
determine the total number of criminal laws. In a project that lasted two years, the Department compiled a list
of approximately 3,000 criminal offenses. This effort, headed by Ronald Gainer, a Justice Department official, is
considered the most exhaustive attempt to count the number of federal criminal laws . In a Wall Street Journal
article about this project, “this effort came as part of a long and ultimately failed campaign to persuade Congress to revise the criminal code,
which by the 1980s was scattered among 50 titles and 23,000 pages of federal law. ” Or as Mr. Gainer characterized this
fruitless project: “[y]ou will have died and [been] resurrected three times,” and still not have an answer to this question.

Decriminalizing explodes limits – insert this list of a small portion of federal crimes
their interp justifies removing
Clarifacts 15 (5-25-15, "Federal Crimes List", https://clarifacts.com/resources/federal-crimes-list/)
 Abusive Sexual Contact
 Advocating Overthrow of Government
 Aggravated Assault/Battery
 Aggravated Identity Theft
 Aggravated Sexual Abuse
 Aiming a Laser Pointer at an Aircraft
 Airplane Hijacking
 Anti-racketeering
 Antitrust
 Armed Robbery
 Arson
 Assassination
 Assault with a Deadly Weapon
 Assaulting or Killing Federal Officer
 Assisting or Instigating Escape
 Attempt to commit Murder/Manslaughter
 Bank Burglary
 Bankruptcy Fraud/Embezzlement
 Bank Larceny
 Bank Robbery
 Blackmail
 Bombing Matters
 Bond Default
 Breaking and/or Entering Carrier Facilities
 Bribery Crimes
 Certification of Checks (Fraud)
 Child Abuse
 Child Exploitation
 Child Pornography
 Civil Action to Restrain Harassment of a Victim or Witness
 Coercion
 Commodities Price Fixing
 Computer Crime
 Concealing Escaped Prisoner
 Concealing Person from Arrest
 Concealment of Assets
 Conspiracy (in matters under FBI jurisdiction)
 Conspiracy to Impede or Injure an Officer
 Contempt of Court
 Continuing Criminal Enterprise
 Conveying False Information
 Copyright Matters
 Counterfeiting
 Counterintelligence Crimes
 Credit/Debit Card Fraud
 Crime Aboard Aircraft
 Crimes on Government Reservations
 Crimes on Indian Reservations
 Criminal Contempt of Court
 Criminal Forfeiture
 Criminal Infringement of a Copyright
 Cyber Crimes
 Damage to Religious Property
 Delivery to Consignee
 Demands Against the U.S.
 Destruction of Aircraft or Motor Vehicles Used in Foreign Commerce
 Destruction of an Energy Facility
 Destruction of Property to Prevent Seizure
 Destruction of Records in Federal Investigations and Bankruptcy
 Destruction of Corporate Audit Records
 Destruction of Veterans’ Memorials
 Detention of Armed Vessel
 Disclosure of Confidential Information
 Domestic Security
 Domestic Terrorism
 Domestic Violence
 Drive-by Shooting
 Drug Abuse Violations
 Drug Smuggling
 Drug Trafficking
 DUI/DWI on Federal Property
 Economic Espionage
 Election Law Crimes
 Embezzlement
 Embezzlement Against Estate
 Entering Train to Commit Crime
 Enlistment to Serve Against the U.S.
 Environmental Scheme Crimes
 Escaping Custody/Escaped Federal Prisoners
 Examiner Performing Other Services
 Exportation of Drugs
 Extortion
 Failure to Appear on Felony Offense
 Failure to Pay Legal Child Support Obligations
 False Bail
 False Pretenses
 False Statements Relating to Health Care Matters
 Falsely Claiming Citizenship
 False Declarations before Grand Jury or Court
 False Entries in Records of Interstate Carriers
 False Information and Hoaxes
 False Statement to Obtain Unemployment Compensation
 Federal Aviation Act
 Federal Civil Rights Violations (hate crimes, police misconduct)
 Female Genital Mutilation
 Financial Transactions with Foreign Government
 First Degree Murder
 Flight to Avoid Prosecution or Giving Testimony
 Forced Labor
 Forcible Rape
 Forgery
 Fraud Activity in Connection with Electronic Mail
 Fraud Against the Government
 Genocide
 Hacking Crimes
 Harboring Terrorists
 Harming Animals Used in Law Enforcement
 Hate Crime Acts
 Homicide
 Hostage Taking
 Identity Theft
 Illegal Possession of Firearms
 Immigration Offenses
 Impersonator Making Arrest or Search
 Importation of Drugs
 Influencing Juror by Writing
 Injuring Officer
 Insider Trading Crimes
 Insurance Fraud
 Interference with the Operation of a Satellite
 International Parental Kidnapping
 International Terrorism
 Interstate Domestic Violence
 Interstate Violation of Protection Order
 Larceny
 Lobbying with Appropriated Moneys
 Mailing Threatening Communications
 Major Fraud Against the U.S.
 Manslaughter
 Medical/Health Care Fraud
 Missile Systems Designed to Destroy Aircraft
 Misuse of Passport
 Misuse of Visas, Permits, or Other Documents
 Molestation
 Money Laundering
 Motor Vehicle Theft
 Murder by a Federal Prisoner
 Murder Committed During Drug-related Drive-by shooting
 Murder Committed in Federal Government Facility
 Narcotics Violations
 Obstructing Examination of Financial Institution
 Obstruction of Court Orders
 Obstruction of Federal audit
 Obstruction of Justice
 Obstruction of Criminal Investigations
 Officer Failing to Make Reports
 Partial Birth Abortion
 Penalties for Neglect or Refusal to Answer Subpoena
 Peonage
 Perjury
 Picketing or Parading
 Pirating
 Possession by Restricted Persons
 Possession of False Papers to Defraud the U.S.
 Possession of Narcotics
 Possession of Child Pornography
 Private Correspondence with Foreign Government
 Probation Violation
 Product Tampering
 Prohibition of Illegal Gambling Businesses
 Prostitution
 Protection of Foreign Officials
 Public Corruption Crimes
 Racketeering
 Radiological Dispersal Devices
 Ransom Money
 Rape
 Receiving the Proceeds of Extortion
 Recording or Listening to Grand or Petit Juries While Deliberating
 Reentry of an Alien Removed on National Security Grounds
 Registration of Certain Organizations
 Reproduction of Citizenship Papers
 Resistance to Extradition Agent
 Rescue of Seized Property
 Retaliating Against a Federal Judge by False Claim or Slander of Title
 Retaliating Against a Witness, Victim, or an Informant
 Robbery
 Robberies and Burglaries Involving Controlled Substances
 Sabotage
 Sale of Citizenship Papers
 Sale of Stolen Vehicles
 Searches Without Warrant
 Second Degree Murder
 Serial Murders
 Sexual Abuse
 Sexual Abuse of a Minor
 Sexual Assault
 Sexual Battery
 Sexual Conduct with a Minor
 Sexual Exploitation
 Sex Trafficking
 Shoplifting
 Smuggling
 Solicitation to Commit a Crime of Violence
 Stalking (In Violation of Restraining Order)
 Stolen Property; Buying, Receiving, or Possessing
 Subornation of Perjury
 Suits Against Government Officials
 Tampering with a Witness, Victim, or Informant
 Tampering with Consumer Products
 Tampering with Vessels
 Theft of Trade Secrets
 Torture
 Trafficking in Counterfeit Goods or Services
 Transmission of Wagering Information (Gambling)
 Transportation into State Prohibiting Sale
 Transportation of Slaves from U.S.
 Transportation of Stolen Vehicles
 Transportation of Terrorists
 Trespassing
 Treason
 Unauthorized Removal of Classified Documents
 Use of Fire or Explosives to Destroy Property
 Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction
 Vandalism
 Video Voyeurism
 Violation of Prohibitions Governing Atomic Weapons
 Violence at International airports
 Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering Activity
 Willful Wrecking of a Train Resulting in Death
 Wire Fraud
Excludes State Prison
 Excludes State Prisons
Criminal justice in the United States is split up into thousands of separate systems, the
USFG only controls one
Barkan & Bryjak 11 - Steven Barkan is an American sociologist, Professor and chairperson of the
Sociology department at the University of Maine. George J. Bryjak taught sociology at the University of
San Diego for 24 years before moving to the Adirondack Park region of New York state with his wife,
Diane. He is the co-author of three sociology textbooks and numerous scholarly articles. - (Barkan,
Steven E., and George J. Bryjak. Fundamentals of Criminal Justice: a Sociological View. Jones &
Bartlett Learning, 2011, Google Books, books.google.com/books?
id=ZHAfpoCO5yMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.) RK

The U.S. criminal justice system is only partly a “system" as that word is usually defined. “System"
implies a coordinated and unified plan of procedure, but criminal justice in the United States is only
partly coordinated and unified. The basic stages of criminal justice-police or law enforce- ment, courts or judicial processing, and
corrections-are the same throughout the nation, but the U.S. criminal justice “system" really comprises thousands of
smaller systems. For example, the federal government has one system of criminal justice, each state
has its own system, and each county and municipality has its own system . Although each system's
components-police, prosecutors, judges, corrections officials-work together on occasion, they have
separate budgets and work independently of one another for the most part . Inevitably, they also often work at
cross-purposes. Thus the police may crack down on drug trafficking in a particular neighborhood by making mass arrests, only to have this flood
of cases overwhelm the prosecutor's office and judicial system. Or new legislation may require judges to put more people in prison, only to find
that prisons have too few cells to hold the newly convicted individuals. This problem then forces prison officials to let out other inmates early,
overcrowd their cells further, or request funds for new prison construction.

The federal government cannot change state law concerning legality – either they fiat
the states and are extra T or there is terminal defense
Bodilly et al 89 (Susan Bodilly, Arthur Wise, Susanna Purnell, 10-27-1989, “The Transfer of Section 6
Schools" RAND Institute, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA213772.pdf) RK
Some problems are more amenable to federal influence than others. For instance: The federal government can provide stable funding for LEAs
through guaranteed payments other than Impact Aid or through shared federal/state funding (the assisted transfer). The federal government
can provide construction funds to ensure that Section 6 schools meet state codes and are acceptable for transfer to the LEA. Alternatively, the
federal government can provide partial funding for the building of schools off-base. Arrangements can be made between the LEA and base
commander to satisfy the command concern about security and control. Arrangements can be made to ensure parent participation in LEA
affairs, such as a base parent representative serving as an ex-officio member of the school board or parent advisory boards. Arrangements can
be made to ensure neighborhood schools for base children. Other
issues, not amenable to federal actions, fall under the
control or purview of state and local government. For instance: The federal government cannot change
state law concerning the legality of certain actions . The federal government cannot force states or LEAs to better the
educational program offerings.
 Excludes State Prisons – Empirics
The First Step Act doesn’t affect state and local criminal justice systems
Martinez 18 – Gina Martinez is a reporter for TIME magazine - (Gina Martinez, 12-20-2018, "The
Bipartisan Criminal-Justice Bill Will Affect Thousands of Prisoners. Here's How Their Lives Will Change,"
Timehttps://time.com/5483066/congress-passes-bipartisan-criminal-justice-reform-effort/) RK

A criminal justice reform effort known as the First Step Act is just one step — a signature from President Donald Trump —
away from becoming law and changing the lives of an estimated 30% of the federal prison population over the next decade. The House voted
Thursday to pass the Senate’s revisions by 358-36. And although Congress also faces the threat of a partial government shutdown, Trump has
signaled his willingness to sign the bill. It
is estimated that some 53,000 of the 181,000 inmates currently
imprisoned in the federal system in the U.S. would be affected over the next 10 years, according to the
Congressional Budget Office. The bill would not cover state jails and prisons, which account for the
majority of the country’s prison population. The U.S. has the worlds highest total prison population
with over 2.1 million people incarcerated. Since the First Step Act was introduced earlier this year, it has earned the support of
both Democrats and Republicans, though some Democrats say the bill doesn’t do enough in regards to sentencing laws that disproportionately
affect minorities. The legislation has also gotten support from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Fraternal Order of Police.

The First Step Act was criminal just reform in the United States
The White House 19 – From the White House official website - (The White House, 4-1-2019,
"President Donald J. Trump Is Committed to Building on the Successes of the First Step Act," White
House, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-committed-
building-successes-first-step-act/) RK
Americans from across the political spectrum can unite around prison reform legislation that will reduce crime while giving our fellow citizens a
chance at redemption. President Donald J. Trump ACHIEVING GROUNDBREAKING REFORM: The landmark First Step Act enacted
commonsense criminal justice reform that is helping prisoners gain a new lease on life and is making
America safer. In December 2018, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the First Step Act, marking the first major reforms to our
criminal justice system in over a decade. The First Step Act enacted commonsense reforms to make our justice
system fairer and help inmates successfully transition back into society . President Trump remains committed to
building on this success and continuing the great work achieved by this legislation.
 Excludes State Prisons – Precision
Federal influence over the states is limited to partnerships, best practices,
enforcement, grants, and assembling jurisdictions.
Obama 16 – former president Barack Obama - (Obama, Barack, "The President's Role in Advancing
Criminal Justice Reform" (2017). U.S. Department of Justice Publications and Materials. 31.) (Harvard
Law Review 130:3 (January 2017), pp 811-866.) (https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1031&context=usjusticematls) RK

Part III details the approaches that Presidents can take to promote change at the state and local level, recognizing that the
state and
local justice systems tend to have a far broader and more pervasive impact on the lives of most
Americans than does the federal justice system. While the President and the executive branch play a less
direct role in these systems, there are still opportunities — as my Administration’s work demonstrates — to advance
reform through a combination of federal-local partnerships, the promulgation of best practices,
enforcement, federal grant programs, and assembling reform-minded jurisdictions struggling with
similar challenges

The federal government is limited to affecting the federal criminal justice system –
distinct from state and local levels
Obama 16 – former president Barack Obama - (Obama, Barack, "The President's Role in Advancing
Criminal Justice Reform" (2017). U.S. Department of Justice Publications and Materials. 31.) (Harvard
Law Review 130:3 (January 2017), pp 811-866.) (https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1031&context=usjusticematls) RK

II. REFORMING THE FEDERAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Every week, I receive letters from people across the country urging me to address issues involving state
and local justice systems, about which there is often frustratingly little that anyone in the federal
government can do. State and local officials are responsible for most policing issues, and they are in
charge of the facilities that hold more than 90% of the prison population and the entire jail
population.45 Even at the federal level, there are important limits on the President’s authority .46 The
Constitution separates the executive, legislative, and judicial powers into three coequal branches of government, all of which have independent
roles in shaping the criminal justice system.47 And within the executive branch, the President’s direct influence is subject to constraints
designed to safeguard the fair enforcement of the law. Nowhere are these limits more important than in the administration of the criminal law.
For good reason, particular criminal matters are not directed by the President personally but are
handled by career prosecutors and law enforcement officials who are dedicated to serving the public
and promoting public safety.48 The President does not and should not decide who or what to
investigate or prosecute or when an investigation or prosecution should happen. T o avoid even the
appearance of politicization, a series of internal White House rules and prudential practices sharply
restrict contact with the Department of Justice and other enforcement agencies on specific matters .49
These practices make things difficult when the public looks to the President to opine on a particular
case, but they are critical to ensuring the rule of law as well as the integrity and independence of the
justice system. Nevertheless, there is still much that Presidents can do to make the justice system
better serve the public. In my Administration, that has meant starting with the federal system — which
has not only directly affected those in federal custody, but also made federal practice a model that
can drive and accelerate change at the state and local levels . This Part shows how my Administration has used the tools
at its disposal to effect change at the federal level: from the legislative reforms we’ve advanced, to the policies we’ve changed in the executive
branch, to the second chances we’ve given to those who received clemency, we have brought our system more in line with the values that
define us.
 Excludes State Prisons – Topic Education
The federal government controls conditions for funding, providing consistency
between states, and ensuring constitutional rights – understanding the differences
between state and federal CJR is key to effective advocacy
FCNL 20 (Friends Committee on National Legislation, xx-xx-2020, "State and Federal Responsibilities for
Criminal Justice," https://www.fcnl.org/updates/state-and-federal-responsibilities-for-criminal-justice-
117) RK

The judicial system divides responsibilities for prosecution and incarceration between the local, state,
and federal levels. Advocacy and changes at each level are critical for ending mass incarceration. Most
crime legislation and prosecution is handled at the state level. However, the federal government can
get involved through its ability to set conditions for funding projects such as prison construction.
Additionally, some crimes, such as drug offenses, may violate both state and federal laws and may be
charged at either level. Federal involvement in criminal justice legislation has the potential to bring a
degree of consistency to a patchwork of state criminal justice codes . However, in recent years, federal legislative
involvement has had a negative effect on criminal justice, as Congress has passed laws dictating mandatory minimum sentences, extending the
death penalty, and limiting death penalty appeals. The
federal government is also responsible for ensuring that
constitutionally-guaranteed rights of all persons (convicts, defendants, and people on the street, alike) are not
trammeled by the criminal justice system. For example, The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and
seizure. The Fifth Amendment protects persons against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, and provides for due process. The Sixth
Amendment guarantees defendants a speedy and public trial, the opportunity to confront witnesses for the prosecution and to obtain
witnesses for the defense, and to have counsel. The Eighth Amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishments. The Fourteenth
Amendment assures equal protection of the laws for all in the U.S. The
Supreme Court may be called on to decide whether
a particular practice violates one of these rights. However, when local or state governments are accused
of practices that selectively violate the civil rights of people of color, the U.S. Department of Justice
(DOJ) may get involved. The DOJ, which is responsible for enforcing federal anti-discrimination
legislation, may initiate an investigation, develop a corrective action agreement, or take legal action
against entities found guilty of discrimination. Thus, all three branches of the federal government
(legislative, judicial, and executive) may be involved in criminal justice activities at the state/local level.
Different Actors
 Excludes DOJ - Limits
The DOJ alone has dozens of sub-divisions – insert this chart
DOJ 19 (Department of Justice, 10-22-19, https://www.justice.gov/agencies/alphabetical-listing-
components-programs-initiatives, JRB)
Antitrust Division
Asset Forfeiture Program
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -ATF
Bureau of Justice Assistance
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Civil Division
Civil Rights Division
Community Oriented Policing Services -COPS
Community Relations Service
Criminal Division
Departmental Ethics Office
Diversion Control Division - DEA
Drug Enforcement Administration - DEA
Elder Justice Initiative
Environment and Natural Resources Division
Executive Office for Immigration Review
Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys
Executive Office for U.S. Trustees
Federal Bureau of Investigation - FBI
Federal Bureau of Prisons - BOP
Foreign Claims Settlement Commission
Intellectual Property Task Force
INTERPOL Washington
Justice Management Division
National Criminal Justice Reference Service
National Institute of Corrections - BOP
National Institute of Justice
National Security Division - NSD
Office for Victims of Crime
Office of Attorney Recruitment & Management
Office of Information Policy
Office of Justice Programs
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention - OJJDP
Office of Legal Counsel
Office of Legal Policy
Office of Legislative Affairs
Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties
Office of Professional Responsibility
Office of Public Affairs
Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking
Office of the Associate Attorney General
Office of the Attorney General
Office of the Deputy Attorney General
Office of the Inspector General
Office of the Pardon Attorney
Office of the Solicitor General
Office of Tribal Justice
Office on Violence Against Women
Open Government
Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces - OCDETF
Professional Responsibility Advisory Office
Project Safe Childhood
Servicemembers and Veterans Initiative
Special Counsel's Office
Tax Division
Tribal Justice and Safety
U.S. Attorneys
U.S. Marshals Service
U.S. Parole Commission
U.S. Trustee Program
U.S. Victims of Terrorism Abroad Task Force
 Includes Immigration
Modern immigration law is part of the criminal justice system
Vasquez 17 – Yolanda Vasquez University of Cincinatti College of Law (“Crimmigration: The Missing
Piece Of Criminal Justice Reform“, 7/21/2017 https://scholarship.law.uc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1346&context=fac_pubs) Accessed 6/27/20

Much like mass incarceration, crimmigration took decades to develop into its current state. The
increasing relationship between the criminal justice system and the immigration system was first
noticed thirty years ago. 36 Immigration scholars and practitioners were the first to see the way in which
the immigration system was taking on aspects that had previously been confined within the criminal
justice system, primarily by increasing punitive treatment.'37 However, shifting punitiveness towards
noncitizens in immigration court seemed, for many, a direct violation of the way that immigration law
was supposed to function. Immigration law and the process of admission and removal wasan
administrative process based on regulating the movement of noncitizens into and out of our nation, and
not on punishment.

However, since the 1980s, immigration laws and status have increasingly subjected noncitizens to
harsher penalties through the criminal court system that appeared more like punishments carved from
the criminal law justifications of deterrence, retributivism, and incapacitation.'38 Increasing numbers of
laws were enacted that made noncitizens subject to removal, many of them based on criminal
conduct.'39 In addition, because these laws were civil in nature, they were retroactive, increasing the
number of noncitizens who, once safe from removal, were now subject to it. 140 The enactment of
these laws have led to prolonged or mandatory detention, criminal convictions for immigration
violations, decreasing relief mechanisms from deportation, mandatory deportation regardless of ties
and history to the United States, increasing numbers of deportations, and permanent banishment as a
result of minor infractions.14 ' The shifting punitiveness of the immigration system caused scholars and
practitioners to describe the new phenomenon as the "criminalization of immigration law."'4 As
immigration scholars and practitioners were focusing on the ways in which immigrants were being cast
as criminals within the immigration system143 and the immigration system's increasing similarity to the
criminal justice system,'4 other scholars were beginning to see a symbiotic relationship between
immigration and criminal law, shifting the way in which the criminal justice system was functioning.
Teresa Miller, for example, reflected not only on the ways in which immigration law has been injected
with criminal law and procedural norms-causing the immigration system to more closely resemble the
criminal system through its harsher and more punitive treatment of noncitizens-but also on ways in
which the criminal justice system had been injected with immigration law norms, turning regulatory civil
law into criminal conduct by criminally prosecuting noncitizens in federal court for solely immigration
violations, increasing the penalties on immigration-related crimes, and increasing the use of criminal law
enforcement to control and monitor noncitizens for immigration law violations.
 Excludes Immigration
Immigration is civil and administrative law which is distinct from criminal law –
inclusion of the former explodes limits to include private contract law, personal injury
law, family law, and property law
Ramón and Brown 20 (Cristobal Ramón, senior policy analyst with BPC’s Immigration Project. Before
joining BPC, Ramón served as a research consultant on immigration integration issues with the National
Immigration Forum. As a graduate student, he also interned with the Migration Policy Institute, the
German Marshall Fund’s Migration Program, and the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Theresa Cardinal Brown,
PC’s director of immigration and cross-border policy. She came to BPC from her own consulting firm,
Cardinal North Strategies, LLC, Brown was director of immigration and border policy at the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce; associate director of business immigration advocacy at the American Immigration
Lawyers Association; and worked in the immigration practices of large Washington, D.C.-based law
firms. She also served as a director and of counsel at The Sentinel HS Group, LLC, She was a policy
advisor in the office of the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and was on Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s Second Stage Review of USCIS. In 2005 and 2006, she became a
member and later director of the Immigration Legislation Task Force in the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) Office of Policy. She then served as the first DHS director of Canadian affairs, and
subsequently as the first DHS attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, 1-15-2020, "Decriminalizing Illegal
Border Crossing: What Does it Mean? An Explainer of Civil vs. Criminal Immigration Enforcement",
Bipartisan Policy Center, https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/decriminalizing-illegal-border-crossing-what-
does-it-mean-an-explainer-of-civil-vs-criminal-immigration-enforcement/, JRB)
Several Democratic presidential candidates have included in their policy platforms support for “decriminalizing” illegal border crossings, arguing
that the Trump administration’s prosecution of migrants led to the child separations in 2018 and that repealing the provision of immigration
law that allows for criminal prosecutions would prevent that from happening again. President Donald Trump has accused them of advocating
“open borders,” and even some former Obama administration officials have come out publicly in opposition to the idea, saying it would create
an incentive for smugglers to encourage more illegal immigration. But what
would “decriminalizing” illegal border crossing
actually mean? Would it really mean no consequences for illegal crossings? Much of the confusion
around these issues is because of the nature of immigration enforcement itself—is it “criminal” or “civil”
enforcement? And what is the difference? Criminal vs. Civil vs. Administrative Law The debate around
immigration enforcement can be confusing because many people assume that the Immigration and
Nationality Act, or INA, consists of criminal statutes even though it is largely not criminal law and ask
why the United States should not enforce criminal law. However, proponents of decriminalization argue
that the enforcement of immigration law is primarily the domain of civil law, not criminal statute . But
many Americans don’t generally understand the difference. “The law is the law, right?” Not exactly . The
U.S. legal system consists of three main bodies of law that govern specific interactions among parties
and include different types of penalties for violations: criminal law, civil law and administrative law. For
many people, “the law” refers to criminal law, which are federal and state statutes that designate
specific offenses against the public or the state that result in sentences of jail time or criminal fines
meant primarily to punish the offender. Federal crimes can include drug crimes, financial crimes, and
criminal conspiracies, among others. States also have bodies of criminal law that may overlap in some respects with federal law.
In addition to criminal statutes, the U.S. legal system also includes civil law that governs interactions
between individuals or entities in society, including contracts between private parties, personal injury
law, family law, and laws regulating relationships between property owners and tenants . Although
courts oversee the adjudication of disputes under these laws, and may require the party in violation to
pay fines or damages to the injured party, there is no incarceration or any conviction on a person’s
record based on this type of case. In some instances, individuals may decide to file a civil lawsuit against
another party to seek payments for damages during or after a criminal trial involving both parties, but
these cases operate in the domain of civil law. Administrative law is the laws and legal principles
governing the administration and regulation of government agencies . Agencies are delegated authority via legislative
action of Congress (for federal agencies) or state legislatures (in the case of state agencies) to carry out legal provisions of statutes and have
responsibility to interpret, administer and enforce these laws. These laws generally regulate the activities of individuals or entities in specific
policy areas related to a public good or obtain access to a government benefit. Examples include immigration law, labor and employment law,
environmental law, and tax law. Government agencies oversee these laws and can issue their own rules or regulations establishing the agency’s
policies and procedures to administer the process and requirements to access a government benefit1 or to collect information needed to
regulate the policy activity and the processes for administering penalties for violations of these rules. In the federal context, the Administrative
Procedures Act sets out the government’s authorities to issue regulations under administrative law, and the limitations on its ability to regulate
and/or punish violations of its regulations. In
contrast to criminal and civil law, violating administrative laws usually
results in administrative or non-criminal fines or other administrative penalties such as prohibitions on
current or future benefits. These penalties are meant to ensure compliance with the regulation and
generally are much lower than criminal fines. Administrative violations involve no arrest or jail time but
can have administrative punishments that include additional reporting or oversight from the agency, or
a ban on future activity under the regulation. However, even statutes that are mostly administrative laws can include some
criminal provisions for the most egregious violations of the regulated activity—for example, criminal tax fraud. In these cases, in addition to any
administrative penalties, the government can choose to prosecute the individual under the criminal statute, resulting in criminal fines and/or
jail time. However, these prosecutions are usually much rarer than the imposition of administrative penalties. Sowhere does
immigration law fit in? The INA, the nation’s main immigration law, is primarily administrative law. It
grants authority to the federal immigration agencies to interpret, regulate and enforce the actions of
foreign nationals coming to or residing in the United States under the conditions set out in the INA. That
means that enforcement of immigration law largely involves levying administrative penalties for
violating the Department of Homeland Security’s administrative rules. These rules regulate foreign
nationals entering and remaining in the United States, and their permissible activities while here,
including applying for temporary nonimmigrant visas, work permits, green cards, and acquiring
citizenship. The INA’s administrative penalties deny offenders access to these benefits in two ways. First, the law can render offenders
inadmissible, which prohibits them from entering the United States or changing their status in the country based on certain criteria or previous
violations. It can also make them deportable, which makes them subject to removal from the United States if they are already here.2 In this
sense, the INA mirrors other statutes with administrative penalties, like state driver’s licensing laws in which individuals lose access to their
driver’s licenses for successive violations of codes of conduct while driving. However, certain immigration violations are also subject to criminal
prosecution and some criminal activity can result in immigration penalties. In the former case, the government can criminally prosecute
individuals for illegal entry, illegal reentry, fraud, and smuggling, among other things, which can result in criminal fines or time in federal prison
in addition to making them deportable. U.S. officials can also deport individuals under immigration law if they have committed certain federal
or state crimes, an ability that has strengthened as reforms of the INA in the 1980s and 1990s expanded the categories of crimes that can lead
to deportation. So
why do we have immigration arrests, detention, judges, and courts if it’s administrative
law? Many people have confused administrative immigration enforcement with the criminal law
enforcement in part because the immigration enforcement system over time has developed many
parallels to the criminal justice system, including arrests, detention, judges and courts . And yet, unlike
the criminal justice system, which involves both arms of the executive branches of government (law
enforcement agencies, prosecutors) and the judiciary branch (state and federal courts), all the
components of the immigration system are part of the executive branch agencies of the federal
government, and immigration enforcement mostly does not include federal courts except for certain
appeals. For instance, the INA authorizes the arrest and detention of noncitizens “on a warrant issued” by DHS or the Office of the Attorney
General, pending a decision on whether the individual is to be removed from the United States..3 In contrast to a criminal arrest warrant, which
must be issued by a state or federal judge, a warrant for immigration arrest and detention must have authorization from the DHS secretary or
the U.S. attorney general, and can only be issued by a delegated immigration officer. The INA gives no authority to any federal
judge to issue an arrest warrant on immigration violations. Immigration enforcement can also involve
detention, which is unique among other federal administrative laws. DHS enforcement agents can
detain individuals at the U.S. border or inside the country and place them in removal proceedings before
an immigration judge. The law also requires mandatory detention of immigrants in certain types of
removal proceedings,4 or when immigrants have committed certain criminal offenses or may be a
national security threat.5 Unlike criminal detention and jail, which is prescribed by criminal law and
overseen by state or federal judges, this civil detention is subject to the rules, regulations, and policies
prescribed by the immigration law and DHS regulations, and is authorized by officers of the executive
branch. Finally, immigration detention is not a criminal punishment, but rather an instrument to ensure
that an individual will show up for their administrative removal hearings and not abscond before they
can be removed from the United States. Confusion also arises from the existence of the immigration
courts. The immigration courts, which decide whether noncitizens are to be removed from the United
States, are an administrative agency that enforces administrative law, not an independent judiciary .
Immigration judges are lawyers appointed by the attorney general to conduct proceedings for removal
under the INA and are to “act as the attorney general’s delegates” in the cases that come before them .6
They are employees of the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and their decisions must conform to orders
and precedents set by the attorney general. They are similar to administrative law judges employed by many federal agencies to make decisions
on appeals of agency decisions under the Administrative Procedures Act, including the Social Security Administration, the Department of Labor,
and the Environmental Protection Agency. However, they have less independence in their decision-making than these other administrative
judges. The “prosecutors” in the immigration courts are also lawyers employed by the executive branch: they work at Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, or ICE, within the Department of Homeland Security, the same agency that conducts the arrests of immigrants. These
facets
of the immigration enforcement system bear resemblance to the criminal justice system, leading many
to confuse immigration enforcement with criminal enforcement. As described above, the immigration
enforcement system is entirely within the executive branch of government and is not subject to the
same due process requirements as the criminal justice system .7 In short, the INA authorizes, and the government uses,
elements similar to the criminal justice system to administer immigration penalties for violations of its provisions. However, the INA also allows
DOJ to criminally prosecute individuals who violate a small number of criminal provisions in the INA, including for illegal entry, smuggling, and
fraud.8 When they are prosecuted, the migrants first go to criminal court, and if sentenced must pay a criminal fine or serve time in jail before
they then proceed to the administrative deportation system, where they may serve additional time in immigration detention before removal.

Insert these charts of all the different types of visas their interp justifies the inclusion
of
DOS 20 (US Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, 3-22-2020, "Directory of Visa Categories",
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/all-visa-categories.html,
JRB)

Required:
Visa Before
Purpose of Travel
Category applying for
visa*
Athlete, amateur or professional (competing for prize money only) B-1 (NA)
Au pair (exchange visitor) J SEVIS
Australian professional specialty E-3 DOL
Border Crossing Card: Mexico BCC (NA)
Business visitor B-1 (NA)
CNMI-only transitional worker CW-1 (USCIS)
Crewmember D (NA)
 A
Diplomat or foreign government official (NA)
 
Domestic employee or nanny - must be accompanying a foreign
B-1 (NA)
national employer
  G1-G5,
Employee of a designated international organization or NATO (NA)
NATO
Exchange visitor J SEVIS
A-2
Foreign military personnel stationed in the United States (NA)
NATO1-6
Foreign national with extraordinary ability in Sciences, Arts,
O USCIS
Education, Business or Athletics
H-1B1 - Chile
Free Trade Agreement (FTA) Professional: H-1B1 - DOL
Chile, Singapore Singapore

International cultural exchange visitor Q USCIS

Intra-company transferee L USCIS
Medical treatment, visitor for B-2 (NA)
Media, journalist I (NA)
NAFTA professional worker: Mexico, Canada TN/TD (NA)
Performing athlete, artist, entertainer P USCIS
Physician J , H-1B SEVIS
Professor, scholar, teacher (exchange visitor) J SEVIS
Religious worker R USCIS
Specialty occupations in fields requiring highly specialized DOL then
H-1B
knowledge USCIS
Student: academic, vocational F, M SEVIS
DOL then
Temporary agricultural worker H-2A
USCIS
Temporary worker performing other services or labor of a DOL then
H-2B
temporary or seasonal nature. USCIS
Tourism, vacation, pleasure visitor B-2 (NA)
Training in a program not primarily for employment H-3 USCIS
Treaty trader/treaty investor E (NA)
Transiting the United States C (NA)
Victim of Criminal Activity U USCIS
Victim of Human Trafficking T USCIS
Nonimmigrant (V) Visa for Spouse and Children of a Lawful Permanent
V (NA)
Resident (LPR)

Renewals in the U.S. - A, G, and NATO Visas   (NA)

Immediate Relative & Family Sponsored Visa Category
Spouse of a U.S. Citizen  IR1, CR1
Spouse of a U.S. Citizen awaiting approval of an I-130 immigrant
K-3 *
petition
Fiancé(e) to marry U.S. Citizen & live in U.S. K-1 *
Intercountry Adoption of Orphan Children by U.S. Citizens IR3, IH3, IR4, IH4
IR2, CR2, IR5, F1, F3,
Certain Family Members of U.S. Citizens
F4
Certain Family Members of Lawful Permanent Residents F2A, F2B
Employer Sponsored – Employment  

E1
E2

Employment-Based Immigrants, including  (preference group):

 Priority workers [First] E3, EW3

 Professionals Holding Advanced Degrees and Persons of Exceptional
Ability [Second]
 Professionals and Other Workers [Third] C5, T5, R5, I5
 Employment Creation/Investors [Fifth]
 Certain Special Immigrants: [Fourth]
S (many**)

Religious Workers SD, SR

Iraqi and Afghan Translators/Interpreters SI 
Iraqis Who Worked for/on Behalf of the U.S. Government SQ
Afghans Who Worked for/on Behalf of the U.S. Government SQ
Other Immigrants  

Diversity Immigrant Visa DV

Returning Resident SB
 Includes National Security
Anti-terrorism measures always spill over to criminal law
Stevenson 11 (Dru Stevenson, Professor Stevenson joined the faculty at South Texas College of Law
Houston in 2003, and teaches Administrative Law/Regulation, Professional Responsibility, Nonprofit
Incorporation, Legislation, and the Law & Economics seminar. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the
University of Connecticut School of Law, where he served as an editor of the Connecticut Law Review.
After receiving his J.D., he practiced as a Legal Aid lawyer in Connecticut for three years. He earned his
Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the Yale Law School in 2002, and became an Assistant Attorney General for
the State of Connecticut until leaving to accept his position at South Texas College of Law Houston.
Professor Stevenson’s publications cover topics ranging from criminal law to civil procedure, with an
emphasis on the intersection of law with economics and linguistic theory. His articles have been cited in
leading academic journals and treatises, by federal and state appellate courts, and in recent briefs to the
U.S. Supreme Court, 4 June 2011, “EFFECT OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY PARADIGM ON CRIMINAL LAW”,
Standford Law and Policy Review, https://law.stanford.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/stevenson.pdf)//MR

Anti-terrorism measures can easily infect contiguous components of criminal law, creating a large
spillover effect.53 Cops on the beat who undergo a dozen sessions of special training in anti-terrorism tactics, whether in detection
skills, prevention strategies, or disaster response, inevitably carry that experience into their other police work. 54
Similarly, in the legislature, lawmaking is an evolutionary process, in which each session bears the influence of
previous sessions and the existing corpus of enactments. 55 The session after the one in which Congress enacted anti-
terror laws continues to some extent on a trajectory.56 When appellate courts rule on a terrorism prosecution, they
create precedents that affect other types of criminal laws .57 Empirical evidence suggests that during periods of
armed conflict, when national defense permeates the culture, the Supreme Court rules more often in
favor of law enforcement, at least on non-war claims, than during other periods, although the Court is no more likely to rule in favor
of the government on war related issues.58Terrorism sits at the juncture of national defense and criminal law, and it would be an
overstatement to characterize it entirely as one or the other . This dualistic character makes it a conduit through which
one domain creeps in and pervades the other.59 Gradually, foreign policy begins to look like global policing, and domestic criminal law
becomes an instrument of national security.60
 Excludes National Security
National security includes a litany of mechanisms distinct from criminal justice
Donohue 11 (Laura K. Donahue, Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, Director of
Georgetown's Center on National Security and the Law, and Director of the Center on
Privacy and Technology, 2011, “The Limits of National Security”, American Criminal Law
Review, https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=2027&context=facpub)//MR
On the rare occasion statutory definitions appear, the term is understood broadly.31 According to the current Classified Information Procedures
Act, for instance, national security involves matters related to the “national defense and foreign relations of the United States”—an amorphous
description, open to wide interpretation.32 Where statutes provide definitions of the term linked to other activities, those definitions prove
similarly broad. In the amended National Security Act, for instance, the term “intelligence related to national security” refers to all intelligence,
regardless of the source from which derived and including information gathered within or outside the United States, that— (A) pertains, as
determined consistent with any guidance issued by the President, to more than one United States Government agency; and (B) that involves— (i)
threats to the United States, its people, property, or interests; (ii) the development, proliferation, or use of weapons of mass destruction; or (iii)
any other similar manner, the
Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002, which provides
government-wide rules for information security, defines “national security system” as any system: (i) the
function, operation, or use of which— (I) involves intelligence activities; (II) involves cryptologic activities
related to national security; (III) involves command and control of military forces; (IV) involves
equipment that is an integral part of a weapon or weapons system; or (V) subject to subparagraph (B), is
critical to the direct fulfillment of military or intelligence missions; or (ii) is protected at all times by
procedures established for information that have been specifically authorized under criteria established
by an Executive order or an Act of Congress to be kept classified in the interest of national defense or
foreign policy.34 The effect is rather circular: material is classified because it is interpreted by officials as being related to national security,
even as national security data is defined as material that has been classified.

Including National Security explodes the topic to cases involving foreign economic,
monetary, environmental, military, and political security
USLegal ND --- “National Security Law and Legal Definition,”
https://definitions.uslegal.com/n/national-security, accessed on 6/30/2020,

National security is a corporate term covering both national defense and foreign relations of the U.S. It
refers to the protection of a nation from attack or other danger by holding adequate armed forces and
guarding state secrets. The term national security encompasses within it economic security, monetary
security, energy security, environmental security, military security, political security and security of
energy and natural resources. Specifically, national security means a circumstance that exists as a result
of a military or defense advantage over any foreign nation or group of nations, or a friendly foreign
relations position, or a defense position capable of successfully protesting hostile or destructive action.

National security explodes the topic - covers everything from domestic criminal law to
customs regulations
Harvard Law 14 --- Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising at Harvard Law School, Harvard.
(2/5/18, “3 questions about the FISA court answered,”
https://hls.harvard.edu/content/uploads/2015/07/NATIONAL-SECURITY-LAW-2014.pdf, accessed on
6/30/2020,

Defining NSL is challenging. The subject covers vast practice areas, from customs regulation to
immigration to human rights. Practice settings are also extremely varied, from government to nonprofits
to private practice. Each area embraces a myriad of legal issues, leading to a multifaceted legal domain
that is as challenging as any legal field could be. Indeed, part of the difficulty in defining NSL resides in
the fact that real-world situations calling for a NSL focus are themselves hard to pin down with any
present-day certainty. What was once a domestic criminal 4 matter can now be a NSL concern. What
was once an issue of military discipline may now have national security implications. Despite, or perhaps
in part because of, these complexities, NSL can be a fascinating area of practice, weaving together
Constitutional law, military law and the law of war, international relations, privacy concerns, cyberlaw,
etc. And of course, many practitioners in this field are drawn to the opportunity to serve their country
by navigating novel legal challenges to the end of protecting both the country and the civil rights and
liberties of its people.
 Includes FISA
FISA is applied to broader criminal law
Donohue 11 (Laura K. Donahue, Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, Director of
Georgetown's Center on National Security and the Law, and Director of the Center on
Privacy and Technology, 2011, “The Limits of National Security”, American Criminal Law
Review, https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=2027&context=facpub)//MR

The entire purpose of enacting FISA was to preserve a distinction between criminal law and national security concerns.1258 Following the
attacks of September 11, however, that wall was deliberately removed.1259 This brought with it broader
application of FISA—one, which was determined in 2002 to be legitimate, even where the primary aim of the
investigation in question was criminal in nature. 1260
 Excludes FISA
Fisa Court Distinct
Wallace 18 --- Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Pennsylvania State University. (2/5/18, Lacey
Wallace, “3 questions about the FISA court answered,” https://theconversation.com/3-questions-
about-the-fisa-court-answered-91208, accessed on 6/25/2020,

2. How is FISA court different from other courts?

FISA court is not like a typical criminal court.

First, Department of Justice officials seeking a warrant do not need to show evidence that a crime has
occurred or is about to happen. That sort of evidence, also known as probable cause, would be needed
to obtain a typical search warrant in criminal court. Instead, officials only need to provide evidence that
the target of surveillance is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power.

Second, investigators can conduct surveillance for up to a year without a court order if authorized by the
president. For this to occur, the U.S. Attorney General has to certify to the court that there is minimal
risk that the investigation will turn up information about U.S. citizens. The U.S. Attorney General must
also certify to the court that the target of the investigation is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign
power. These requirements parallel what Department of Justice officials would need to demonstrate in
FISA court in order to obtain a FISA court warrant.

Third, the FISA court is closed to the public. Unlike a criminal court, there is no jury and the government
is the only party present. In other words, FISA court proceedings do not involve prosecutors and defense
attorneys arguing on behalf of clients. The FISA court is simply hearing the requests of officials seeking
search warrants. This is very similar to what happens when local law enforcement officials seek a search
warrant.

However, FISA court records are not open to the public. In rare cases, some records have been released
with redacted information. The U.S. president also has the authority to declassify information at his
discretion. This is different from normal police investigations, where search warrants generally become
public record unless sealed by a judge.

Fisa creates bc of national security, not criminal punishment

Wallace 18 --- Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Pennsylvania State University. (2/5/18, Lacey
Wallace, “3 questions about the FISA court answered,” https://theconversation.com/3-questions-
about-the-fisa-court-answered-91208, accessed on 6/25/2020,

Congress passed FISA, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978. FISA was originally introduced
by Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy. The act was largely a response to President Richard Nixon’s misuse of
federal resources to investigate U.S. citizens.

Its purpose was to provide oversight for foreign intelligence surveillance activities. These might include
tracing telephone and email use, conducting physical searches or accessing business records. FISA lays
out guidelines and procedures for these activities.

FISA applies only to “foreign powers” and “agents of foreign powers.” Basically, this means that FISA is
used to gather information about people who work for the governments of other countries.
Investigators are typically not allowed to target U.S. citizens under FISA. In fact, if information about a
U.S. citizen is accidentally discovered, the law requires those records to be destroyed.

But there are some notable exceptions.

One is when the discovered information shows that there is a threat of death or serious harm to another
person. Another is that officials can wiretap U.S. citizens while they are overseas. Importantly, FISA
warrants can also be requested to monitor U.S. citizens believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign
power.

As part of FISA, Congress established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA court.

The FISA court is a U.S. federal court whose purpose is to review and rule on search warrant requests
made under FISA. Each year, the FISA court is required to provide a report to Congress of its activities.
These reports include the number of requests made under FISA, but not the content of those requests.
That content is not a matter of public record.

FISA explodes the topic to other bodies which are components of an administrative
agency
FJC No Date – Federal Judicial Center (“Executive Agency Courts“,
https://www.fjc.gov/history/courts/executive-agency-courtsAccessed 6/27/20

Several federal adjudicatory bodies are not widely considered part of the federal judiciary because they
are components of an administrative agency or executive branch department. Executive agency
adjudication began to proliferate in the Progressive Era in response to calls for a more efficient process
to promulgate, interpret and enforce federal regulations. More than 1,300 administrative law judges
now serve in such bodies. Their powers and roles vary in keeping with the responsibilities of their
agencies and departments, but most conduct hearings, issue or recommend decisions and enforce
agency regulations.

The composition and nomenclature of agency tribunals varies. Some agency courts are fully integrated
into the agencies whose cases they adjudicate and are bound by those agencies’ policies. Some, such as
the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, created in 1970, and the Executive Office for
Immigration Review, created in 1983, are themselves independent agencies within a federal department
and are empowered to rule on decisions of other agencies.

The boundary between agency and court adjudication has not always been clear or uncontested.
Congress has created independent Article I courts, such as the United States Tax Court, and Article III
courts, such as the United States Customs Court, out of former agency bodies. Moreover, because
individuals inevitably contested some agency rulings, Congress initially had to determine whether to
facilitate review within the agencies themselves, or to allow review in traditional courts of law. Even
where judicial review was statutorily or constitutionally mandated, it was sometimes unclear what
degree of deference courts should pay to previous agency rulings. In 1946, Congress passed the
Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) (60 Stat. 237), which codified the rules governing administrative
agencies and the process for further review in Article III courts. Subsequent decisions by the Supreme
Court of the United States have generally weighed access to judicial review and agency efficiency and
expertise under the APA framework.
 Excludes Juvenile
Criminal Justice excludes Juvenile Justice. Juvenile courts are civil proceedings, not
criminal.
Michon No Date – Kathleen Michon Attorney, B.A. from Yale University and a law degree from
Northwestern University School of Law.(“Juvenile Court: An Overview”, https://www.nolo.com/legal-
encyclopedia/juvenile-court-overview-32222.html) Accessed 6/23/20

The juvenile justice system is separate from the criminal justice system. Read on to learn some basics on crime and
punishment for minors. Each state has special courts—usually called juvenile courts—to deal with minors who
have been accused of violating a criminal statute. The proceedings are civil as opposed to criminal. So,
instead of being formally charged with a crime, juvenile offenders are accused of committing a
delinquent act.

A juvenile case normally gets started when a prosecutor or probation officer files a civil petition, charging
the juvenile with violating a criminal statute and asking that the court determine that the juvenile is delinquent. If the charges are proved and a
delinquency determination is made, the juvenile offender comes under the courts broad powers. At that point, the juvenile court has the
authority to do what it considers to be in the best interest of the juvenile.

Often, the juvenile

court retains legal authority over the minor for a set period of time— until the juvenile
becomes an adult, or sometimes even longer.

Burden of proof is distinct

Erstad 18 – Will Erstad Attorney, writer for Rasmussen. (“Civil Law vs. Criminal Law: Breaking Down the
Differences”, 10/29/2018 https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/civil-law-versus-
criminal-law/) Accessed 6/23/20

Another significant distinction between civil and criminal cases is what it takes for a party to win a case. In
either trial, the accuser must meet a burden of proof—essentially an obligation to prove or back up the claims being made. Criminal cases, and
the serious penalties that can accompany them, require
a higher bar to be met than civil cases. In criminal law , the
standard is that the accused are guilty of committing a crime “ Beyond a reasonable doubt.”

For civil cases, the burden of proof is lower—usually based on the “Preponderance of evidence” or
“Clear and convincing” standards. These different standards can seem a bit frustrating to those who aren’t familiar with them.
You’ve likely heard of criminal cases where the evidence makes the accused seem like they’re probably guilty but they were not convicted. In
these cases, criminal
defense attorneys worked to poke holes in the credibility of the evidence and
witnesses presented to create reasonable doubt among jurors.

Punishment is distinct
Erstad 18 – Will Erstad Attorney, writer for Rasmussen. (“Civil Law vs. Criminal Law: Breaking Down the
Differences”, 10/29/2018 https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/civil-law-versus-
criminal-law/) Accessed 6/23/20

Another important distinction between civil and criminal law is the type of penalty paid for being found
guilty. In a criminal case, if the individual charged with a crime loses the case, they’re likely facing
incarceration or some type of probation. For civil cases, the resolution to a case doesn’t result in the
“losing” party going to jail. Often the judgement results in a financial penalty or an order to change
behavior.

Civil suits are also often settled outside of the courtroom. This typically includes a substantial payment to the accuser in
exchange for the suit being dropped, and the defendant admitting to limited or no wrongdoing
 Excludes Military
Military Criminal Justice are Distinct from Civilian Criminal Justice
Norton 19 --- military judge for the Air Force Trial Judiciary at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. He serves
as a trial judge at general and special courts-martial worldwide. (6/10/19, Andrew R. Norton, “The
differences between military courts-martial and civilian courts,” https://www.judges.org/news-and-
info/the-differences-between-military-courts-martial-and-civilian-courts/, accesed on 6/25/2020,

In practice, these are some of the major differences between the two legal systems:

Military-specific offenses

The movie A Few Good Men (“You can’t handle the truth!”) demonstrated the difference in the nature
of some offenses. The Marines on trial were charged with “conduct unbecoming a marine,” a distinctly
military, if misquoted, offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The actual offense is “conduct
unbecoming an officer and gentleman” with “gentleman ” covering both male and female commissioned
officers, cadets, and midshipmen.

This offense and others, including failure to obey a lawful order or regulation, desertion, malingering,
and mutiny – to name a few – are distinctly military offenses designed to maintain good order and
discipline in the armed forces by making specific conduct criminally punishable.

Rights advisements

Perhaps no legal term is more widely known outside the legal community than “ Miranda rights.”

In the civilian system, rights advisements must be given to a person who is being questioned about a
suspected offense after they are in custody.

Rights advisements are more proactive and protective in the military . Article 31 of the Uniform Code
requires that military members be advised of their “Article 31 rights” when questioned by any other
military member acting in an official capacity and when a reasonable person would consider the
questioner to be acting in an official or law enforcement capacity.

Notably, the member does not have to be in custody to trigger the rights advisement. The reason for
this is to protect military members, who are taught to obey the military chain of command, from law
enforcement taking advantage of their obedience in order to extract incriminating statements.

Guilty pleas

Military members may plead guilty only if they truly believe themselves to be guilty. The military does
not allow members to enter nolo contendere pleas or Alford pleas. In order for a member to plead
guilty, and be found guilty, a military judge must conduct a detailed “providence” or “Care” inquiry. The
term “Care” comes from United States v. Care, 40 C.M.R. 247, which requires a judge to instruct the
accused on the applicable law and question the accused’s guilty plea on the record to establish “a clear
basis for the determination of guilt.”

Split verdicts
One of the biggest differences between the military and civilian justice systems is that there are no
mistrials. That is because the military is one of the few jurisdictions that allows for split verdicts i n
criminal trials.

The federal system and almost all states (Oregon and Louisiana excepted) require unanimous verdicts
for criminal trials. General courts-martial – the forum reserved for the most serious offenses – require a
concurrence of three-fourths, or six, out of the eight-member panel to convict. Special courts-martial, in
which the maximum punishment is limited to one year in jail, also require a concurrence of three-
fourths, but the panel is composed of only four members. The military does require a unanimous verdict
of 12 members in all capital cases.
T Subsets
 CJR
The phrase criminal justice reform requires a meaningful overhaul that addresses
systemic issues across the categories in the resolution – their interpretation justifies
small affs about edge cases that avoid core controversies
Bryan Stevenson (a civil-rights lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human-rights
organization that challenges convictions, advocates for criminal-justice reform and racial justice, and
created the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Alabama,) June 1, 2020 “Bryan
Stevenson on the Frustration Behind the George Floyd Protests”, interview with New Yorker staff writer
Isaac Chotiner https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/bryan-stevenson-on-the-frustration-behind-
the-george-floyd-protests

Criminal-justice reform has become a bipartisan issue, but it often seems to be spoken of as being
distinct from police brutality and police reform. How important is it to bring police reform into the
broader context of criminal-justice reform?

I think, for many of us, it has always been at the center of it. Changing the way we police, prosecute,
judge, and punish is the essence of criminal-justice reform.

I think people use the phrase “criminal-justice reform” in a pretty lazy way. Modifying the federal
sentencing parameters at the edges, so a very small percentage of people in federal prisons might get
reduced sentences, is not meaningful criminal-justice reform. Ninety per cent of the prisoners in the
United States are in the state system. That is not impacted by what the White House or any President
has done. [The Obama Administration amended federal sentencing guidelines in order to reduce the
sentences of people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. In 2017, Jeff Sessions, who was then the
Attorney General, overturned those reforms.] The real meaningful reform would have been
implementing the task force’s recommendations, changing the way we think about police and
prosecutorial accountability, mandating the data disclosure that would allow us to evaluate the nature
of this problem. And, when you don’t do those things, everything else you do is going to be
compromised.

We had the so-called War on Drugs that was carried out against black and brown people, because the
law-enforcement agents that were the people carrying out that war saw black and brown people
differently. That’s a policing and prosecutorial problem. The immunity we have created to shield people
from accountability is a barrier to shield people from any effective reform. That includes sentencing and
all these others things, because, if prosecutors can withhold evidence and wrongly convict people, and
police can abuse people and coerce confessions, then nothing else we do at the sentencing or policy
level is going to be effective. And that has to change.

Learning about the criminal justice as one whole system is key to understanding it and
evaluating reforms
Jrank Law Library 06 – Although there is no author the article cites many reputable sources including
Richard S Frase - Richard S. Frase is the Benjamin N. Berger Professor of Criminal Law at the University of
Minnesota Law School. He teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, and the federal defense clinic. He
has also taught the Misdemeanor and the Federal Prosecution clinics. His seminars include comparative
criminal procedure, sentencing guidelines, and sentencing policy. He was the Julius E. Davis Professor of
Law for 1988-89 and became the Benjamin N. Berger Professor of Criminal Law in 1991. His scholarship
examines Minnesota and other state sentencing guidelines, punishment and proportionality theories,
criminal procedure in the U.S. and abroad, and comparison of sentencing law and practice in the United
States and in other nations. He is the author or co-author of eight books and over seventy articles and
essays on these topics. (No Author, 03-12-2006, "Criminal Justice System," No Publication,
https://law.jrank.org/pages/855/Criminal-Justice-System-importance-viewing-criminal-justice-
system.html) RK

The Importance Of Viewing Criminal Justice As A System: Although criminal justice, in practice, is often
highly un-"systematic," it is still very useful to take a system-wide approach when seeking to better
understand and more effectively respond to problems of modern criminal justice. Understanding
criminal justice practices. A systemwide approach facilitates better understanding of the many ways
in which decisions at earlier and later stages of the process affect each other (President's Commission, p. 7).
Earlier decisions, such as those involving prosecutorial screening or pretrial detention, often anticipate later ones (conviction and sentencing),
and provide the essential "inputs" for subsequent case processing. Later decisions react to or overrule earlier ones, and in some cases provide
new system inputs (for instance, when unreformed offenders are released back into the community, or appellate courts adopt rulings limiting
or expanding police powers). Systemic
analysis also helps to avoid the serious distortions that can occur when
selected aspects of system functioning are compared across jurisdictions (or in the same jurisdiction
over time). For example, a simple comparison of the proportion of convicted assault offenders who
receive a custodial sentence in two jurisdictions will yield very misleading results if these two systems
have different rates of case screening in earlier stages; convicted assault cases in the jurisdiction with
higher screening rates will usually have stronger evidence and more aggravated offense and offender
details, which would help to explain higher custody sentencing rates observed in that jurisdiction (Frase,
2001). System-wide analysis also reveals common policies and principles that apply at very different
levels or stages of the process. For example, although issues of criminal law, sentencing, and criminal
procedure are usually analyzed separately, it is useful to recognize the common values that underlie
legal rules in several of these areas, such as the need to limit state power (especially physical brutality);
concern for crime victims; the value of equal justice (but also of flexibility and local control); and the
critical importance of defendant cooperation . Similarly, an examination of the reasons for case attrition at different stages
(victim nonreporting; police and prosecutorial dismissal; sentencing leniency) shows that cases are usually dropped (or charged down, or
punished less harshly) for three basic reasons: because greater severity appears to be Table 9 SOURCE: Ringel, p. 3, Table 1; Brown et al., p. 5.
legally or factually unsupportable; because a less severe alternative seems more appropriate; or because the offense seems too minor to justify
stricter measures. This
similarity suggests a surprisingly broad policy consensus, but also raises questions as
to which actor(s) should implement these agreed policies. Finally, the pervasiveness of case attrition
(and of the various discretionary powers that produce it) becomes clear when all stages of the system
are examined. The magnitude of this attrition, across the entire system, has important implications for
our understanding of the limits of the criminal law, and the purposes it can feasibly achieve. There is,
unfortunately, also considerable system-wide disagreement on major issues and, in general, a lack of
agreed goals, priorities, and performance measures for the whole system . The police measure their success
primarily by arrest and clearance rates (even if no conviction results), and secondarily by reported crime rates (even if many crimes are
unreported); prosecutors "keep score" according to their conviction rates (even if large numbers of cases are dismissed or charged down);
judges saddled with heavy caseloads sometimes keep score in terms of how quickly they can dispose of cases (by any means); elected
prosecutors and judges are tempted to emphasize how "tough on crime" they are (whether or not "tough" means "effective"). Systemic
analysis promotes recognition of these conflicting standards, and the impact such conflicts have on
the performance of the system and its separate parts . Evaluating criminal justice reforms and operations. Systemic
analysis also helps in evaluating the merits of proposed reforms, and the consequences of reforms
that have been adopted. One consistent problem of criminal justice reform, which results from the
pervasiveness of unregulated discretion, is the tendency for changes in one part of the system to be
nullified or greatly weakened by compensating changes in other parts. This phenomenon is sometimes
referred to as the system "hydraulic"; like a full tube of toothpaste, "squeezing" one part of the system
causes it to "bulge" somewhere else. For example, mandatory minimum sentence reforms are often
undercut by charging or plea bargaining decisions that prevent many eligible offenders from being
convicted of the targeted offense. Reforms that create new, intermediate options (pretrial diversion;
strict supervision before or after conviction; prison "boot camps") provide another good example of
the need for careful, systemic evaluation. Although many such reforms are designed to reduce the use
of more severe options, in practice they are more likely (for reasons of public and political safety) to
be applied to cases that would otherwise have received less severe treatment—thus increasing, not
decreasing, the budgetary and other disadvantages Table 10 NOTE: Excludes six states that lack locally operated jails.
SOURCE: Beck 2000a, pp. 8–9, Tables 10 and 11. of severity, and greatly complicating the selection of matched comparison groups to evaluate
offender impact (Zimring and Frase, pp. 349–387).
A third example of the value of systemic analysis is its ability to
identify strong linkages between existing practices that may preclude a particular reform, or show
that it is unnecessary. Thus, an American state may not wish to adopt the narrower, more flexible
exclusionary rules found in many civil law systems if such rules depend on other practices—stricter
police discipline or closer prosecutorial oversight of the police—which that state would be unable or
unwilling to emulate (Frase, 1990, pp. 550, 553–564). Conversely, to the extent that civil law systems
employ these compensating police and prosecution safeguards, they may have less need to adopt
broader American exclusionary rules. Beyond the assessment of specific reforms, the system concept
underscores the need for system-wide planning and coordination, particularly of information systems.
American criminal justice is highly balkanized; although planning agencies exist in many states and
some local jurisdictions, it is rare that any agency has a mandate (and budget) to engage in detailed
planning for all, or even many, components of the system . One notable exception is found in states with sentencing
guidelines monitored by a permanent sentencing commission (Frase, 2000, pp. 70–71). Such commissions usually have members representing
all major public and private agencies and interests involved in sentencing, and have the legal authority and resources to take a long-term,
multiagency view of sentencing issues. Similar multiagency, criminal justice coordinating councils have existed in some metropolitan areas
(National Advisory Commission, pp. 32, 35). System
analysis also encourages legislators and other criminal justice
policymakers to keep the various components of the system in proper balance. This is particularly
important in three areas: Balancing the powers of the various sentencing agencies . The legislature,
sentencing commission and parole board, prosecutors, defenders, courts, and corrections officials all
share power over sentencing decisions, and thus serve as a check on each other (Frase, 2000). Reforms
such as mandatory minimum sentencing tend to unduly concentrate power in the legislature and the
prosecution (Reitz, pp. 396–398). Balancing the funding provided to different agencies and levels of
government. Funding for some agencies, especially courts and defense services, is less popular and
tends to lag behind funding for the police and prosecution. States often pass criminal laws imposing
unfunded mandates on local systems. Conversely, local judges have no direct stake in allocating scarce
state resources, and thus are tempted to send too Figure 1 SOURCE: Bureau of Justice Statistics web site
(probation and parole); F.B.I. 2000 [and corresponding earlier reports] (arrests); Beck 2000a [and
corresponding earlier reports] ( jail inmates); Beck 2000b [and corresponding earlier reports] (prison
inmates). many offenders to state prison (the "correctional free lunch"; Zimring and Hawkins, p. 140).
Balancing short-term and long-term perspectives. As much as we may hate criminals, it is in our long-
term interest to help them, since almost all of them return to the community (usually after only a few
months or years). Moreover, extremely long custodial sentences, although politically popular and
satisfying today, impose substantial added costs far in the future, when the benefits (e.g., of confining
"geriatric" inmates) may be slight or even negative. As for shorter custodial sentences, these may be
cheaper than noncustodial alternatives in the near term, but more expensive in the long run (the
marginal cost of confining one more inmate is usually small, while noncustodial alternatives take time
and money to set up). Application of the system concept to criminal justice research and evaluation has
many advantages. But the complexities and contradictions of modern criminal justice systems will
always pose a challenge to those seeking to improve the design and operation of these systems .
Perhaps the greatest problem is that few researchers, and almost no officials or private citizens, have
a stake in studying, improving, and explaining the whole system. This lack of systemwide experts and
defenders helps explain (along with conflicting goals and values, poor coordination, and chronic
funding shortages and misallocations) why these systems are so often maligned and misunderstood.
Officials and other actors in each system, as well as researchers, must try to do a better job of
understanding—and explaining to the public—the system's purposes, values, and operations.
 Forensic Science

The aff is a reform in the area of “forensic sciences” not in the area of “forensic
science” – the distinction is not semantic – the resolution requires the aff engage with
the entire ecosystem of the forensic science discipline
Ruth Morgan (Professor of Crime and Forensic Science in the Department of Security and Crime
Science, and the Director of the UCL Centre for the Forensic Sciences) 2019 “Forensic science. The
importance of identity in theory and practice” Forensic Science International: Synergy Volume 1, 2019,
Pages 239-242 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2019.09.001

The term used to name a discipline will define what that discipline is, sets a trajectory for how it will
evolve, and shapes the perspectives of both those within and those outside the discipline [19].
Therefore, the name of a discipline, and its identity, is core to its credibility, strategic importance and
therefore to its future. Forensic science has evolved as a field of enquiry over time and is often
considered to be a ‘patchwork of sciences’ that can be applied to questions pertinent to forensic
investigations [20]. It is often referred to as ‘forensics’ or the ‘forensic sciences’ to convey the premise
that it is a multidisciplinary field that takes methods and techniques from ‘parent’ or ‘core’ sciences and
applies them to ‘forensic’ questions.

3.1. Forensics

The term ‘forensics’ is challenging nomenclature. Technically ‘forensic’ is a term originally used as an
adjective to describe ‘belonging to, used in, or suitable for the courts’. As a result, the term ‘forensic
science’ came to be used to describe the science applied to questions of law. However, alongside
‘forensic science’, ‘forensics’ has become established as a term, and generally speaking it is often used
as a synonymous (but shortened) version of ‘forensic science’, even though the term in and of itself is
arguably (technically) meaningless.

‘Forensics’ has come to have its own (often contested) meaning. While it is still used interchangeably
with ‘forensic science’ in many instances, a ‘forensics’ model has emerged within forensic science that
has become a dominant approach, and understanding of, the identity of ‘forensic science’ [16]. Within
‘forensics’ the focus is predominantly upon how parent disciplines (such as chemistry, biology, computer
science, geology) can assist in the exploitation of evidence within the criminal justice system. In this
approach, the crime scene is considered to be a distinct activity generally addressed by the police in an
operational and processing capacity [15,16], and often these activities are directed at answering
questions of source and identity. As a result, ‘forensics’ is now a widely used term within policing.
However, this can convey a narrow remit for forensic science that primarily addresses the detection of
forensic materials (source attribution), rather than the whole crime reconstruction process that
incorporates a consideration of activity and offence level propositions [21,22] within the matrix of
multiple stakeholders and external factors that frame the deployment of forensic science from crime
scene to court [15,23].

3.2. Forensic sciences

The term ‘Forensic Sciences’ communicates a collection of applied ‘core sciences’ and therefore a ‘field
of interest’, rather than a clearly defined discipline in its own right. Taking this approach is attractive
because it addresses the operational needs that require answers to the ‘what’ and ‘who’ source
questions in crime detection (what is this particle made of? who left this DNA profile?). A focus on these
operational needs also leads to valuable developments in terms of technological advances to achieve
those answers more quickly and accurately (for example enabling rapid DNA analysis in a custody suite,
or real time fingerprint analysis).

However, there are two issues with this approach or ‘model’ of Forensic Science. First technologies are
often transposed in to a ‘forensic’ problem without sufficient regard for the specific context in forensic
reconstruction [15]. For example, consider the development of a powerful new technique for detecting
trace amounts of material to distinguish between materials from different locations. However, the new
technique requires a long sample preparation time, and an expensive piece of equipment that is not
currently in standard forensic science laboratories. The cost implication of both of these attributes is
likely to make the use of this breakthrough new technique unlikely (at least in the short term) [24,25].
While the new technique that has been developed addresses the ‘forensic problem’ (of distinguishing
between materials from two locations) in isolation, it can not be considered to be ‘forensic science’,
because the research has been designed in a way that is not sensitive to the context in which the new
technique needs to be employed (ie it does not address the constraints of finance, time and personnel
inherent to forensic science). The second issue is that considering Forensic Science as the ‘forensic
sciences’ removes the possibility of a coherent and truly interdisciplinary approach for the scientific
endeavour of crime reconstruction and evaluation [15,16,26]. It presents a very narrow view of forensic
science, and one that constrains forensic science to a a limited range of activities (usually related to the
crime scene and analysis of specimens for forensic service delivery), and prevents a full consideration
and appreciation of the contribution of science to the complex ecosystem of the justice system. As such
it becomes very difficult to offer a comprehensive understanding of the value of forensic science [27,28]
which has significant implications for where investment of resources is channelled.

3.3. Forensic science: A fragmented ecosystem

The identity of what forensic science ‘is’ is therefore, contested. However, what forensic science is ‘for’
is equally contested. Through different lenses, forensic science is considered to be a service, a science, a
practice, or evidence. As a result of this identity crisis, forensic science is a highly fragmented ecosystem.
This can be seen at the small scale, in an individual case where the ‘atomisation’ of the forensic science
process means that different individuals and institutions are responsible for distinct parts (for example,
one team addresses the scene, one scientist looks at trace evidence on one exhibit, a different scientist
in a different institution deals with the DNA analysis from a different exhibit), rather than having a
harmonised approach [23,29]. It is also seen at the larger scale in the fragmentation of forensic service
provision in the UK with both in-house police and private company providers of forensic services. In
addition investigations are often carried out in a piecemeal way with a lack of coherence between
investigations and the courts [14].

Within the research domain this identity issue is also evident. What forensic science is considered to be
for has created tensions over whether the purpose of forensic science research is primarily for
developing analytical or technological solutions for investigators or service providers, or whether there
is also value in undertaking foundational science that develops theory to underpin the whole forensic
science process from detection to evaluative interpretation. This lack of clarity has led to a situation
where it is often unclear where responsibility for research and development belongs in forensic science,
and therefore who is accountable and responsible for it.

Given the fragmented nature of the ecosystem, it is therefore perhaps not surprising that forensic
science is facing such significant challenges. Without a coherent identity of what forensic science is and
what it is for, it is difficult for forensic science to fit into the existing structures that nurture and enable
its services or its research and development [30]. Therefore, articulating the identity of forensic science,
and agreeing the nature of the discipline is critical to its future, and certainly not merely a matter of
semantics. Given the breadth and diversity of forensic science this is not something that can be
articulated from one quarter. It will require a collective approach that brings together the breadth of
perspectives that forensic science incorporates. This is something that will require incubation and space
for ideas to evolve for a consensus to be reached.

Interpretation: Forensic science reform must increase oversight over forensic science
laboratories
Ryan Goldstein 11 [B.A., summa cum laude, from Georgetown University "Improving Forensic
Science Through State Oversight," Texas law review,
http://texaslawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Goldstein-90-
TLR-225.pdf, 230-231] nw
forensic science has historically operated under the formal
Fragmentation by jurisdiction, laboratory, and discipline exacerbates the validity and reliability problems. First,

supervision of law enforcement within each jurisdiction but without any significant external regulation .46

The large number of small laboratories

Funding often comes from different levels of government, and laboratories often perform analyses for law enforcement from neighboring or overlapping jurisdictions.47 48

and laboratories that only perform limited types of analysis further disaggregate forensic science rise 49 . The

of private laboratories adds to the fragmentation as well any reform proposals must include ,50 and

increased oversight of these laboratories the term forensic science encompasses a complex world . In short,

of overlapping jurisdictions and laboratories . The result is an environment where it is difficult to determine which entity should be responsible for oversight.
 Forensic Science – Limits
The NRC report that the Cole evidence is about says it is important to discuss
specificities of forensic science
NRC 2009 (National Research Council, Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Sciences
Community, “Strengthening Forensic Science in the
United”, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf)
In evaluating the accuracy of a forensic analysis, it is crucial to clarify the type of question the analysis is called on to address. Thus, although
some techniques may be too imprecise to permit accurate identification of a specific individual, they may still provide useful and accurate
information about questions of classification. For example, microscopic hair analysis may provide reliable evidence on some characteristics of
the individual from which the specimen was taken, but it may not be able to reliably match the specimen with a specific individual. However,
the definition of the appropriate question is only a first step in the evaluation of the performance of a forensic technique. A body of research is
required to establish the limits and measures of performance and to address the impact of sources of variability and potential bias. Such
research is sorely needed, but it seems to be lacking in most of the forensic disciplines that rely on subjective assessments of matching
characteristics. These
disciplines need to develop rigorous protocols to guide these subjective
interpretations and pursue equally rigorous research and evaluation programs. The development of
such research programs can benefit significantly from other areas, notably from the large body of
research on the evaluation of observer performance in diagnostic medicine and from the findings of
cognitive psychology on the potential for bias and error in human observers .
 Sentencing
Enacting substantial sentencing reform requires a holistic approach that changes the
way that laws and guidelines upon which excessive sentences are based
Carey Holley (intern in the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law) October 8,
2018 “What’s Happening in Congress on Criminal Justice Reform?”
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/whats-happening-congress-criminal-justice-
reform

Sentencing Reform

Sentencing reform prioritizes changing the laws and guidelines that made prison sentences so long in
the first place. Mandatory minimum laws set fixed minimum sentences for certain crimes, leaving judges
with no choice but to impose a harsh penalty they may not believe in. On the other hand, sentencing
guidelines help judges use what little discretion they have left. These guidelines are not compulsory, but
judges tend to closely adhere to them.

These laws and guidelines helped create mass incarceration, and more and more prosecutors, judges
and lawmakers are recognizing that they need to be fixed to end it.

Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) have one plan to achieve that goal. In
2015 and again in 2017, they introduced a bipartisan and popular bill called the Sentencing Reform and
Corrections Act (SRCA). This bill significantly reduces mandatory minimum sentences for several drug-
related crimes and ensures that people who went to prison before 2010 can still benefit from the Fair
Sentencing Act of 2010, which dramatically revised some drug sentences in an effort to reduce the racial
disparities caused by crack cocaine sentencing laws.

SRCA would make a real dent in the prison population: Around 2,500 people entering prison each year
would receive a sentence reduction of between 22 and 50 percent, and more than 6,000 currently
incarcerated drug offenders would be immediately eligible for a sentence reduction of nearly 30
percent. It also includes prison reform provisions such as increasing recidivism reduction programming
and activities, and significantly limiting the use of juvenile solitary confinement.

The Need for Both Types of Reform

Both prison reform and sentencing reform are critical to improving the criminal justice system. However,
prison reform on its own, while improving conditions of confinement, does not meaningfully reduce our
country’s unjustifiably large incarcerated population. Sentencing reform, on the other hand, confronts
the foundation of mass incarceration by changing the laws upon which excessive sentences are based.

To holistically address our country’s incarceration problem, we need to put an end to unnecessary
incarceration through enacting sentencing reform and ensure that the remaining prison population is
treated with dignity through prison reform.
Sentencing is a discrete act not an ongoing process – the aff can’t apply to those who
have already been sentenced
William Robinson (Associate Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court) April 18, 2011 “STATE v.
Brandy GRAFF” majority opinion. No. 2010–3–C.A. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ri-supreme-
court/1563969.html

“Every person convicted of a first violation shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not
less than five (5) years and for not more than fifteen (15) years, in any unit of the adult correctional
institutions in the discretion of the sentencing judge * * *.” (Emphasis added.)

The statute clearly and unambiguously vests the sentencing judge with discretion to sentence first-time
offenders under this statute to any unit of the ACI. In the instant case, it is undisputed that defendant
was not ordered to the work-release program at the time of her sentencing on June 18, 2007. A review
of the hearing justice's decision to grant defendant's motion to modify sentence, which decision was
announced almost two full years after her sentencing, suggests that it was predicated on a notion that
sentencing is not a singular event and on a belief that the judicial officer who is “the sentencing judge”
referred to in § 31–27–2.2 continues to have the discretionary powers accorded by that statute even
after the sentence has been meted out.11

We reject as erroneous the hearing justice's very expansive interpretation of sentencing and of § 31–27–
2.2. There is nothing in the statute that in any way suggests that sentencing is some sort of ongoing
process. Rather, sentencing is, in our view, a discrete act. We view “the discretion” that this statute
accords to “the sentencing judge” as unambiguously referring to a discretion that is exercisable when
the judge pronounces the sentence and that, except as otherwise explicitly provided for in Rule 35 of
the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure, ceases to exist after that event takes place.12

Our understanding of the discrete nature of sentencing and of the meaning of the term “sentencing
judge” in § 31–27–2.2 is consistent with dictionary definitions of the English word “sentence.”13 For
example, the New Oxford American Dictionary 1591 (3d ed.2010) defines “sentence” in the legal context
as meaning “the punishment assigned to a defendant found guilty by a court” and as punishment “fixed
by law for a particular offense.” Similarly, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
1586 (4th ed.2006) defines the noun “sentencing” as: “1. The act of pronouncing a judicial sentence on a
defendant. 2. The sentence so pronounced.” Nothing in those definitions is even remotely suggestive of
an ongoing process. See also Corey v. United States, 375 U.S. 169, 174, 84 S.Ct. 298, 11 L.Ed.2d 229
(1963) (“Final judgment in a criminal case * * * means sentence. The sentence is the judgment.”)
(internal quotation marks omitted).

We consider it noteworthy that Rule 35 (entitled, “Correction, decrease or increase of sentence”) is

replete with language that presupposes that the imposition of sentence is a discrete act and not a sort
of continuing process which (in addition to what is specifically authorized by Rule 35) the sentencing
judge may from time to time revisit. Significantly, the 120–day period within which most Rule 35
motions must be filed is measured from the date when “sentence is imposed.”

The hearing justice in the instant case had the authority to order the defendant to the work-release
program at the time of her sentencing on June 18, 2007, but he did not have the continuing authority to
thereafter grant the defendant's “Motion to Modify Sentence for Court Ordered Work Release.” In our
opinion, he erred in doing so.

Sentencing reform is a complex process that goes beyond focusing on one part of the
process – the aff cant limit their reform to a single domain
Jacqueline Cohen (Emeretus research professor at Carnegie Mellon University specializing in criminal
justice policy) and Michael H. Tonry (the McKnight Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and Policy at
the University of Minnesota Law School) 1984 “Federal Sentencing Revision” Hearing before the
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the Committee of the Judiciary in the House of Representatives,
https://books.google.com/books?id=5T-Z5EQ6T7gC&pg=PA1393&lpg=PA1393&dq=
%22the+word+sentencing
%22+AROUND(15)+reform&source=bl&ots=EimTc0HdtT&sig=ACfU3U14BWFf6tzJ5_0x9pGezRvj05CezQ
&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjhscHf56bqAhUVZc0KHT90DB8Q6AEwCnoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=fals
e

The sentencing reform movement has forced us to look at the sentencing process whole. Until recently
the word sentencing usually evoked images of defendants in the dock. berobed judges, and high—
ceilinged courtrooms. The roles of police, prosecutors, and parole and prison professionals in sentence
outcomes very little attended to. Now, after a decade of ferment, most discussions of sentencing reform
address not the discretion of judges, but also that of prosecutors, parole boards, and sometimes other
officials. Sentencing is no longer commonly perceived as simply what a judge does, but rather as a
complex process in which various people make decisions that influence the quality and quantum of
punishment a defendant receives. Most sentencing reforms have focused on only one part of the
process. Maine, for abolished parole but addressed no other punishment power; the abolition of parole
without development of criteria and constraints for judges, however, gave little reason to expect that
sentences imposed by judging would algo change in some desired way. California “abolished” parole and
get detailed statutory criteria for judges imposing prison sentences on convicted offenders, raising the
possibility that much of the power in determining sentence outcomes would thereby be shifted to
prosecutors through the charging and plea negotiation processes. Illinois abolished parole, set loose
statutory sentencing criteria, and established “day-for-day” good time. Prisoners, however, have no
vented entitlement to accrued good—time credits, leaving corrections authorities with the power to
increase a prisoners nominal sentence by much as 100 percent by withdrawing credits to penalize
prisoner misconduct.

In view of this complexity, evaluations of the impact of sentencing reforms should not be limited to the
domain in which these schemes are implemented. To see the impact of parole guidelines, one must
consider not only the actions of the parole board, but also those of judges, lawyers, and prison officials.
To see the impact of sentencing guidelines, one must consider their implications for plea bargaining,
parole release decisions, and so on.
Stare decisis supports our interpretation our distinction between judicial proceedings
that constitute sentencing and the fact-finding proceedings that precede them
Lorie Skjerven Gildea (Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court) July 12, 2017 “State v. Willis”
majority opinion A16-0275 https://casetext.com/case/state-v-willis-379

The dissent attempts to revisit the distinction we drew in Sanchez-Sanchez, between fact-finding
proceedings (Blakely trials) and proceedings at which a judge listens to the parties' sentencing
arguments; considers all the relevant facts, including the special verdicts returned at an earlier Blakely
trial; and then announces a sentence (sentencings). 879 N.W.2d at 330. According to the dissent, the
word "sentencing" should instead be broadly defined as "[t]he judicial determination of the penalty for a
crime." Infra at D-3. The dissent's argument is unavailing because it ignores the doctrine of stare decisis,
which "directs us to adhere to our former decisions in order to promote the stability of the law and the
integrity of the judicial process." Walsh, 851 N.W.2d at 604. Consistent with the doctrine of stare decisis,
we apply the definition of "sentencing" adopted in Sanchez-Sanchez to the facts of this case.
 Policing

Defining “policing” based on their discrete functions is bad – aff’s reform must address
the deeper political and social dynamics
Alan Wright (lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth,
Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University, and former police officer) 2002 “Policing: An
introduction to concepts and practice” p. 31 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781843924708

These inquiries show that it is not possible to make an institution more effective by ignoring the
ambiguity inherent in its practice. Indeed, they illustrate why the whole modern idea that institutions
are rational structures defined by their functions is deeply flawed. Political, economic, social and
technological change means that we can no longer associate policing with the police alone. In fact,
reference to the functions of the police can no longer answer the question, 'What is policing?' at all. The
only way to do this is to provide an account that interprets policing practice in terms of its social and
political purposes. Such an account will point to the rich pattern of relations between policing, the state
and other agencies, groups and individuals. It will recognise that policing can only exist in an
'informational society' of the kind discussed by Bell ( 1980) and Castells (1989). We will discuss this
further in Chapter 7. In the light of the evidence, therefore, we should abandon any attempt to
understand policing as a range of functions of the police. Instead we should develop an account which
recognises the diversity of meanings which now characterise the terms 'police' and 'policing'.

Diversity of meanings

Functionalism has not led to a unified scientific account of police work. Nor has it produced practical
measures for police reform. As we have argued above, the reason for this is that we can no longer
simply understand policing in terms of the functions of the police. We need to look anew at the meaning
of 'police' and 'policing' to establish new ways of approaching these questions. It is true that there is a
rapidly expanding literature on the police. However, it seldom discusses the deeper meaning of the
concept. Studies of police work regard policing as a transparent concept. Those who recognise the
difficulties, however, are aware that there are problems associated with the meaning of the term
'policing'. Indeed, it is now unsafe to use the term as if it refers to the activities of a single institution.

The fact that the meanings of 'police' and 'policing' are ambiguous makes them difficult to define. The
context in which they are used makes a difference to the meaning. For example, the use of the term
'police' by criminologists discussing police accountability may not be the same as its use by the police or
those who make complaints against them. Its meaning for practitioners will not be the same as that in
the minds of those who consider themselves 'policed against'. The concept of policing may have had
very different meanings for protesting students who faced the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité
(CRS) in Paris in 1968 than for the members of the CRS who were on public order duty at that time. This
is so, despite the fact that both may have believed that they were influencing the future and very
legitimacy of the French state. It is all the more problematic in such cases if theoretical accounts assume
that the meanings of the terms 'police' and policing' are unequivocal. However, even where the
meaning is elusive, 'police' and 'policing' cannot simply mean anything we want them to mean. For this
reason, we need to clarify the way in which the various forms of discourse use the concepts, both in
theory and in practice.

“policing” should not be rigidly defined – prefer a more abstract interpretation that
denotes the its organizational history and the associations between various police
practices
Alan Wright (lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth,
Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University, and former police officer) 2002 “Policing: An
introduction to concepts and practice” p. 36-7 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781843924708

We can argue with some justification that the concept of 'policing' meets Ryle's criteria for
polymorphism. As already suggested in relation to differences in meaning, there need be nothing going
on in some kinds of policing that needs to be going on in others. For example, the action content of
community policing need not be the same as the action content of law enforcement. There is no
necessary overlap between them, although there may be overlap under some specific conditions.
Technically speaking, our use of the term 'policing' does not rigidly designate the action content of
policing practice other than the one we are specifically referring to at the time. It is an abstract general
term but it does not label only one thing. This is not a complicated point. We often distinguish between
forms of police work in terms of their action content, as we also often distinguish between them in
terms of their context, both organisationally and historically. We can talk about paramilitary policing and
not get it confused with the kind of policing which is concerned with putting identifiable marks on
children's bicycles. However, we still want to make use of the word to denote some kind of association
between these different kinds of practice. This indicates that we should be looking for an understanding
of policing in terms of a modal logic of practice that recognises this variability. A provisional model for
such a modal logic of policing practice is set out later in this chapter.

Policing reform must effect every aspect of police organization

Beyer 91 - Lorraine R. Beyer, Senior Constable (“The Logic and the Possibilities of 'Wholistic'
Community Policing”, McKillop, S. and Vernon, J; Victoria Police, THE POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY IN
THE 1990s, Australian Institute of Criminology) ICW-AZL

The concept of 'wholistic' community policing is not anything mystical or spiritual. It is, however, about a
vision. It is a vision of a police organisational structure and management which is organised around what
police actually do, rather than around only a part of their duties---that is crime fighting. Where police at
every level can be efficient, effective, responsive and accountable in all their duties. This is not a 'pie in
the sky' ideal. It seems that the 'wholistic' approach to community policing is essential for the future of
policing. So first, what is wholistic community policing? There are three types of approach to community
policing currently discussed in the literature. In the first approach community policing is seen as just one
pattern or unit within the police organisation. In the second approach community policing is the name
given to smallscale initiatives, usually local, which are designed to bring police into non-confrontational
contact with the community in some way. The third approach is the 'wholistic' approach. This approach
sees community policing as affecting every aspect of the police organisation, including being reflected
in the informal corporate culture. It would involve the police organisation being organised in such a way
that it could be demonstrably effective and responsive in its service and peacekeeping tasks and in its
prevention of crime and disorder. It makes sense for the police organisation to be organised around
what police actually do and around what the community wants them to do. Instead though, police
appear to be organised around assumptions which, at the very least, are open to question. These are
discussed below.

The police are comprised of the characteristics of coercion, professionalism, and

discipline-reforms must change one or more of the three
Williams and Patterson 19 [Andrew Williams is a Consulting & Visiting Lecturer, The
Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, Sheffield Hallam University, Craig
Patterson is a Principal Lecturer in Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University "What
Future for Policing? Some Reflections on the Concept and Purpose of Policing and Their
Implications for Police Reform in England and Wales," Redfame,
doi:10.11114/ijlpa.v2i1.4158] nw
By a concept of policing, we mean the 'most basic linguistic constructions by means of which people order and categorize reality' (Mouton and
Marais, 1988: 58). A concept of policing is therefore our most basic tool for analysing, debating and making sense of our own understanding of
policing. It is a symbolic construct which conveys meaning about the purpose of policing, much
of which underpins public
discourse about what the police do and should do but is largely taken to represent common-sense
assumptions which are often specific to context . This conceptual meaning can be defined through reference to the basic
dimensions of a concept; its connotation (the meaning of policing as it is conveyed to people) and its denotation (the phenomena which exist in
reality when we refer to policing). The connotative dimension refers to theories, perspectives and interpretations of policing whereas the
denotative dimension refers to things that can be empirically measured. As an example of this, Hills' (2014) refers to 'policeness' as the
fundamental characteristics of police (what we refer to here as first principles) that transcend nation states. In doing so, Hills
identifies
three terms that commonly characterize connotative and denotative conceptualizations of police and
which have relevance to the broader conceptualization of policing. These terms - coercion, professionalism and
discipline - are briefly outlined in the next section.

5.1 Coercion

The use of actual or threatened force and intimidation (Hills, 2014: 768). This term draws on Bittner's (1970: 131)
interpretation of police as an 'institution with the monopoly to employ non-negotiably coercive force'
although Hills extends this definition to include 'the technical skills associated with a specialist coercive
knowledge' (2014: 775) and thus other non-state modes of policing. The coercive function of policing is both imagined, in
that it does not need to be implemented to have impact, and actual.

5.2 Professionalism
The giving of recognition and authority to a body of people to police. In western contexts, professionalism is often identified by the public in the
form of a specific uniform although, in governmental terms, professionalism
arises from training, status and
accountability to civil society. From a non-western perspective, and reflecting Durkheim's work on order and change,
professional 'policeness' relates to ownership of the knowledge, skills and power required to fulfil
societal or political expectations about the management of low-level forms of disorder. Professionalism
is thus often deemed to separate formal state police bodies from the myriad of other policing bodies that
exist in societies.
5.3 Discipline

There is an Anglophone assumption that the term 'police',

as opposed to policing, refers to an organised and often
hierarchical body of people. Underpinning this perspective is recognition that training, acculturation and
hierarchy impose discipline upon police with the threat of punishment where this discipline is breached.
Anglophone perspectives on discipline are traditionally predicated on state-centred and rule-oriented models devised in contexts where
resources are plentiful for the efficient administration of policing but these assumptions are challenged in states with plural modes of policing
and governance where system of governance have evolved in a multitude of different ways. In this latter context, discipline can be understood
as a form of governmentality; a technique of governance and an expression of power relations (Foucault, 1991)

Coercion, professionalism and discipline provide a loose framework for understanding some basic characteristics, or first
principles, of police and policing which have meaning across a range of contexts. These characteristics comprise elements of the
denotative and connotative dimensions of policing that can be applied to reform endeavours and, in some
instances, measured in practice. These fundamental characteristics of policing gather local meaning in their specific socio-cultural, legal,
ideological and political contexts. Coercion is an ever-present element of policing although the extent of professionalism and discipline in
policing organisations undoubtedly differs and changes across time and space. For example, public responses to state, voluntary and
commercial modes of policing differ dramatically across national jurisdictions, geographical locations and at different points in history (Bayley
and Shearing, 1996; 2001). The meaning of policing is therefore constructed both at the state level through law, policy and varying levels of
professionalism but also at the local level where micro-politics, social norms and culture inform the ways in which coercion and discipline are
perpetually negotiated and managed.
 We Meet – DNA
DNA reform implicates the broader field of forensic science
Telsavaara & Arrigo 06- Terhi V. T. Telsavaara, University of North Carolina–Charlotte; and Bruce A.
Arrigo, University of North Carolina–Charlotte (“DNA Evidence in Rape Cases and The Debbie Smith Act:
Forensic Practice and Criminal Justice Implications”, International Journal of Offender Therapy and
Comparative Criminology, Volume 50 Number 5, October 2006, Sage Publications,
10.1177/0306624X05285929, http://ijo.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com;
https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306624X05285929, ICW-AZL)

Conclusions The tragic story of Debbie Smith benefited from considerable media scrutiny and public
review, in part, because it highlighted a void in the processing of rape offenders and the treatment of
victims of sexual assault. In recent years, society has been introduced to several such stories, and all of
them have spawned powerful legislative reform affecting forensic practice and the criminal justice
system. Indeed, Stephanie’s Law (Kansas), the Amber Alert (Texas), and Megan’s Law (New Jersey) all
illustrate how the harm that befalls one person or family can garner enough public support and political
attention that it eventually becomes law (Merlo & Benekos, 2004; Walker, 2006). To be sure, many
victims of rape are not as fortunate as was Debbie Smith. By mere chance, the DNA of Mrs. Smith’s
assailant was entered into CODIS 6 years after the initial offense occurred, and a match identifying her
assailant was later found. She finally experienced some closure from her horrifying and traumatizing
rape experience. However, as of November 1, 2004, all other victims of rape can receive the same DNA
analysis benefits that were availed to Debbie Smith.

Naturally, when legislation becomes law it takes time for it to be properly executed. The major delay in
DNA testing before the passage of the act was the lack of funding and the absence of appropriate
training. Because the act allocates considerable financial resources to reduce the backlog of rape kit
samples and to train laboratory technicians, implementation will likely be efficient and effective.
However, as Walker (2006) noted, difficulties in executing a policy arise, particularly at the local level, if
various constituency groups oppose the law in question on principled grounds. Concerns for the
substance and details of the “Justice for All” Act were not spotlighted, especially given the media
scrutiny of the tragic case of Mrs. Debbie Smith and the public’s outcry for legislative reform in its wake.
As such, delays in its execution, even at the grassroots level, are not anticipated.

Having said this, the Debbie Smith Act does present a series of implications affecting forensic practice
and the justice system. This article endeavored to enumerate several of them. On one hand, the act
makes DNA testing, particularly in rape cases, a routine occurrence. Moreover, every crime scene
investigator, SANE professional, law enforcement officer, detective, prosecutor, and juror would like to
have this evidence at its disposal when tracking and profiling offenders, or evaluating the crime of rape,
given the scientific quality of DNA evidence. It dispenses with conjecture, especially with respect to
factual and legal guilt, and it has the potential to exonerate those falsely accused. In sum, the act
represents powerful legislation that, in many ways, is long overdue.

On the other hand, there are several limits to the act, affecting personnel in the forensic and justice
arena. Police officers will need to be better trained in their interactions with victims of rape, particularly
given the sensitive nature of the harm and the sophistication of the science. The court system will have
to respond to a growing number of writs from inmates to have DNA testing performed. This practice
could overwhelm the legal system while retraumatizing victims. Prosecutors will have to reassess their
priority prosecution efforts and focus on sexual offenders, undoing or significantly challenging the plea-
bargaining process. Inmate reentry and early release initiatives will have to be reevaluated, as DNA
evidence used to convict felons in rape cases will disincline parole boards to grant such requests. The
concern for treating juvenile sexual offenders will need to be reexamined, especially as more, rather
than less, adolescents, will be prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced in the adult system. These issues
represent the unanticipated fallout of the “Justice for All” Act.

Laws that are fueled by media scrutiny and public outrage can benefit society. Regrettably, this is not
always the case, particularly when appalling tragedy trumps thoughtful judgment. The Debbie Smith Act
certainly endeavors to address a clear and compelling need regarding DNA evidence in rape cases. To
this extent, the legislation is a worthwhile reform, benefiting forensic and justice practice. However, in
the final analysis, the act appears to raise more troubling problems than it solves. These problems, as
identified above, warrant more systematic attention by policy makers and justice professionals,
especially if the legislation is to withstand costly and timely litigation from prison rights advocates or
those championing the treatment needs of sexual offenders.
 We Meet – Qualified Immunity
Qualified immunity is a sweeping police reform
Cohen, 6-19 (Li Cohen, 6-19-2020, accessed on 6-30-2020, CBS News, "Colorado passes
sweeping police reform bill", https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colorado-passes-sweeping-
police-reform-bill/) – ICW-AZL

Colorado passed a sweeping police reform bill on Friday that, among other reforms, bans chokeholds and makes
officers personally liable if they are found guilty of violating a person's civil rights . Colorado is one of
the first states that will allow police officers to be financially liable for civil misconduct suits , according to the
state's ACLU.

The bill, signed by Governor Jared Polis on Friday morning, mandates the following, according to CBS Denver:
All local and state police officers must wear body cameras by 2023

Body camera footage must be made public

Chokeholds are prohibited

Shooting at fleeing suspects is prohibited

Deadly force can only be used if a person's life is imminent danger

Police must report every instance in which they stop someone who they suspect of a crime; they must also include that person's race, gender,
and ethnicity

Police must report other officers for wrongdoing

Officers can be held personally liable for damages up to $25,000 if they are found guilty of violating an
individual's civil rights
Officers can turn off body cameras "to avoid recording personal information that is not case related," or if they are working undercover or are
on an unrelated assignment, according to the bill. They may also turn off their camera "when there is a long break in the incident; and in
administrative, tactical, and management discussions."

If officers do not follow these rules, they may be subject to criminal liability and penalty under the law,
and will face discipline "up to and including termination," the bill says. Officers who intentionally don't turn on or tamper with their camera will
lose their certification for at least one year.

The bill also states that police should "apply nonviolent means, when possible, before resorting to the use of physical force." The rules on the
use of physical force are less stringent for officers who work in jails, prisons, or correctional institutions.

The bill also states that "qualified immunity is not a defense to liability," blocking a practice that is common
nationwide. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado tweeted that Colorado is one of the first states in the country to end
qualified immunity.

Many have argued that qualified immunity, which protects police officers from financial liability in civil suits,
enables excessive force.
Officers can use qualified immunity as a shield unless evidence shows that they violated the fourth amendment by using excessive force, and
knew they were breaking "clearly established" law, Reuters said in a comprehensive investigation into the practice. Clearly established law,
according to the Supreme Court, refers to prior cases in which similar police actions were designated as illegal.

Reuters analyzed qualified immunity cases in appellate courts from 2015 to 2019. In more than half of the 252 cases
where police were accused of using excessive force, the courts granted police qualified immunity . They also
found dozens of cases in which this immunity protected police who had allegedly engaged in unlawful
misconduct.
On Monday, the Supreme Court refused eight cases that presented opportunities to reconsider qualified
immunity, according to the Institute for Justice.
In a press release, the Institute said that in practice, qualified immunity "means that government officials can only be held liable if a federal
court of appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court has already held that someone violated the Constitution by engaging in precisely the same conduct
under precisely the same circumstances."

"Qualified immunity means that government officials can get away with violating your rights as long as
they violated them in a way nobody thought of before," said Institute for Justice attorney Anya Bidwell.
"And that means that the most egregious abuses are frequently the ones for which no one can be held
to account."
 Aff – Criminal Justice Reform
Criminal justice reform includes both incremental and large-scale reforms
Blanco et al 4 (Rafael Blanco, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Richard Hutt, Cook County Public
Defender, Hugo Rojas, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Issue 2 Spring/Summer 2004, "Reform to the
Criminal Justice System in Chile: Evaluation and Challenges", Loyola University Chicago International Law
Review, https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=lucilr, JRB)

IV. Evaluation of the Reform Process The

process of criminal justice reform, as in the case of all political processes, requires
periods of evaluation which permit
modifications and changes in both strategic planning and day-to-day
systemic operation. The idea is to identify advances and successes, as well as challenges, as the process
moves onward. Indeed, all such political processes must pass the test of public scrutiny as well as being tested by political scientists and
economists. During this period, the administration of President Eduardo Frei and the current administration of President Ricardo Lagos have
closely followed the reformation of the Code of Criminal Justice. 3' At the same time, there have been ongoing studies by universities and
private organizations that have contributed immensely to both a financial and political understanding of the entire process. 32 These studies
have identified significant successes in this process in the following areas: (a) transparency; (b) speed; (c) contact; (d) orality; (e) due process; (f)
impartiality; (g) protection; and (h) professionalism.
 Aff – Forensic Science
Forensic science reform is defined as reducing adversary influences on forensic science
Pyrek 7 [Kelly M. Pyrek is a Forensic textbook author, Forensic Science Under Siege: The Challenges
of Forensic Laboratories and the Medico-Legal Investigation System, https://doi-
org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1016/B978-0-12-370861-8.X5000-1, p. 445] nw
The outcome of forensic science reform, then, is to achieve accuracy, reliability, and validity in all
forensic laboratory examinations and analyses, as well as in all medico-legal death investigations and
autopsies. Feldman et al. (2001) state that the overarching goal of forensic science reform is to “Reduce the
adversary influences on, and emphasize science, in forensic science. ” Thomson (1974) calls for a suite of
reforms: Consolidation of forensic facilities, placing forensic labs under the supervision of the courts,
accreditation, instituting a mandatory regime of proficiency testing, provision for open access for all
parties in a criminal action, and use of separate facilities by the antagonists in a criminal process.
 Aff - Policing
Write concludes aff – “policing” cannot be reduced to an essential institution or
function. Conceptual clarity under a unified theory of policing is impossible – imposing
one onto the aff fails
Alan Wright (lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth,
Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University, and former police officer) 2002 “Policing: An
introduction to concepts and practice” p. 38 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781843924708

In the senses intended by Ryle and Gallie, therefore, it is logically impossible to give a singular
definitional account of the essence of policing. We cannot specify in advance all the kinds of intentions,
actions and outcomes that the concept might entail. The conceptual clarity that would be necessary to
underpin essentialist claims is always lacking. It is always necessary to resort to argumentation about the
nature of the concept in the actual world in which we find ourselves. In this sense, we are right to regard
the meanings of 'policing' as contested. It does not suffice to suggest that such concepts have a natural
meaning and that contestedness is simply a mistake over their true nature. In the words of Douglas
(1992: 9), 'Knowledge always lacks, ambiguity always lurks'. Also, as Gallie shows, to understand the
nature of such concepts, we need not only ask for their use in practice but also for their history.
Understanding such concepts, as this discussion has tried to show, is as much a matter of grasping their
historical development in practice (in dispute and discussion) as it is for empirical criminological science.

Of course, if these claims about the problematic nature of meaning are correct, it should not be
surprising that there are seemingly endless disputes among both criminologists and practitioners about
policing. However, it is precisely the contested nature of policing that should alert us to the fact that no
single function or set of functions can serve to define its essence. Indeed, it is the very diversity and
contested nature of policing that now allows us to break free from the pretence that its meaning is
defined by the functions of 'the police'. When we review the concept of policing, therefore, we should
interpret the whole range of meaning implied by the use of the term in practice. In doing so, we find
that the variety of usage leads us towards comparison of particular kinds of resemblance. For example,
in using the term 'policing', we connote different types of activity that are alike in some ways but
different in others. The danger is that we might persist in the essentialist claim that there is one and only
one thing that is truly policing or that the essence of policing should be defined in some irreducible way.
Even Bittner, who has provided us with perhaps the most illuminating accounts of certain kinds of
policing, has been tempted to take this line (Bittner, 1970). Although he shows that local police often
have the end of peacekeeping in mind more than that of law enforcement, his purview of policing across
a wider range of its contemporary practice remains limited.

Many kinds of policing are possible within the variety of ways in which we can legitimately use the term.
Indeed, it now becomes clear why some of the classical works on policing have not tried to create a
unified theory of policing. They have not done so because their authors have long recognised the futility
of the exercise, given the endemic ambiguity of the subject. In any discussion of police science, serious
conceptual problems will always arise that will confound even the most determined determinist. Given
the conceptual polymorphism and contestability that is endemic in the practice and study of policing, we
should not be surprised at this. Nor should we be surprised at the recourse to historical narrative and
interpretation in much recent criminology, including that in Reiner (1992a, 2000a). But we can certainly
no longer resort to an analysis of the functions of the police to provide us with either a theoretical or
practical understanding of the complexities of policing. To rely on this, given the difficulties outlined
above, is no longer a viable option.
 Aff – Sentencing
Sentencing reform is reducing the amount of people sent to prison and amount of
time spent in prison
Serano 18 [David A Serano is a Maui defense attorney " Passing Criminal Justice Reform Will
Congress Finally Pass Criminal Justice Reform?," David Serano blog,
https://www.davidserenolaw.com/passing-criminal-justice-reform/ Sentencing reform] nw

Sentencing reform refers to fixing the “front end.” It targets reducing the amount of people sent to
prison and the amount of time people spend in prison by changing what happens before they are
locked up, meaning when offenders are arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced. Sentencing reform aims to
ensure the punishment fits the crime by reducing mandatory minimum sentences and giving judges
more discretion to give a sentence considering the offender’s history and circumstances surrounding the
case instead of handing out terms based on the charges.
 A2 Morris
Morris goes aff-Morris is criticizing wholesale reform to the Criminal Justice system
and advocates for smaller reforms, but never defines or excludes either approach
Morris 78 [professor of law at Harvard Denial of Justice: Criminal Process in the United States by
Lloyd L. Weinreb Review by: Norval Morris Source: Harvard Law Review, Vol. 91, No. 6 (Apr., 1978), p.
1370] nw
It is often unfair, though common, to criticize a book for not being a different book; an author may surely select his own topics. But in this case
one cannot but regret the failure to offer at least a primitive guide to the reformer's path. Few scholars take as holistic
an approach to
the criminal justice system as Lloyd Wein- reb does in Denial of Justice. Undoubtedly, such an overarching perspective is essential
to serious and substantial reform of our present anarchic, inefficient, and unjust system; to leave the book with a sense of a chapter or
chapters missing, however, is a dis- appointment.

The truly difficult task in criminal justice reform is to define politically viable courses of legislative, regulatory,
and judicial conduct which are capable of avoiding the formidable ability of existing institutions to
swallow changes without affecting the overall system. There should have been at least one long chapter, of this
prescriptive nature, sketching the path between the diagnosis in the first five chapters and Weinreb's utopian "alternative model." Am I
condemning Weinreb for not writing a different book? I think not. It may be true, as Weinreb argues, that fundamental change in our criminal
justice system is needed. But this does not necessarily imply that such a grand vision of a new goal cannot be achieved by means of politically
viable incremental steps. Weinreb, in neglecting (or rejecting) this pos- sibility, fails to fulfill the promise of his earlier critical analysis of the
criminal justice system and leaves this book troublesomely incomplete.

[Their ev ends]
Let me offer an example of the need for intermediate prescriptive steps toward fundamental reform .
Weinreb amply demonstrates that charge and plea bargaining is the "usual pattern" for the disposition of a
criminal issue and that the trial represents the aberrational breakdown of this unofficial system. In his alternative model he
abolishes such bargaining, placing reliance instead on the discretion of an investigating magistrate to
take up the slack. How do we get from here to there? Broad social change is too complex for such swift,
draconian cures. Why not try to reach similar results by building on what we have? Here, it must be admitted, I
am offering an aspect of my own "alternative model" rather than that of Weinreb . I do not believe that
fundamental change is incompatible with incremental reform. Let me risk a suggestion or two on how it might be
achieved, suggestions of the type missing in Denial of Justice.

Given our overloaded criminal justice system and the extent of its reliance on charge and plea bargaining , it
would seem futile to propose a date on which such bargaining shall cease . It is better to modify,
reshape, and control these negotiative processes rather than to dream of their abolition . And perhaps the
best initial step in this direction has little link with the prosecutor's and the defense counsel's complicated bargaining gavottes.
In
 In the Dominion of the United States
The phrase “in the United States” means “in the dominion of the United States” –
both legislative and judicial debates in a constitutional setting prove
Benjamin Wallace Mendelson, 2017. University of Texas School of Law, 2017, J.D., with Honors,
University of Texas at Austin, 2014, B.A., Government and Hebrew Language, with Highest Honors, 3-5-
2017, “Courts Have Gone off the Map: The Geographic Scope of the Citizenship Clause” Texas Law
Review, Vol. 95:873, https://texaslawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Mendelson.pdf)//don

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment simply codified the English common law ideas of
citizenship that the Supreme Court had already recognized, including birthright citizenship within the
dominion of the United States. Thus, the correct interpretation of the Citizenship Clause’s phrase “in the United
States” is actually “in the dominion of the United States .” This is apparent in both the legislative debates
surrounding the passage of the Amendment and in Supreme Court decisions shortly thereafter .

Early legislative debates regarding the meaning of the Citizenship Clause imply that it merely codified the common law
idea of birth within the dominion of the United States . The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to
constitutionalize the citizenship language of the 1866 Civil Rights Act and to abrogate Dred Scott.40 The drafters of the 1866 Civil Rights Act

“insisted that it merely declared the existing law prior to Dred Scott and codified the common law

principles that had theretofore defined birthright citizenship .”41 Specifically, “Congressman Wilson, chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee, stated that under the bill, as before, ‘[e]very person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens
or aliens, is a natural-born citizen of the Constitution.’”42 Further, during the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment itself, Senator Johnson said that citizenship
refers to birth within the territory of the United States.43 Critically, both Wilson and Johnson did not limit the geographic scope of “the United States” to the several
states and the District of Columbia. Rather, they explicitly referenced
the common law of Coke and Blackstone , asserting
that the borders of the Citizenship Clause extended into “ territories” of the United States—that is, any place in
which America was sovereign.
Overall, however, there was little debate surrounding what the phrase “in the United States” meant. The debates on the Citizenship Clause were mostly focused on
whether it granted birthright citizenship to Native Americans, Gypsies, Chinese people, and others.44 In other words, legislators were greatly concerned about
whether the Citizenship Clause would give the children of foreigners birthright citizenship.45 But these debates were largely centered around the Citizenship
Clause’s second part, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” not the first part, “in the United States.”46 This emphasis on debating the phrase “subject to the
jurisdiction thereof,” and not “in the United States,” implies that most legislators agreed with Wilson and Johnson that the latter phrase, as used in both the 1866
Civil Rights Act and the Citizenship Clause, was simply an extension of the common law idea of birth within the dominion.

The Supreme Court’s Wong Kim Ark case most clearly demonstrates that, at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth
Amendment, the phrase “in the United States” meant “in the dominion of the United States .” In that case, the

Court clearly articulated the common law. It first correctly declared that “[t]he interpretation of the constitution
of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the

English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.”47 Then, the Court explained that “[t]he fundamental
principle of the common law with regard to English nationality was birth within the allegiance , also called
‘ligealty,’ ‘obedience,’ ‘faith’ or ‘power,’ of the King. The principle embraced all persons born within the King’s allegiance, and

subject to his protection.”48 Next, the Court listed the familiar exceptions to common law birthright citizenship—children of ambassadors and
children of foreign enemies49—before explicitly referring to Calvin’s Case. 50 Finally, the Court held that, “[t]here is, therefore, little ground for the theory that, at
the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . there was any settled and definite rule of international law, generally recognized by civilized nations,
inconsistent with the ancient rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion.”51

Hence, at the time of Wong Kim Ark in 1898, it was abundantly clear to the Supreme Court that the phrase “in the
United States” meant “in the dominion of the United States .” The Court cited Calvin’s Case, described the common law concept of
allegiance, and concluded that the appropriate rule was birth “within the dominion” of the United States.52
That includes the territories, military bases, and embassies
Benjamin Wallace Mendelson, 2017. University of Texas School of Law, 2017, J.D., with Honors,
University of Texas at Austin, 2014, B.A., Government and Hebrew Language, with Highest Honors, 3-5-
2017, “Courts Have Gone off the Map: The Geographic Scope of the Citizenship Clause” Texas Law
Review, Vol. 95:873, https://texaslawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Mendelson.pdf)//don

This Note will argue that, from an originalist, historical perspective, all of the recent federal appellate cases interpreting the
phrase “in the United States” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment have been incorrectly decided, and that if one wishes
to stay true to the framers’ intent , the correct interpretation of that phrase is “in the dominion of the
United States.” In other words, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment would have considered anywhere that the United States exercises sovereignty
to be “in the United States,” not just the fifty states and the District of Columbia. This would include U.S.

territories, military bases, embassies, and other similarly situated locations.

 Excludes bases and ships
The most recent court cases use “in the United States” in a geographic context – that
excludes territories
Harvard Law Review, 2017. “American Samoa and the Citizenship Clause: A Study in Insular Cases
Revisionism” 130 Harv. L. Rev. 1680, Chapter 3, https://harvardlawreview.org/2017/04/american-
samoa-and-the-citizenship-clause/)//don

On the one hand, the

plaintiffs urged a broad reading of the Citizenship Clause and its “use of the overarching
term ‘in the United States,’” in comparison with the Fourteenth Amendment’s neighboring Apportionment Clause, which “speaks narrowly in terms
of apportionment of representatives ‘among the several States.’” Conversely, as the defendants claimed — and as Justice Brown suggested in Downes — a
comparison of the Fourteenth Amendment with the Thirteenth arguably militated in favor of a narrow reading. The Thirteenth Amendment proscribes slavery
“within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” whereas the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to persons “born . . . in
the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Conceivably, then, “the Thirteenth Amendment’s phraseology contemplates areas ‘not a part of the
Union, [which] [a]re still subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,’ while the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates a ‘limitation to persons born or naturalized
in the United States[] which is not extended to persons born in any place “subject to their jurisdiction.”’”

Judge Brown found neither textual argument “fully persuasive” or “[]sufficient to divine the Citizenship
Clause’s geographic scope.” Both textual comparisons had some merit but remained “incomplete” because they produced, at most, a vague
inference as to how broadly or narrowly the clause should be read. Nor was the court impressed by the plaintiffs’ attempt to

“rely on scattered statements from the legislative history to bolster their textual argument.” Some of these statements, to be sure,
suggested a broad reading of the clause. But in addition to voicing a general skepticism as to the utility of such “[i]solated statements” in constitutional or statutory
interpretation, Judge Brown noted the Supreme Court’s longstanding warnings against the perils of such an enterprise in this area in particular, where “the
legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . contains many statements from which conflicting inferences can be drawn.”

The court gave greater attention to, but also ultimately rejected, plaintiffs’ attempts to interpret the clause and the
relevant precedents “in light of the common law tradition of jus soli.” This doctrine of “‘the right of the soil’” was an
“inheritance from the English common law” under which birthright citizenship broadly “extended beyond the
British Isles to include, for example, persons born in the American colonies.” The plaintiffs argued that the 1898 case of United States v. Wong
Kim Ark constitutionally codified that common law rule with regard to “outlying territories” such as American
Samoa. But the court distinguished that case , which undisputedly involved a California-born person and thus offered no
binding precedent on the territorial reach of the Citizenship Clause beyond the states. Wong Kim Ark itself lent arguable support to that
reading with its emphasis of the interpretive maxim that “general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which those
expressions are used. If they go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is
presented for decision.”

Constitutional differences prove that “subject to their jurisdiction” and “within the
US” are separate legal categories – that excludes Guantanamo Bay, military bases, and
ships
Sean Morrison, 13. Sean Morrison manages a solo practice and is the Chief Operating Officer for the
Caribbean Econonomic Development Alliance. Until 2012, he worked in American Samoa, first as a
criminal prosecutor and later as counsel for the American Samoa Department of Commerce. He served
two terms as President of the American Samoa Bar Association. Morrison received his J.D. from Case
Western Reserve University School of Law. Fall 2013, “Foreign in a Domestic Sense: American Samoa
and the Last U.S. Nationals”, 41 Hastings Const. L.Q. 71. Lexis Nexis)

As part of the analysis, he

compared the text of the Civil War Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibited
slavery "within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." To Justice Brown, the latter part of the phrase
suggested that there might be places subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. without being part of the Union. Meanwhile, the Fourteenth Amendment
merely [*101] conferred citizenship to "persons born or naturalized in the U nited States … and of the State wherein they reside."
This wording did not extend to persons born in those areas subject to U.S. jurisdiction but not part of a
state. Under this theory, statehood was required to be part of the "United States." This was a change from the opinions in the Slaughter-House Cases and Wong
Kim Ark, which recognized a difference between the United States and the individual states.

Taking his analysis beyond the confines of the issue at question, Justice Brown declared that the territories were not part of the
"United States" under the Fourteenth Amendment , so those born in the territories were, therefore, not birthright citizens. He also argued that
the power to acquire territory entailed the power to prescribe the terms of that acquisition. From a policy perspective, it would be unlikely that Congress would
ever annex territory if the inhabitants, "whether savages or civilized," automatically became citizens of the United States.

Justice Brown's arguments on citizenship are hardly persuasive. Aside from the ominous echoes of Dred Scott's racial caste system inherent in his opinion, he draws
a line between the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, but does not justify why it was drawn where it was. The text of the Thirteenth Amendment was
purposefully broad to completely eradicate slavery wherever the U.S. could claim jurisdiction. As Justice Fuller stated in his dissent: "Clearly this prohibition [on
slavery] would have operated in the territories if the concluding words had not been added."

The use of the jurisdiction test in the Thirteenth Amendment would clearly apply to the territories, but would
equally apply to the District of Columbia and the various possessions and protectorates . It would even
extend to places outside the territory - but under American jurisdiction - like ships or military bases like
[*102] Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Justice Brown did not explain why the Fourteenth Amendment stopped at the territories, instead of protectorates or
ocean vessels.
 Excludes Bases – Limits
The US has 800 military bases in more than 80 countries
Vine 15 (David Vine, PhD, professor of Anthropology at American University, 9-14-2015, "The United
States Probably Has More Foreign Military Bases Than Any Other People, Nation, or Empire in History",
The Nation, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-united-states-probably-has-more-foreign-
military-bases-than-any-other-people-nation-or-empire-in-history/, JRB)
With the US military having withdrawn many of its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans would be forgiven for being unaware that
hundreds of US bases and hundreds of thousands of US troops still encircle the globe. Although
few know it, the United States
garrisons the planet unlike any country in history, and the evidence is on view from Honduras to Oman,
Japan to Germany, Singapore to Djibouti. Like most Americans, for most of my life, I rarely thought about military bases. Scholar
and former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson described me well when he wrote in 2004, “As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do
not recognize—or do not want to recognize—that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government
secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet.” To the extent that Americans think about these bases
at all, we generally assume they’re essential to national security and global peace. Our leaders have claimed as much since most of them were
established during World War II and the early days of the Cold War. As a result, we consider the situation normal and accept that US military
installations exist in staggering numbers in other countries, on other peoples’ land. On the other hand, the idea that there would be foreign
bases on US soil is unthinkable. While there are no freestanding foreign bases permanently located in the United States, there
are now
around 800 US bases in foreign countries. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the
Korean War, there are still 174 US “base sites” in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea,
according to the Pentagon. Hundreds more dot the planet in around 80 countries, including Aruba and
Australia, Bahrain and Bulgaria, Colombia, Kenya, and Qatar, among many other places. Although few
Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people,
nation, or empire in history.
 Excludes Embassies – Limits
Insert this list of over 150 the countries the US has embassies in
US Embassy 1 (11-29-2001, "Official list of embassies from the U.S. Department of State",
USEmbassy.gov, https://www.usembassy.gov/, JRB)

Afghanistan

Albania

Algeria

Angola

Argentina

Armenia

Australia

Austria

Azerbaijan

U.S. Mission to ASEAN

U.S. Mission to the African Union

Bahamas

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Barbados

Belarus

Belgium

Belize

Benin

Bermuda

Bolivia

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Botswana

Brazil

Brunei
Bulgaria

Burkina Faso

Burma

Burundi

Cabo Verde

Cambodia

Cameroon

Canada

Central African Republic

Chad

Chile

China

Colombia

Costa Rica

Côte d’Ivoire

Croatia

Cuba

Curacao

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Denmark

Djibouti

Dominican Republic

Ecuador

Egypt

El Salvador

Equatorial Guinea

Eritrea
Estonia

Eswatini

Ethiopia

U.S. Mission to the EU

Fiji

Finland

France

Gabon

Georgia

Germany

Ghana

Greece

Guatemala

Guinea

Guinea-Bissau

Guyana

The Gambia

Haiti

Holy See

Honduras

Hong Kong and Macau

Hungary

Iceland

India

Indonesia

Iran

Iraq

Ireland

Israel
Italy

U.S. Mission to the ICAO

Jamaica

Japan

Jordan

Kazakhstan

Kenya

Kosovo

Kuwait

Kyrgyz Republic

Laos

Latvia

Lebanon

Lesotho

Liberia

Libya

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Madagascar & Comoros

Malawi

Malaysia

Maldives

Mali

Malta

Marshall Islands

Mauritania

Mauritius

Mexico

Micronesia
Moldova

Mongolia

Montenegro

Morocco

Mozambique

Namibia

Nepal

Netherlands

New Zealand

Nicaragua

Niger

Nigeria

North Macedonia

Norway

U.S. Mission to NATO

Oman

U.S. Mission to OSCE

U.S. Mission to the OAS

U.S. Mission to the OECD

Pakistan

Palau

Panama

Papua New Guinea

Paraguay

Peru

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Qatar
Republic of Congo

Romania

Russia

Rwanda

Samoa

San Marino

Saudi Arabia

Senegal

Serbia

Sierra Leone

Singapore

Slovakia

Slovenia

Somalia

South Africa

South Korea

South Sudan

Spain

Sri Lanka

Sudan

Suriname

Sweden

Switzerland

Syria

American Institute in Taiwan

Tajikistan

Tanzania

Thailand

Timor-Leste
Togo

Tonga

Trinidad & Tobago

Tunisia

Turkey

Turkmenistan

U.S. Mission to the UN-Geneva

U.S. Mission to the UN-Rome

U.S. Mission to the United Nations

Uganda

Ukraine

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

Uruguay

Uzbekistan

U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna

Venezuela

Vietnam

Yemen

Zambia

Zimbabwe
 Includes Guantanamo Bay
Cuba holds no substantive sovereignty over Guantanamo, which means the US has
complete control over the territory similar to property law
United States Court of Appeals, 03. December 18, 2003, Gherebi V. Bush, United States Court of
Appeals, Ninth Circuit, https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1423215.html)//don

That the
Lease uses the word “continuance” to describe Cuba's “ultimate sovereignty ” does nothing to undercut the
temporal construction of “ultimate.”   As we have explained, during
the period the United States exercises dominion and control, i.e.
sovereignty, over Guantanamo, Cuba retains a contingent sovereign interest-a reversionary right that springs into
being upon a lawful termination of the U.S. reign.   It is this reversionary interest that is “continued”
even as substantive (or qualitative) sovereignty is ceded to the U nited States.   In effect, the lease functions not
unlike a standard land disposition contract familiar in the area of property law , in which the partitioning of a bundle
of rights into present and future interests is commonplace.17

Finally, the term “ultimate” sovereignty must be construed in context.   It is clearly the temporal definition of “ultimate,” not its qualitative counterpart, that most
naturally and accurately describes the nature of Cuban sovereignty in Guantanamo.   By the plain terms of the agreement, the
U.S. acquires full
dominion and control over Guantanamo, as well as the right to purchase land and the power of
eminent domain.   Until such time as the United States determines to surrender its rights, it exercises full
and exclusive executive, legislative and judicial control over the territory, and Cuba retains no rights of any kind to do anything with respect
to the Base.18 If “ultimate” can mean either “final” (temporal) or “basic, fundamental, and maximum” (qualitative), given that Cuba does not under the agreement
retain any degree of control or jurisdiction over Guantanamo during the period of United States occupation, the use of the term “ultimate” as a modifier of
“sovereignty” in that agreement can only mean “final” (temporal) and not “basic, fundamental, and maximum” (qualitative).   Accordingly, we conclude that the
Lease and continuing Treaty must be construed as providing that Cuba possesses no substantive sovereignty over Guantanamo during the period of the U.S. reign.  
All such sovereignty during that indefinite and potentially permanent period is vested in the United States.
 Excludes Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo is in foreign territory and the process and protections detainees are
given are distinct from the rest of the criminal justice system
Amy Kaplan, 05. the 2003 President of the American Studies Association as well as a professor of
English and the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities at the
University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture and
The Social Construction of American Realism, and co-editor with Donald E. Pease of Cultures of United
States Imperialism, 2005. “Where Is Guantánamo?” American Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 3, The Johns
Hopkins University Press, pp. 831–858. JSTOR.)//don

To follow this reasoning, it is necessary to turn briefly to the Hamdi deci- sion, the one most heralded by the press as the victory of judicial restraint
against unbounded executive power. Yet, in this case, Justice O'Connor, writ- ing for the plurality, accepted Bush's position that the

nation is at war and that this open-ended "war on terror" gives the president and the executive branch sweeping powers to
jail anyone they accuse of being an "enemy combatant" - citizens and noncitizens alike - without the approval of Congress. The ruling
accepted the administration s position that such "enemy combatants" are not entitled to the protections either of the Geneva
Conventions on prisoners of war or to full due process rights accorded to criminal defendants in the U.S. courts. This decision thus
legitimated an evolving category of persons before the law, who are not defined primarily by citizenship or their relation to
na- tional or international law but by their designation by the executive. While the Court upheld Hamdi's right to counsel and to petition for habeas

corpus, it also endorsed a legal process skirting both constitutional restrictions and i nternational law, with a weakened
adherence to due process, with an assump- tion of guilt until proven innocent, and with the admission of hearsay as evi- dence. The Court s decision allows for an
unspecified military tribunal in lieu of a civilian trial or a military court-martial, itself a kind of parody of the Geneva Convention provisions for prisoners captured on
the battlefield.81

In RasuL, the Court made clear that it would not specify any procedures or venues for addressing the
petitioners' claims. In its response to the Supreme Court's decision, the Justice Department capitalized on this by quickly
adopt- ing part of the Court's logic in the Hamdi case to argue that aliens in foreign territory (Guantanamo detainees)
would certainly not be afforded more con- stitutional protections than those deemed appropriate for citizens within the United
States, such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi. To argue for denying due process to the Guantanamo prisoners, the government, in its

response, quotes from the Hamdi decision, "that the full protection that accompanies chal- lenges to detentions in other

settings may prove unworkable and inappropri- ate in the enemy combatant setting."82 Thus, the government relies on

Hamdi specifically to claim that the Guantanamo detainees have no protections un- der the Fifth Amendment ,
and they use the district court's ruling in Padilla to claim that the detainees have no constitutional rights to counsel
unmonitored by military security.83

Although these issues remain unresolved, the Justice Department has been consistent in arguing that the detainees in
Guantanamo have no constitu- tional protections . And it has been aided here by the gaps in the Court's deci- sion. It left mainly unanswered the
century-old question of whether the Con- stitution follows the flag, and the government has called on both the Insular Cases and Verdugo-Urquidez to argue that
the inmates at Guantanamo have no constitutional protections whatsoever. Although the arguments may sound staggeringly cynical, nothing in the Supreme Court
decision really works against them. TheJustice Department argues against the Sixth Amendment right for the accused in a
criminal proceeding to have "assistance of counsel for his defense" because "petitioners are being detained solely

because of their status as enemy combatants, not for any other criminal or punitive purpose."84 The counsel claims that
Verdugo-Urquidez established that "aliens receive constitu- tional protections when they have come within the

territory of the U.S. and developed substantial connections with this country."*5 Beyond its ongoing insis tence that Guantanamo is
not "within the territory of the U.S.," the govern- ment argues that the detainees do not have "voluntary
connections" to the United States, because they were captured involuntarily by the military, and therefore - like slaves - they do not have sufficient
connection with the United States to warrant constitutional protection. In other words, the act of impos- ing arbitrary power - the forced transport to Guantanamo,
the lack of crimi- nal charges - tautologically justifies the imposition of arbitrary power immune from constitutional restrictions and international treaties.
 Excludes International Policing
Understanding policing beyond just western definitions is key to effective police
reform domestically
Williams and Patterson 19 [Andrew Williams is a Consulting & Visiting Lecturer, The Helena Kennedy
Centre for International Justice, Sheffield Hallam University, Craig Patterson is a Principal Lecturer in
Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University "What Future for Policing? Some Reflections on the Concept
and Purpose of Policing and Their Implications for Police Reform in England and Wales," Redfame,
doi:10.11114/ijlpa.v2i1.4158] nw

We argue theabsence of a philosophical conceptualisation of policing is profoundly important because

foundational texts for police officers or policing students fail to address the fundamental or universal
aspects of policing that extend beyond each nation state and instead focus upon the role and function of
police organisations (Kapoor, 2015; Paterson and Williams, 2018). We argue that this predisposition to function without
concept has had a profound effect on the discourse concerning the transferability and reform of
policing models. One simple way of challenging these assumptions is to step outside of mainstream
western discourse and to engage with different legal, social, cultural and political perspectives . To illustrate
this, we draw on the international policing literature and post-colonial perspectives as they draw insight from different development contexts
with varied social needs (for example, Cole, 1999; Kapoor, 2013; Tankebe, 2013).

Ellison and Pino (2012) argue that any policing assistance to overseas states must be set alongside, or as an enabler for economic, social,
political and cultural change and must also nurture a democratic process. Policing is thus inseparable from the context it is
embedded in. This politically utilitarian approach is reiterated by other western scholars such as Szikinger (2001) and Pino and Wiatrowski
(2006) as well as by some state development organisations (Denney and Domingo, 2017). Yet, as Tankebe (2013) and Kapoor (2013) note, in
practice there is a misalignment between the intent to build stable democratic institutions with access to justice for all and the functions of
post-colonial or post-conflict policing agencies which tend to support the established political order. Herewith, we identify fundamental
differences in the conceptualisation of policing that relate to the contemporary social order.

Many contemporary transitional states have a pluralised form of policing based on non-state actors providing a
community-centric policing function in the absence of, or as a supplement to, an established centralised policing
capability (Grabosky, 2009; Hills, 2014). This structure reflects Fukuyama’s (2012) description of pre-modern and
tribal societies. Tribal societies in pre-Roman Europe, Asia, Africa, and on the Arabian Peninsula had collective and,
often, consensual justice administered by combinations of individuals from the tribe or community and generally
agreed to by those members of the community or tribe. In transitional states this remains the extant situation as
modes of communal policing continue to exist alongside other modern modes of policing. Cole (1999) and Marenin
(2009:353), considering African states, identify and describe a vast informal social ordering system that does what
the state police are unable to do. More specifically, Schmeidel and Karokhail (2009:320) describe the arabaki as a
community based customary policing structure that focuses on the tribal issues of the Pashtun in Afghanistan. In
Benin, Bierschenk and de Sardan (2003, p158) describe the local forms of dispute resolution in the rural tribal
communities and identify the diverse forms of legitimacy that exist across communities. Similarly, Braithwate and
Gohar (2014) consider legal plurality in tribal areas of Pakistan and identify multiple policing structures with a
similar genesis and status to the developing state systems.

Ignorance of these fundamental differences is most commonplace in the evangelising of western

models of policing that takes place during policy transfer to states in transition . Despite widespread
evidence that policy implantation does not work (Evans, 2004a; 2004b; 2004c; 2004d; Ivanova, 2004; Jones and Newburn,
2007), this evangelising occurs, in part, due to introspection on the part of government and change agents
but also assumptions that effective policing is the replication of extant practice in the donor country . This
assumption continues to exist regardless of evidence that highlights an absence of sustained positive
impact in the beneficiary country (Hills, 2014) or an appreciation of the political, socio-cultural, ideological
or legal context of the beneficiary state (Williams, 2014). The consistent replication of these findings provides
a rationale for further investigation and interrogation of the concept of policing , using global and comparative
analysis, so that future policing and development reform is aligned to the specific needs of a society.

So, it is important
to recognise the assumptions that underpin the philosophical concept of policing
rather than simply providing a description of near-contemporary functions . Continued failure to do this
precipitates the observation of policing through the lens of accountability, effectiveness and policing
being 'what the police do' (Waddington and Wright, 2010). The consequence of such a position is to reinforce
Ellison and Pino’s assertions about cultural dislocation and contextual failure and to deliver non-aligned
models of policing that will be rejected outside of the specific context of the donor state (Williams 2014).
Sentencing
 Not Retroactive
Interpretation: prison reform refers to reducing time of those already incarcerated-
sentencing reform must be before someone is locked up
Serano 18 [David A Serano is a Maui defense attorney " Passing Criminal Justice Reform Will
Congress Finally Pass Criminal Justice Reform?," David Serano blog,
https://www.davidserenolaw.com/passing-criminal-justice-reform/ Sentencing reform] nw

Sentencing reform refers to fixing the “front end.” It targets reducing the amount of people sent to
prison and the amount of time people spend in prison by changing what happens before they are
locked up, meaning when offenders are arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced. Sentencing reform aims to
ensure the punishment fits the crime by reducing mandatory minimum sentences and giving judges
more discretion to give a sentence considering the offender’s history and circumstances surrounding the
case instead of handing out terms based on the charges.
Prison reform

Prison reform is improving the “back end,” which means possibly reducing prison time once people are
already incarcerated, by for example, offering credits for good behavior that may let someone get out
earlier than they were sentenced for . Prison reform also supports policies and programs that will help
offenders leaving prison to become productive members of society and reduce the chance they will
reoffend.
Policing
 Policing =/= Law Enforcement
Interpretation: policing is a subset of law enforcement-the aff is another subset of the
executive
Conser et al 11 [James Conser is Professor Emeritus at Youngstown State University,
Youngstown, Ohio. He earned an A.B. degree in Law Enforcement Administration from Youngstown
State University, an M.S. degree in Criminal Justice from Michigan State University, and a PhD in Higher
Education Administration from Kent State University, Law Enforcement in the United States, “The Field
of Law Enforcement” http://samples.jbpub.com/9780763799380/99380_ch01_pass01.pdf] nw
LAW ENFORCEMENT AND POLICING

The concept of law enforcement encompasses all levels (federal, state, and local) of the executive branch of
government. It includes agencies that enforce administrative codes and regulations (rules of agencies)
and criminal laws related to the health, safety, and welfare of the people . A broad spectrum of officials
with titles such as inspector, compliance officer, deputy, special agent, trooper, auditor, investigator,
ranger, marshal, constable, or police officer can be found in law enforcement agencies . These officials may
be employees of agencies that inspect the food supply (Department of Agriculture) and places of
employment (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), investigate the causes of fires (State Fire
Marshal), protect abused and neglected children (County Children Services), investigate airplane
accidents (Federal Aviation Administration), conduct audits of government expenditures (State Auditor's
Office), investigate criminal complaints (federal, state, and local law enforcement), and/or apprehend
offenders (any agency with arrest authority).

The term policing, on the other hand, refers to a subset of law enforcement that applies to the
process of regulating the general health, safety, welfare, and morals of society as it relates to criminal
behavior. The policing function in the United States is primarily observed through the operations of the
criminal justice system in the prevention, detection, investigation, and prosecution of crime. The
personnel affiliated with agencies who are engaged in policing functions can be referred to as law
enforcement personnel; however, in the United States, police officials are a unique group of law
enforcement officials because they are armed and are authorized to use coercive and physical force ,
under certain conditions, when carrying out their duties. They are non-military, armed, governmental personnel who
are granted the authority to prevent, detect, investigate, and prosecute criminal behavior and to
apprehend alleged offenders. Figure 1-2 illustrates the policing agencies as a subset of the law enforcement community.

The focus of this text is on the policing agencies of the law enforcement community as identified in Figure 1-2. However, it must be
understood that the entire law enforcement community is quite extensive. The term law enforcement also is used
to describe one of the many functions within policing agencies; in fact, the local policing agency personnel normally spend less than 20—30% of
their time engaged in crime-related law enforcement functions (Greene and Klockars 1991, 279). Most of their time is spent on prevention,
general public service, and order maintenance functions. This relationship is depicted in Figure 1-3. Today's professional police officials often do
not want to emphasize their law enforcement functions; they prefer to be thought of for their service, especially the public safety functions
which do not involve enforcement activities.
 Broad
Policing includes all social practices intended to create and sustain social order
Bradford et al 16 (Ben Bradford, University of Oxford, Beatrice Jauregui, University of Toronto,
Canada, Ian Loader, University of Oxford, Jonny Steinberg, University of Oxford, The Sage Handbook of
Global Policing, pg. 156-157, July 2016, JRB)

Policing At least four levels of the term policing can be distinguished (Garland 1990, see also Jacobs, this volume). At
the most general level policing can be understood to include all social practices intended to create and
sustain social order. At this level, the term policing coincides with that of social control . It prompts
thereby a fundamental question of sociology, namely of the conditions making social order possible . This
very general understand of the term policing provides the background for the more concrete designations which will be addressed in this text.
At a second, historically more concrete level, policing
can be understood in terms of particular geographical-
temporal understands of phallic order and political subjectivity. It is tempting to designate this as
relating to particular (global, national, local) ‘police cultures’, bound by time and space. However, the
term ‘police culture’ is ambiguous, as it can also be understood as a specific configuration of the rules,
practices, and common discourses of a specific police organization . In this sense, the term police culture is used by
authors like Waddington (1999a) and Monjardet (1994), even though they may disagree how police culture comes about, e.g. through shared
practices or shared discourses (see footnote 6). In view of this ambiguity, in this present context I prefer the term ‘police idea’, in the sense of
shared ideas about the right form of policing which are held in a specific historical setting by actors inside and outside the police (Klockars
1985). In the context of this contribution, I am interested above all in the national ‘police idea’, as a set of ideas on policing circulating in a
nation-state (see also Williams, this volume). This raises
the question as to the actors of policing , so that, on a third, still very
general level, we can designate as police those individuals or organizations that are authorized by a
collectivity to regulate the internal social relations and to enforce compliance with norms, if necessary
by use of physical force (Bayley 1975: 328). Only on a fourth, more intuitively accessible level does the term policing refer to
concrete, extend police organizations, i.e. those organizations and players, who in a specific content are
authorized to use force to preserve the public social order. Since the 17th century, with the rise of
nation-states that claimed a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of force in their territories and over
their populations, an entire array of pre-existing policing institutions were incorporated into national
institutions, and subjected to the state-bureaucratic control and judicial review. Police thereby became a
tool of the administrative engineering of the modern nation-state; increasingly, its function was (at least
normatively) reduced to the surveillance of adherence to the law, e.g. law enforcement. It is in this sense that
police, as state-controlled bureaucratically organizations claimed the monopoly on the use of force, are generally envisaged. However, the ideal
goal of concentrating every type of police work in state police and their work of enforcing the law as been achieved nowhere, so that police and
law are to be seen as to different modalities of domination in modern nation-states. The integration of police and law remains one of the
dilemmas of modern governance. In fact, the tension between a legal system and actual police practices cannot be resolve but only managed
(see Bradford and Loader, this volume). Good police work is demonstrated by the good management of this tension. In some ways, this
conceptual typology corresponds to a long-term history during which the scope of meaning of the term policing has
increasingly narrowed (Knemeyer 1978). In German, wherein the term has been used since about 1500, policey initially carried a
double meaning. It designated both the good order of the community, as well as legal principles and
authoritative regulations by which this state of good order was to be produced . Therefore, the correspond policey
laws related to the diverse fields of state action: not only the combating of dangers and the production
of security, but also the fostering of welfare. Thus, policey designated both the purpose of the state as an orderly coexistence,
and the sate activities that would serve the purpose, as well as the means by which state power, which was considered a basic requirement of
an orderly coexistence, was to be extended. In other words, in the European Early Modern period, the concept of policey was synonymous
with state administration.
 Includes Military
Policing includes the military
Dubber 5 (Markus Dick Dubber, professor of Criminal Law at the University of Toronto, B.A. Harvard,
J.D. Stanford, “The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government”, Columbia
University Press, 2005, pg 238 (notes to pg 71-74), JRB)
[Begin Footnote 47]

Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality 87, 95 (Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller
eds. 1991) The ahuman nature of the objects of police can also be seen in a peculiar American usage of the term that appeared in
the nineteenth century and continues today. In the American military, to police means “to make or keep clean or
orderly.” “Police,” v., Oxford English Dictionary, at 1070, 1070, col. I (definition 2.b.). The result of this policing is the police of
the camp. And the soldiers assigned to perform the police task are called, police . “Police,” n., The American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition (2000) (definitions 3.a. and b.) The task of the military police thus, all
in all, is to “preserve civil order and attend to sanitary arrangements .” “Police,” n., Webster’s Revised Unabridged
Dictionary (1913) (definition 4.) Thanks to Robert Steinfeld for bringing this usage to my attention.

[End Footnote 47]

 Private Policing
We Meet--Private Police are in the area of policing
Scott and McPherson 71 (Thomas M. Scott and Marlys McPherson, November 1971, “The
Development of the Private Sector of the Criminal Justice System,” Law and Society Review,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052856?seq=1)//MR

If one takes a standard definition of police functions, e.g., O. W. Wilson (1963: 22-27), crime prevention,
crime repression, criminal apprehension, and the regulation of non-criminal behavior and social welfare
functions (including traffic control, intervention in domestic squabbles, handling of drunks, etc.), it is
clear that the private police have been heavily involved in the performance of these functions since, at
least, the establishment of the Pinkerton Agency in the 1850s. Certainly private police are involved in
significant ways in the performance of these functions today. We do not really know how many of the
reported crimes listed as solved by police departments may in fact have been solved by private police
who have turned evidence and in some cases the suspect over to the public police.
 Excludes Private Prisons
legal authority given to private individuals and agencies is defined by state law
Scott and McPherson 71 (Thomas M. Scott and Marlys McPherson, November 1971, “The
Development of the Private Sector of the Criminal Justice System,” Law and Society Review,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052856?seq=1)//MR

Sincethere is no federal legislation dealing directly with private police , the legal authority granted to such
individuals and agencies is defined by state law, varies from state to state, and may vary within states
from one local jurisdiction to another. John Peel in his book Fundamentals of Training for Security Officers summarizes the
prevailing grants of authority to private police: Watchmen, guards, security officers, special police officers appointed for the purpose of
patrolling, policing, watching and guarding the persons, premises, and property of an area shall have the same powers and authority upon the
assigned property or premises which they are appointed to protect and in the period of their duty, as the regular police officers but not otherwise
(Peel, 1970: 65). Peel also indicates that in
some localities in the absence of statutory limitation, private police
forces have authority virtually equivalent to public law enforcement officers (Peel, 1970: 65).
 Private Prisons - ground
The PIC accounts for 1/3 of the total money expended in the criminal justice system
Scott and McPherson 71 (Thomas M. Scott and Marlys McPherson, November 1971, “The
Development of the Private Sector of the Criminal Justice System,” Law and Society Review,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3052856?seq=1)//MR

Nevertheless, it seems clear that the private investigation and private protection industry as a whole has
experienced considerable growth in recent years. Forbes magazine (1970: 22) quotes a member of the
security industry as estimating that “two out of every three law enforcement officers in the nation are
actually on private payrolls.” Pinkerton’s alone has over 23,000 employees. It has been estimated that
approximately $1.6 billion was spent for services performed by the private protection firms last year,
with an addition $400 million spent for protective fire and criminal alarms (Forbes, 1970: 22). The
President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice reported that public
expenditures in 1965 at the federal, state, and local levels on police, criminal courts, and counsel totaled
$3.2 billion. This estimate means that approximately one-third of the total amount of money expended
in the criminal justice system is spent in the private police and protection sector of the system.
Certainly, then, no examination of the role of the police in the criminal justice system can be complete
without considering the role of the private police. This is especially true when there is evidence that the
private police part of the system is rapidly expanding and when there are many questions concerning
accountability, rights of the accused, and law and order.

Private Prisons account for 8.2% of total prison population

The Sentencing Project 19 (24 October 2019, “Private Prisons in the United States”,
The Sentencing Project, https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-
prisons-united-states/)

Private prisons in the United States incarcerated 121,718 people in 2017 , representing 8.2% of the total state
and federal prison population. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 39%.
However, the private prison population reached its peak in 2012 with 137,220 people. Declines in private prisons’ use make these latest overall population numbers the lowest since 2006 when

the population was 113,791. States show significant variation in their use of private correctional facilities . Indeed, the New
Mexico Department of Corrections reports that 53% of its prison population is housed in private facilities , while 22 states do not
employ any for-profit prisons. Data compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and interviews with corrections officials find that in 2017, 28 states and the federal

government incarcerated people in private facilities run by corporations including GEO Group, Core Civic (formerly Corrections Corporation of
America), and Management and Training Corporation. Eighteen states with private prison contracts incarcerate more than 500 people in for-profit prisons. Texas, the first state to adopt private
prisons in 1985, incarcerated the largest number of people under state jurisdiction, 12,728. Since 2000, the number of people in private prisons has increased 39.3%, compared to an overall rise in
the prison population of 7.8%. In six states the private prison population has more than doubled during this time period: Arizona (479%), Indiana (310%), Ohio (277%), Florida (199%),
Tennessee (117%), and Georgia (110%). The Federal Bureau of Prisons maintains the nation’s highest number of people managed by private prison contractors. Since 2000, its use increased
77%, and the number of people in private federal custody — which includes prisons, half-way houses and home confinement — totaled 27,569 in 2017. While a significant historical increase, the
population declined 15% since 2016, likely reflecting the continuing decline of the overall federal prison population. Among the immigrant detention population, 26,249 people – 73% of the
detained population – were confined in privately run facilities in 2017. The privately detained immigrant population grew 442% since 2002. Political influences have been instrumental in
determining the growth of for-profit private prisons and continue today. However, if overall prison populations continue the current trend of modest declines, the privatization debate will likely
intensify as opportunities for the prison industry dry up and corrections companies seek profit in other areas of criminal justice services and immigration detention.
Impact
 Limits - general
Deepening education increases long term student success and it doesn’t become stale
because students naturally align with their preferences
Daniel Kreisman & Kevin Stange. 2019. Daniel Kreisman is in the Department of Economics at the
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Kevin Stange is in the Ford School of Public Policy at the
University of Michigan 12/29/2019. “Vocational and Career Tech Education in American High Schools:
The Value of Depth Over Breadth.” Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press One Rogers Street,
Cambridge, MA 02142-1209 USA journals-info@mit.edu. One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209
USA journals-info@mit.edu, www.mitpressjournals.org, doi:10.1162/edfp_a_00266 )//don

To further demonstrate that those students

taking a large number of low-level , or introductory, vocational courses are indeed
experiencing breadth as opposed to racking up multiple low-level credits in a single field, we plot in figure 8 the
relationship between the number of low-level vocational courses taken and the number of different vocational fields in which students took vocational coursework.
Were the majority of students simply accruing multiple low-level courses in a single field (a different measure of depth) we would expect a flat relationship between
credits and the number of fields experienced. We find this is not the case. For example, students who take three Carnegie credits of low-level vocational coursework
experience on average nearly three different fields, suggesting that indeed our interpretation of breadth versus depth is warranted.

[Chart Omitted]

We have demonstrated that those taking more specialized vocational coursework see higher wages and lower
incidence of idleness in early careers. We attribute this to students sorting into coursework that aligns with their
talents and preferences, as self-selection models predict. Further, we have taken several steps to identify possible alternative hypotheses. Primary among
these is the negative selection story, where lessable students are pushed into vocational coursework. The persistently positive results we observe here are likely
inconsistent with this story. As an additional test, in the online Appendix we use a set of instruments that affects enrollment in vocational courses, specifically
nonvocational course requirements. Although our results are noisy as the instruments are relatively weak, in these exercises we find little positive effect of
additional vocational courses for those induced into taking them, suggesting that students who choose to enroll in vocational coursework are the ones realizing
gains, and those induced to enroll due to graduation requirements see little benefit. This is consistent with a positive sorting story, but also one where course
requirements induce students into entry level vocational classes, where gains are low. Nonetheless, we take this as further evidence, combined with results in table
4, that policies limiting (upper-level) vocational coursework for students who would have enrolled otherwise would negatively impact wages.

One might also worry that states or localities where returns to vocational training are (expected to be) higher will offer more, or have better funded, vocational
programs. Yet, we find that comparing within state-cohort, or even county-cohort, has little impact on results. Lastly, one might worry that specialization might also
include multiple introductory courses within a field. Yet, we show that alternatively defining vocational course-taking by concentrators and specialists yields even
larger results, and we also demonstrate that increasing introductory courses corresponds with an increasing number of different vocational fields. In addition, we
note that this is all true conditional on a very broad set of observable characteristics, courses taken in other fields, a measure of ability, and accounting for
postsecondary attendance and attainment. As a result, we interpret our findings as strongly suggestive evidence that those students who choose to take vocational
coursework see benefits in the labor market to specialized courses, in particular in technical fields and among those who do not earn a postsecondary degree. This
does not imply that nonvocational students would benefit from more (specialized) vocational coursework, but it does strongly suggest that were vocational
coursework removed from the curriculum, a sizable share of students, in particular those not planning to attend college, would be worse off.

There are caveats to these conclusions, in addition to those mentioned above. Foremost among these is that we only observe the early careers of NLSY respondents
—the mean age in the most recent year of the wage sample is 28.5 years. Recent work by Hanushek et al. (2016) suggests that increasingly specialized training in
high school limits workers’ ability to adapt to changing labor market conditions later in life. This is a question we and others would be wise to address in future
research with a direct focus on the U.S. context.

6. CONCLUSION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

We weigh in on a longstanding debate over labor market training in U.S. high schools. Our
analysis focuses on factors leading students
to take vocational courses and how these courses affect transitions to college and the workforce. We couch our
analysis within a sorting framework where students learn about preferences for and skill in academic or
vocationally oriented (course)work.

Using detailed course-taking and labor market information from the NLSY97, we find that each additional year of
advanced vocational coursework during high school is associated with a near 2 percent increase in wages . This
result is robust to an extensive set of individual controls for student background, ability, location, and cohort

effects, for any displacement effects on the completion of other courses and effects on postsecondary attainment. Thus we conclude that each
additional course of introductory vocational coursework has no benefit (or harm) in the labor market. We interpret this
finding as the value of depth over breadth.

Our analysis reveals several subtle yet sharp distinctions that lead to direct policy implications. First, we find that vocational
coursework may have
informational value, enabling students to make more informed choices about their likely fit with college . Because
taking more advanced vocational coursework is associated with lower fouryear-college enrollment rates but no reduction in college completion, this implies that
students induced out of four-year college by a vocational secondary curriculum may have been least likely to earn a degree. Early
exposure to
vocational curricula may thus facilitate better college enrollment decisions and fewer ex post “mistakes .”
Concerns about high student debt among college dropouts has made improving college enrollment decisions an important policy priority. Second, we demonstrate
that whereas wage gains associated with nonvocational courses (core and electives) are entirely explained by college enrollment, wage gains from upper-level
vocational courses are unaffected by controlling for college enrollment and completion, suggesting that these courses do in fact have value in the labor market.
Lastly, we demonstrate that gains accrue to those students who select into vocational coursework. Those induced into additional courses due to graduation
requirements see no benefit. These last two points speak directly to criticisms that vocational education is “preparing students for jobs that don’t exist,” or that it is
a “dumping ground” for low-ability students. The results we uncover do not support either of these conclusions.

Limits are the controlling internal link political engagement

Walter C. Parker et al. 2018. College of Education at the University of Washington. Sheila W. Valencia
is at the College of Education at the University of Washington. Jane C. Lo is at the College of Education at
the University of Washington 03/04/2018. “Teaching for Deeper Political Learning: A Design
Experiment.” Journal of Curriculum Studies, vol. 50, no. 2, Routledge, pp. 252–277.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220272.2017.1343386?
casa_token=0CIoK4GJD10AAAAA
%3ALa0ydXWC_lEReMtoJ6vP9Oiq99PYxgQuidjCw4fYJr5f3twqkRtWkmU3kDtVUYaVO_vOq2ILACTT )//do
n

We learned in this final round of a DBIR study that the

quest for deeper learning in a school subject relies on curriculum decision-
making, particularly with respect to the articulation of depth and breadth . Otherwise, instruction has no
object and rigour is theorized without reference to particular knowledge . Everything we did instructionally hinged on
content selection. In the process, we devised a depth/breadth scheme, admittedly an incipient one, that may have general applicability for identifying the core
substantive and syntactical curriculum of any course of study. The centre–periphery relationship of deep-to-broad knowledge strikes us as a generally useful course
design principle both on and off the AP platform.

This is not to say that innovative instruction is not also a nexus of concern and design activity. It is, and it was in this DBIR; hence, engagement
first,
looping, learning from text, and political simulations as the spine of the course . But the knowledge to be
developed—the subject matter—requires the spotlight in this mix for, without it, discourses of ‘deep’ and
‘rigorous’ learning are hollow. Again, this would go without saying were it not for the surprising silence of curriculum scholars on the curriculum
itself. Deng (2015) suspects that the reason for the curriculum field’s inattention to its object reflects the ‘remarkable rise of a learning discourse which has
impacted our way of thinking and talking about education—a language that construes teaching as facilitation of learning’ (p. 723). This is right, we believe, but
alongside it is the contemporary focus on the knowers themselves—students and their cultures. While
a learning discourse tends to
conflate knowledge with knowing, a learner discourse tends to conflate knowledge with knowers . Both
discourses are important, to be sure, but we never in this study were allowed to forget that there is a third leg of the
stool: knowledge itself—the curriculum that is selected for teaching and learning.

We know of no better way to identify curricular emphases than curriculum deliberation, the curriculum field’s
term for the process of deciding on the knowledge-to-be-taught (Reid, 1999). Deliberation is social; it is discussion with an eye

towards decision-making. It is a practical activity for educators who wish to talk and argue with one another about which subject matter
to choose for recursive instruction—Bransford’s challenge cycles. This is what we did across the years of this DBIR with our teacher collaborators, meeting to talk
about which ideas and skills to loop within the course and to evaluate earlier decisions (see the account in Parker & Lo, 2016). The main obstacle to doing this
routinely in schools is, of course, the difficulty of providing the social and organizational conditions needed for teachers to have regular curricular conversations.
Most schooling is simply not made for that (Westbury, 2008). Still, such
conversations are what guided instruction in this DBIR, from
the selection of roles within simulations to the selection of texts for homework reading assignments.
Prefer depth – it creates better long-term learning strategies, promotes critical
thinking, and increases student engagement
Dr Jon Vogels. 2019. the principal of the Colorado Academy Upper School. 12/18/2019. “Breadth vs.
Depth: What’s the Best Way to Learn?” Colorado Academy News. news.coloradoacademy.org,
https://news.coloradoacademy.org/breadth-vs-depth-whats-the-best-way-to-learn/.)//don

An inch deep and a mile wide? Or a mile deep and an inch wide?

One of the ongoing debates in education revolves around the question of breadth versus depth. Is it better to expose
students to many concepts (breadth) or to foster a deeper exploration into fewer topics (depth)? Not surprisingly, consensus has not been reached, but certainly
the trend in the past decade is towards deeper learning.

In recent years the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC), about which I have written in previous articles, has received widespread
attention and has helped direct conversation towards mastery-based or competency-based curriculum. This
curricular movement emphasizes depth of learning such that students reach certain competency levels as
established by their teachers. Those who espouse this model argue that students develop better long-term learning

strategies and critical thinking if they are allowed to go deeper into fewer total topics , especially when
given some freedom to pursue areas of interest and passion . When educators strive for depth over breadth, the argument
goes, they increase both student agency (the means by which students control their own learning) and engagement.

In depth learning is better – students are impacted twice as much

Rebecca P. Arrington, 2009. Assistant Director of Media Relations, Office of University
Communications, 03/04/2009. “Study Finds That Students Benefit From Depth, Rather Than Breadth, in
High School Science Courses.” UVA Today. news.virginia.edu, https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-
finds-students-benefit-depth-rather-breadth-high-school-science-courses.)//don

March 4, 2009 — A
recent study reports that high school students who study fewer science topics, but study them
in greater depth, have an advantage in college science classes over their peers who study more topics and
spend less time on each.

Robert Tai, associate

professor at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, worked with Marc
S. Schwartz of the University of Texas at Arlington and Philip M. Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to conduct the study and produce the report.
"Depth Versus Breadth: How Content Coverage in High School Courses Relates to Later Success in College Science Coursework" relates the amount of content
covered on a particular topic in high school classes with students' performance in college-level science classes. The study will appear in the July 2009 print edition of
Science Education and is currently available as an online pre-print from the journal.

"As a former high school teacher, I always worried about whether it was better to teach less in greater depth or more with no real depth. This study offers evidence
that teaching fewer topics in greater depth is a better way to prepare students for success in college science," Tai said. " These
results are based on
the performance of thousands of college science students from across the United States."

The 8,310 students in the study were enrolled in introductory biology, chemistry or physics in randomly selected four-year colleges and universities.
Those who spent one month or more studying one major topic in-depth in high school earned higher grades in

college science than their peers who studied more topics in the same period of time.

The study revealed that students

in courses that focused on mastering a particular topic were impacted twice as
much as those in courses that touched on every major topic .
The study explored differences between science disciplines, teacher decisions about classroom activities, and out-of-class projects and homework. The researchers
carefully controlled for differences in student backgrounds.
 Precision - general
Precision is prerequisite to education
Resnick 1 [Evan Resnick, Journal of International Affairs, 0022197X, Spring 2001, Vol. 54, Issue 2,
“Defining Engagement”]

In matters of national security, establishing a clear definition of terms is a precondition for effective
policymaking. Decisionmakers who invoke critical terms in an erratic, ad hoc fashion risk alienating their
constituencies. They also risk exacerbating misperceptions and hostility among those the policies target.
Scholars who commit the same error undercut their ability to conduct valuable empirical research.
Hence, if scholars and policymakers fail rigorously to define "engagement," they undermine the ability
to build an effective foreign policy.
 Ground – 2020 Education Good
Learning about the 2020 election is necessary and valuable
Wilson 20 (Reid Wilson, national correspondent for The Hill, called “The Greatest Political Mind of Our
Time” by Comedy Central, 1-26-2020, "On The Trail: Why 2020 is the most important election in our
lifetime", TheHill, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/479580-on-the-trail-why-2020-is-the-most-
important-election-in-our-lifetime, JRB)

This year’s election is the most important in our lifetime . It is a tired cliché, one parroted by presidents
and politicians every two years in hopes of driving their voters to the polls. But clichés become clichés
for a reason: They tend to be true. This year, the decisions voters make in November will reverberate
for a generation to come, through all three branches of American government and across the world.
The presidential contest alone will represent perhaps the starkest choice between two competing
visions for the nation’s future since the elections of 1860 that set the Union on course for a civil war.
President Trump has governed in his first term as a fierce culture warrior, intent on reshaping American
government and refocusing its foreign policy in an unprecedented manner. The Democratic Party is likely to
nominate the most liberal candidate ever to carry the party’s mantle; even the party’s leading moderate contenders, former Vice President Joe
Biden and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, have staked out positions to the left of former President Barack Obama
and the 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton. The president who takes the oath of office a year from now will
almost certainly have the opportunity to reshape the face of the U.S. Supreme Court. By the time he or
she is sworn in, four justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito
— will be north of 70 years old. Ginsburg and Breyer are already in their 80s. Thomas, Ginsburg and
Breyer have each served on the court for more than a quarter century, making them, respectively, the
19th, 25th and 28th-longest serving justices in American history. Voters in 34 states will elect U.S.
senators this year, members who will determine just how far the next president can go in choosing the
next justice — and the federal judges who serve on lower courts as well. Democrats, who need at least
three seats and the White House to win control of the Senate, are targeting Republican-held seats in
Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina, as well as longer shot states like Iowa, Georgia and Kansas .
Republicans have Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) in their sights, and a promising candidate running against
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) too. In an era of record-breaking fundraising and spending, this year’s battle
for the Senate could see at least half a dozen nine-figure campaigns. As many as a quarter of seats in
the House of Representatives will be contested next year in what will be the widest battlefield in at
least a decade. Democrats are defending a new majority, including 31 districts President Trump won in
2016, and they plan to target another 44 Republican-held seats, from Alaska to North Carolina and
Florida. Republicans have eyes on 55 Democratic-held seats. Raising the stakes even more, 2020 marks
a once-in-a-generation confluence of a presidential election cycle in which control of the decennial
redistricting process is also on the line. Voters in most states will elect new state legislators, who have
the power to draw legislative and congressional boundaries. Of the eleven states that will elect
governors this year, seven will have a role in the map-making process. The results of the decennial redistricting and
reapportionment process have historically shaped the makeup of both state legislatures and the U.S. House. While Democrats woke
up to what they now see as the pernicious practice of gerrymandering after the Republican sweep of
2010, which handed the GOP control of redistricting in dozens of states, Republicans had long suffered
under district lines drawn by Democratic legislators that ensured their party controlled Congress for a
40-year stretch. Today, both sides acknowledge the importance the redistricting process , so much so that they
have set up outside groups that can accept unlimited donations from future-conscious mega donors to coordinate their efforts across state
lines. Those groups, unprecedented in modern political history, will fund years of litigation — but the legislative majorities who get to draw the
maps that will inevitably wind up in court will begin with the upper hand. The
fierce urgency of the political moment has
spurred both Democrats and Republicans to invest record sums in operations designed to identify and
turn out voters who are otherwise disengaged from politics, a block-by-block battle to harvest every
possible vote. And there are increasing signs that Americans, too, feel the pressure. The media, under
more constant attack from President Trump and his Republican allies and constant scrutiny from
Democrats who believe it is not critical enough of the incumbent, has seen business boom through
higher ratings, more clicks and more subscriptions. Surveys show voters are as tuned in to the
presidential race now as they were immediately before the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, and
much more so than just prior to the 2016 race. A CNN poll released Wednesday showed 71 percent of registered
voters are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in this year’s elections; the final CNN poll
conducted before the 2016 vote showed just 46 percent were that hyped up to vote. Every election
matters, whether Americans are voting in a new president or a new school board member. But the
confluence of critical races up this year and the massive power to reshape the nation’s direction that the
winners will have makes what sounds like a throw-away line in a speech the absolute truth: This year’s
elections are, indeed, the most consequential in our lifetimes, and probably in more than a
century.
 Advocacy Skills
Narrow definitions of Criminal justice reform are key to advocacy skills
Halpin et al 19, [Senior Fellow; Co-Director, Politics and Elections "25 Years After the 1994 Crime
Bill, Voters Back Criminal Justice Reforms," Center for American Progress Action,
https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/criminal-justice/reports/2019/09/10/174927/25-years-
1994-crime-bill-voters-back-criminal-justice-reforms] nw

The confusing nature of the term “criminal justice reform” also contributes to how voters rank this issue
compared with other more commonly understood priorities . The survey asked respondents to describe in
a few words what the term itself means to them. Responses varied widely, from ideas about sentencing
reform and the drug war to more abstract discussions about justice and fairness to more counterintuitive
opinions that the term meant increasing punishment and jail time for offenders.

Given these important, more qualitative findings, supporters of criminal justice reform need to spend
additional time defining the issue overall . And perhaps more importantly, they need to sharpen their public
arguments on what the debate about “criminal justice reform” substantively represents so that voters
understand what they mean.
 Topic Education
Understanding criminal justice gives a broader perspective that makes you look for
systems-oriented solutions as opposed to quick fixes
Bailey 19 - Marc Bailey joined National University in 2016 after a 35-year career as an Emmy-winning news anchor, host,
and producer. He is also a veteran law enforcement professional, joining the San Diego Police Department in the late 1970s. He
currently volunteers as an El Cajon police reserve sergeant. Bailey earned a bachelor’s of business administration and a master’s
in organizational leadership from National University. As a professor, he has taught investigations, media and policing,
corrections, and juvenile justice, among other criminal justice courses. (Marc Bailey, 02-26-2019, "Why Is The
Criminal Justice System Important?," https://www.nu.edu/resources/ask-an-expert-why-is-criminal-
justice-important/) RK
A lot of law enforcement professionals naturally gravitate towards criminal justice , because it most directly benefits them and they can apply it in the
field immediately. And that’s what we pride ourselves on in our classes .
We want you to take what you learned in class and that
day take it out to work with you that day. But a degree in criminal justice can be useful even if you don’t
want to be a cop. Understanding the criminal justice system as the whole of all these integrated parts
gives you a broad perspective that most people don’t have. It makes you look for integrated and
systems-oriented solutions as opposed to quick fixes. That kind of systems thinking and integrated
problem-solving will serve you in any profession, anywhere in the world, in anything that you do . We
need new ways to look at problems and how to solve them. And if you decide to go into the field of
criminal justice, you’ll go in with your eyes wide open to the fact that it’s a whole lot more
complicated than people think.