This article considers how judges' political and racial backgrounds intersect with offender race under the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Using variation in judges' political affiliation and race at the district level and significant changes to Guidelines enforcement, I find that...

Theft is the major component of crime rates in Mexico City and its reporting remains low and stable even when the budget assigned to federal public security reached an increase of 202.23% in 2006-2010. We develop a utility maximization model that attempts to explain the incentives that...

How does the organizational structure of law enforcement agencies affect police activity and crime? We examine the consequences of an organizational reform in Israel that transferred the responsibility for housing arrestees from the police to the prison authority. Using the staggered rollout of...

This paper deals with two aspects referring to the procedure of the preliminary chamber, which could raise questions about the right to a fair trial guaranteed by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights: is the judge of the preliminary chamber compatible to judge the case on the...

This paper analyzes trial by poison ingestion, or “sassywood,” as an institution of criminal justice in contemporary Liberia. We argue that effective criminal justice institutions must satisfy three conditions: they must be accessible to citizens, incentivize judicial administrators to...

Although several established theories of crime often suggest an association between socio-economic background and youth criminal involvement, the empirical evidence for such claims diverges considerably. The aim of this paper is to re-investigate the relationship between family income and...

When judges have discretion over fines and prison terms, sentencing exhibits a tendency" toward efficiency: fines are larger, and prison terms shorter, for offenders with greater ability to" pay. Sentencing guidelines place fairly rigid upper and lower limits on fines and prison terms" and may...

This research studies the impact of changes to federal judicial discretion on criminal sentencing outcomes. The Feeney Amendment to the 2003 PROTECT Act restricted federal judges’ ability to impose sentences outside of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and required appellate courts to review...

Indice: 1. Il mandato europeo di repressione penale del negazionismo. 2. La presenza del passato nella legislazione penale tedesca fino allo Historikerstreit. 3. L'apparente Sonderweg antinegazionista della Germania riunificata. 4. Una comparazione diacronica doverosa: il reato di Greuelhetze...