Individual Debate Assignment Topic and Sources

Topic:

The criminal justice system in the United States should implement one of the following: community
oriented policing; restrictions on plea bargaining; or the elimination of private prisons.

Sources:
Community Oriented Policing

Affirmative:

Braga, A. A., Brunson, R. K., & Drakulich, K. M. (2019). Race, place, and effective policing.
Annual review of sociology, 45(1), 535-555.

Skogun W. (2022). Prospects for Reform? The Collapse of Community Policing in

Chicago. University of Chicago Law Review, 89 (2).

Negative:

Dias, R. A. (2015). Racism Creates Barriers to Effective Community Policing. S. Ill. ULJ, 40,
501.

Luis Daniel Gascon, Aaron Rousell, "The limits of community policing," Chapter 6, 2019,
New York University, Link to PDF.

Plea Bargaining

Affirmative:

Findley, K. A., Amaya, M. C. A., Hatch, G., & Smith, J. P. (2022). Plea Bargaining in the
Shadow of a Retrial: Bargaining Away Innocence. Wis. L. Rev., 533.

Lucian E. Dervan and Vanessa A. Edkins., The Innocent Defendant's Dilemma: An

Innovative Empirical Study of Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem, 103 J. Crim. L. &
Criminology 1 (2013).

Reilly, B. (2012). Just who should be “crashing the system”? Unprison. Retrieved from:
https://unprison.com/2012/03/13/just-who-should-be-crashing-the-system/

Negative:

Conklin, M. (2020). In Defense of Plea Bargaining: Answering Critics' Objections. W. St.

UL Rev., 47, 1.

Heiner, B. (2016). The procedural entrapment of mass incarceration: Prosecution, race,

and the unfinished project of American abolition. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 42(6),
594-631.
Private Prisons

Affirmative:

Craig, R., & Pond Cummings, A. D. (2019). Abolishing private prisons: A constitutional
and moral imperative. U. Balt. L. Rev., 49, 261.

Jay. (2019). From Mass Incarceration to Mass Coercion. Monthly Review (New York.
1949), 71(7), 24–36. https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-071-07-2019-11_2

Negative:

Pfaff, J.F. (2020) The Incentives of Private Prisons, Arizona State Law Journal, 52, 991.

Davis, A. Y., & Shaylor, C. (2020). Race, Gender, and the Prison Industrial Complex:
California and Beyond. Meridians, 19(S1), 87-111.

Abolition Alternative

Negative:

McDowell, M. G., & Fernandez, L. A. (2018). ‘Disband, disempower, and disarm’:

Amplifying the theory and practice of police abolition. Critical Criminology, 26(3), 373-391.

Affirmative:

Barkow, R.E. (2022) Promise or Peril?: The Political Path of Prison Abolition in America.
Wake Forest Law Review, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=4232267 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4232267