Criminal Law, Cases and Materials

Cynthia Lee, George Washington University Law School

Angela P. Harris, University of CA-Davis School of Law

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Changes to Chapter 1 (Basic Principles) – We replaced the phrase “criminal justice system” with “criminal legal system” wherever it appeared in author text or notes (but left the phrase if it was in the original text of a case or law review article excerpted in the chapter).

In footnote a in the section on Sources of Criminal Law, we added the following note on criminal jurisdiction in Indian country, to acknowledge the third major sovereign in the territory of the United States, Indian tribes:

American Indian and Alaska Native tribes have the inherent authority as sovereigns to write and enforce their own penal codes against tribal members. However, Congress has long reserved jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit certain felonies in “Indian country.” See Major Crimes Act, codified as 18 U.S.C. § 1153. For years, the Supreme Court held that in the absence of congressional action, states could not pass laws that “infringed on the right of reservation Indians to make their own laws and be ruled by them.” Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217, 220 (1959). However, in 2022, the Supreme Court held in a controversial decision that the federal government and states have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country. Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, 597 U.S. 629 (2022). See generally John P. LaVelle, Surviving Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta: The Historical Perseverance of the Basic Policy of Worcester v. Georgia Protecting Tribal Autonomy, Notwithstanding One Supreme Court Opinion’s Errant Narrative to the Contrary, 74 MERCER L. REV. 845 (2023).

We deleted People v. Suitte and replaced it with People v. Greene, a case suggested by one of our adopters that similarly raises questions about sentencing discretion and justifications for punishment, but in addition notes the existence of alternatives to the criminal legal system in the form of restorative justice. Chapter 14 contains material from the secondary literature on restorative justice for interested students and teachers.

Further edited down the William DeFord article on expressive punishments and rewrote the Note following the article. Instead of discussing Dan Kahan’s idea of promoting shaming sanctions (which he recanted twenty years ago), the new Note acknowledges the role of social media in mediating public debates about crime, punishment, and responsibility.

Added introductory text before the ABA Ethical Standards for the Defense (and Prosecution) Function as helpful road mapping for the students.

We corrected text in footnote a in the Note on “The Role of the Jury” since it reflected the pre-2020 law on unanimity and jury verdicts and added a cite to the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision, Ramos v. Louisiana.

Checked to make sure the New Hampshire law (allowing defense attorneys to inform jurors of their power to nullify) cited in the Note following Paul Butler’s article on racial jury nullification is still good law. It is still good law. We updated the year in the date parenthetical to 2025.

Changes to Chapter 2 (Constitutional Limitations) – In Kolender v. Lawson, we reinserted language that had been in the third edition that we had removed from the fourth edition to try to streamline the case. Two of our adopters (thanks to Chinelo Dike-Minor and Jenny Roberts) reached out to say that they thought this language was important and should be included in the excerpt of the case, so we listened and reinserted this language.

The language that we reinserted is the following text that now appears right before “Our Constitution is designed to maximize individual freedoms within a framework of ordered liberty.”:

In the courts below, Lawson mounted an attack on the facial validity of § 647(e). “In evaluating a facial challenge to a state law, a federal court must, of course, consider any limiting construction that a state court or enforcement agency has proffered.” As construed by the California Court of Appeal, § 647(e) requires that an individual provide “credible and reliable” identification when requested by a police officer who has reasonable suspicion of criminal activity sufficient to justify a Terry detention. “Credible and reliable’’ identification is defined by the State Court of Appeal as identification “carrying reasonable assurance that the identification is authentic and providing means for later getting in touch with the person who has identified himself.” In addition, a suspect may be required to “account for his presence . . . to the extent that it assists in producing credible and reliable identification. . . . ” Under the terms of the statute, failure of the individual to provide “credible and reliable” identification permits the arrest.

We also deleted Sessions v. Dimaya, which is in the section on Void for Vagueness, and replaced it with City of Chicago v. Morales, which was in the third edition because some of our adopters liked teaching Morales and we felt Morales is a more significant case than Dimaya, especially in light of efforts by municipalities to deal with recent spikes in violent crime. For example, in Washington, DC, the DC Council passed legislation in 2024 to deal with a spike in carjackings and other crime, including reviving 1990s era anti-loitering provisions that had been repealed in 2014 amidst constitutional concerns.

We decided not to include an excerpt from City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson in this chapter’s section on Cruel and Unusual Punishment because this section is already extremely long with the three important cases that we already have on the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause and we would have to delete one of those cases to make room for a new case.

Since City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson does not break new ground in terms of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause but simply declines to extend the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to the Oregon ordinance that was challenged, it would not make sense to replace one of the existing cases with this case.

We plan to include an excerpt of City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson in the Actus Reus chapter after Powell v. Texas.

We replaced the phrase “criminal justice system” with “criminal legal system” in the one instance in which it appeared in author text but left the phrase if it appeared in the original of a case or excerpt.

Changes to Chapter 3 (The Actus Reus Requirement) – We added a reference to the increasing number of shootings in which the shooter wrote about their plans beforehand to the Note at the beginning of the chapter after the “Jailed on the Precipice of Crime” article on the proscription against bad thoughts to highlight the relevance of this question of whether and when the criminal law should be utilized to proscribe bad thoughts.

We added a few lines of introductory text before the sample Good Samaritan statutes.

We also checked to make sure our sample Good Samaritan statutes from Hawaii and Vermont are still good law and updated the date to reflect that as of 2025, these statutes are still in effect.

We replaced the Jones case at the end of the chapter with the 2024 Supreme Court decision in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, since Jones is no longer good law.

Changes to Chapter 4 (Mens Rea) – Added some text in the introductory text to better explain the broader meaning of mens rea as scienter.

We deleted Regina v. Cunningham and replaced it with Elonis. We moved Elonis from where it was in the Fourth Edition of the casebook (in the section on Strict Liability) up to Part A and changed the title of Part A from “The Historical Development of Mens Rea” to “The Importance of Mens Rea in the Criminal Law” for two reasons. First, Elonis is not a case involving a strict liability offense so it did not seem appropriate to include it in the Strict Liability section. Second, Elonis reflects the important principle that as a general rule, a mental state is required for criminal conviction and this seems like it should be something students learn at the beginning of their study of mens rea, rather than towards the end. We deleted Regina v. Cunningham to trim the length of this long chapter because the only thing it reflected was the fact that at common law, there was little uniformity in the definitions for the different mental states, something already stated in the introductory text and not worth spending an entire case on.

We edited Elonis by deleting the following language in the procedural history portion of the case:
At trial, Elonis testified that his posts emulated the rap lyrics of the well-known performer Eminem, some of which involve fantasies about killing his ex-wife. In Elonis’s view, he had posted “nothing . . . that hasn’t been said already.” The Government presented as witnesses Elonis’s wife and co-workers, all of whom said they felt afraid and viewed Elonis’s posts as serious threats.

We also deleted Justice Alito’s opinion in Elonis since the case was very long, even as originally edited.

We moved what used to be “Part B. Problems in Statutory Interpretation” (with Yermian and Holloway) to the end of the chapter because the chapter is quite long and it is difficult to cover everything in the chapter if one is teaching Criminal Law as a 3-course. Most professors probably want to get right to the other cases in the chapter (covering intent and shortcuts to proving intent, knowledge and wilful blindness, the transferred intent doctrine, and specific versus general intent) and this way they can do so without students wondering why they aren’t assigning a large chunk of material at the start of the chapter, but for our adopters who teach Yermian and Holloway, these cases are still in the chapter – just at the end of the chapter.

We also added a Note on the deadly weapon rule following State v. Fugate as a second example of a legal shortcut, allowing the jury to infer an intent to kill.

Changes to Chapter 5 (Mistake and Ignorance) – Minor changes to the text for clarification. Deleted U.S. v. Clegg, as the chapter is long and this case does not add a lot to the points already made in Marrero.

Changes to Chapter 6 (Causation and Concurrence) – No substantive changes to Chapter 6 but we updated the citations to the previous edition of Joshua Dressler’s Understanding Criminal Law to the most recent edition, the 9th edition, published by Carolina Academic Press in 2022, including the pincites.

Changes to Chapter 7 – In the Section of this Chapter on when life begins and ends, we edited the Note on the “born alive” rule, letting students know that People v. Keeler, which endorsed the born alive rule, was later superseded by statute. Because this Note talks about abortion in the context of when life begins, we also added reference to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs and information on the state of abortion following Dobbs.

In the Section on Categorizing Homicides, we edited the text for greater clarity. We also deleted the explanation of the deadly weapon rule in this Note because we have added a more detailed explanation of the deadly weapon rule in the Note on the natural and probable consequences doctrine following Fugate in Chapter 4.

In the Section on Degrees of Murder in the Note following Gilbert v. State (the case in which a 75-year-old man shot his wife who was suffering from osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s Disease in the back of the head and argued it was a mercy killing) where we reference the Oregon Death with Dignity statute, we updated the list of states that now follow Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. We also deleted the words “Oregon residents” from the block quote explaining the Oregon statute because in 2023, the Oregon legislature deleted the requirement that individuals with a terminal illness be residents of Oregon in order to request medication for the purpose of ending his or her life under the statute. See O.R.S. § 127.805 (Westlaw 2025). We also updated the statistics on how often the Act has been invoked following the block quote because the data provided in the last edition of the casebook was from 2016. We now provide data from 2024 on how many people requested prescriptions under the Act (4,881) and how many people died from taking such medication (3,243) between 1998 and 2024.

In the Section on the Doctrine of Provocation (Voluntary Manslaughter), in the Introductory Note to the Section on the Early Common Law’s Approach to Provocation, we made clear that the early common law’s categorical approach has largely been abandoned. In the Note following People v. Ambro discussing exceptions to the mere words rule, we added some text letting the students know that State v. Tackett, the case that recognized an exception to the mere words rule for a white man who killed a slave for stating “words of reproach,” was later overruled by the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

One of our adopters called our attention to an article by her former colleague Professor Emeritus Timothy P. O’Neill that she assigns to her students when teaching the Section on the Early Common Law’s Approach to Provocation. After reviewing that article and spending some time trying to edit it down for inclusion in the casebook, we decided to simply reference that article (rather than add that article to the already fairly long chapter) in the last author footnote in People v. Ambro. This is the newly added text in that footnote:

Illinois was one of the last states to abandon the early common law’s categorical approach to provocation. In a 1996 article, Professor Emeritus Timothy O’Neill, who taught at John Marshall School of Law (now UIC Law) in Chicago for more than 33 years, pointed out that the “mere words rule” actually appeared nowhere in Illinois’ second-degree murder statute. Timothy P. O’Neill, Murder Mystery: 2d Degree Needs 2d Look, Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (Nov. 15, 1996). He argued that the “mere words rule” along with the then common categories of legally adequate provocation came from the Committee Comments to the Criminal Code of 1961 yet Illinois courts were treating those comments as if they were part of the statute. Id. He further argued that these “neat, box-like categories — ‘mutual combat,’ ‘adultery,’ ‘no mere words’ — were merely constructs by commentators attempting to turn an open-ended subjective inquiry into an objective rule-like test.” Id. He ended his article urging criminal defense attorneys in Chicago to “attempt to stretch the concept of ‘serious provocation’ to include more than the narrow situations found in the Committee Comments” and “tell the courts that it is time to … take a hard look at the actual language of the Illinois Criminal Code.” Id.

In the Section on the Doctrine of Provocation (Voluntary Manslaughter), in the Note following the Laurie Taylor excerpt in the Section on the Modern Reasonable Person Test, we updated the statistics on gender and homicide.

In the Section on the Doctrine of Provocation (Voluntary Manslaughter), in the Note following the Joshua Dressler excerpt on gay panic and trans panic, we added a cite to Cynthia Lee, The Trans Panic Defense Revisited, 57 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1411 (2020).

In the Section on the Doctrine of Provocation (Voluntary Manslaughter), we added an author footnote at the end of the Dumlao case to let students know that Dumlao has been overruled in part. Here’s the text of the new author footnote:

As explained in State v. Adviento, 132 Haw. 123 (2014), “Dumlao was overruled in part by [State v. Seguritan, 70 Haw. 173, 766 P.2d 128 (1988)], to the extent that the discussion of EMED manslaughter suggested that the defendant is required to be exposed to an "extremely unusual and overwhelming stress." See Seguritan, 70 Haw. at 174, 766 P.2d at 128-29. The Seguritan court held that HRS § 707-702(2) focuses "on the defendant's reaction to the stress, and requires only that the defendant be under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance for which there is 'a reasonable explanation'." 70 Haw. at 174, 766 P.2d at 129.”

In the Note following Dumlao, where we talk about Maryland’s categorical ban on the use of the provocation defense in spousal adultery cases, we added the fact that Maryland also categorically bans the provocation defense when the claimed provocation stems from a belief about the victim’s race, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or disability, whether or not accurate.

In the Section on Depraved Heart Murder in this Chapter, we added some information about Marjorie Knoller being denied parole in 2023 in the Note following People v. Knoller, the dog mauling case, and added footnotes with citations to sources supporting the propositions in the text of the Note following the Knoller case.

In the Section on Involuntary Manslaughter, we updated the information in the Note following State v. Williams on the Indian Child Welfare Act on the percentage of Native American children in the state of South Dakota and how they represent a disproportionate number of the children removed to foster care and we added a parenthetical following the NPR citation.

See Laura Sullivan & Amy Walters, Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families, National Public Radio, Oct. 25, 2011, available at http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-lost-children-shattered-families (https://perma.cc/9J5Q-3LPV) (last visited September 30, 2024) (reporting that in South Dakota, nearly 700 Native American children continue to be removed from their Native American parents each year).

In 2022, Native American children made up less than 12 percent of the state’s child population, but represented 57.5 percent of the South Dakota children in foster care. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Res., Administration for Children and Families Child Welfare Outcomes: South Dakota (2022), https://cwoutcomes.acf.hhs.gov/cwodatasite/pdf/south%20dakota.html. Today, over 70 percent of all Native children in South Dakota are still being removed into non-Native foster homes or group care. Sioux Falls Argus Leader, The Lost Children: An Argus Leader/South Dakota Searchlight investigation into ICWA in SD, Argus Leader (Nov. 17, 2023, 1:16 PM), https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2023/11/09/indian-child-welfare-act-argus-leader-south-dakota-searchlight-investigation-stories-native-american/71516934007/ (last visited Sept. 30, 2024) (reporting that “Of the 1,683 children in the foster system in 2022, Native American children account for over 70%”).

The constitutionality of the ICWA was challenged on multiple grounds in October 2017. Brackeen v. Bernhardt, 937 F.3d 406, 420 (5th Cir. 2019). In 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the ICWA. Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U.S. ___ (2023).

We are working on a class exercise that can be assigned with the Canola case when you are covering third party killings. The fact pattern is a take off on an actual event that occurred during a “No Kings” rally in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 14, 2025. As reported by the Washington Post, during this particular "No Kings" rally, a man named Arthur Folasa Ah Loo was shot and killed by an armed member of the "No Kings" protests' peacekeeping team. Loo was a bystander and not the intended target of the shooting. The article explains that two “No Kings” peacekeepers who were carrying handguns and wearing neon green vests saw a man (Arturo Gamboa) move to a secluded area and take out an AR-15 style rifle from a bag. The peacekeepers drew their weapons and ordered Gamboa to drop his weapon, but instead of dropping his rifle, he ran towards the crowd of protesters, holding his rifle in a firing position. One of the “No Kings” peacekeepers fired at Gamboa three times, striking Gamboa and Loo, who died from the gunshot wound. Police arrested Gamboa, who was dressed in all black clothing and wearing a black mask, for murder. He had a gas mask, black clothing and a backpack nearby. Daniel Wu, Police Investigate Disruptions at ‘No Kings’ Rallies; 1 Protester Killed, Washington Post (June 16, 2025), https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/06/16/no-kings-protest-shooting-salt-lake-threats/.

Under the majority rule, Gamboa could not be convicted of murder under a felony murder theory of liability because neither he nor a co-felon shot the gun that killed Ah Loo. Under the minority “proximate causation” rule, prosecutors could argue that Gamboa may be held liable because his act of going to a secluded area and pulling out an Ak-15 style rifle and not dropping it when asked to drop his weapon but instead running toward the crowd, holding his rifle in a firing position, proximately caused the peacekeepers to fire at him and it is fair and just to hold him liable for the death of the bystander. Under California’s provocative act theory of liability, prosecutors could argue that Gamboa should be liable for murder under a depraved heart theory of malice aforethought since he acted with gross recklessness and extreme indifference to human life and provoked the acts that led to the death of the bystander.

Changes to Chapter 8 (Sexual Offenses) – In the Introduction to this chapter, we updated the material we had on the Model Penal Code and referenced the American Law Institute’s relatively recent revisions to the law on sexual assault in the MPC. We have also updated the MPC provisions on sexual assault in the Appendix.

Given the length of this chapter, we deleted State v. Alston.

One of our adopters pointed out an inconsistency between what we said in the casebook and what we said in the Teachers Manual (TM) regarding In re John Z. In the TM, in the commentary on In re John Z, we say that an honest and reasonable belief in consent is a case-in-chief defense, not an affirmative defense. In the casebook, we said that an honest and reasonable mistake as to consent is an affirmative defense to rape. To correct this inconsistency, we just deleted the sentence in the casebook that called an honest and reasonable belief in consent an affirmative defense since it wasn’t necessary.

We updated some of the information in the Note preceding the Antioch College Sexual Offense Prevention Policy.

In the Section of this Chapter entitled, Beyond The Common Law Model of Forcible Rape, in the Note preceding the Scherzer case, where we reference “[s]exual intercourse with a person who is unconscious,” we added an author footnote describing the Brock Turner case.

We changed the name of the Section of this Chapter previously entitled, “Rape and Social Identity” to “Rape and Social Norms.”

We added an author footnote to the excerpt by Francine Banner where she discusses Bill Cosby, informing the reader that Cosby was convicted of sexual assault in 2018 but his criminal conviction was reversed three years later by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the ground that prosecutors violated Cosby’s rights by reneging on a promise by a previous District Attorney not to prosecute Cosby.

We edited the excerpt by Francine Banner down from approximately 8 pages to approximately 6 pages to make it easier to assign this excerpt.

We also replaced the excerpt by Donna Coker with an excerpt by Myka Held entitled, Myth Making and Spirit Breaking: How Conventional Rape Narratives Adversely Shape Judicial Language.

In the Section on Prostitution, in the introductory text, we dropped an author footnote explaining why we use the contested term “prostitute.” The text of that footnote explains:

While use of the term “prostitute” may be criticized for invoking negative connotations, alternative words like “prostituted person” or “sex worker” may also be critiqued for failing to capture the widely varied experiences and degrees of autonomy among those selling sex. See Michelle Madden Dempsey, Sex Trafficking and Criminalization: In Defense of Feminist Abolitionism, 158 Univ. Pa. L. Rev. 1729, 1730 n.3 (2010); Catharine A. MacKinnon, Trafficking, Prostitution, and Inequality, 46 Harv. C.R.-C.L. Rev. 271, 276-77 (2011) (suggesting that the sex work model fails to recognize the reality of abuse and exploitation inherent in prostitution). In the absence of consensus, this textbook will continue to use the term “prostitute.”

In this Section, we added the following two paragraphs to show that the focus on prostitutes as opposed to johns is still prevalent today and to highlight the effect on marginalized groups:

A study on commercial sexual exploitation in Pennsylvania published in 2017 found that found that 78% of those arrested were prostitutes, and only 21% were johns. Vill. Univ. Charles Widger Sch. Of L., Report on Commercial Sexual Exploitation in Pennsylvania 12 (2017). This was likely an underestimate of the true gap, because prostitutes are “routinely charged” with crimes such as disorderly conduct or obstructing the highways in lieu of prostitution. Id. at 13. Nationwide, 63% of persons arrested for prostitution-related crimes in 2019 were women and only 37% were male. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Table 42 (2019), https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table 42).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the enforcement of prostitution laws falls disproportionately upon marginalized groups. A 2011 study found that 11% of trans and nonbinary people had engaged in sex work, roughly ten times the estimated rate of cisgender women. Grant, Jaime M., Et. Al, Injustice At Every Turn A Report Of The National Transgender Discrimination Survey 22 (2011). Transgender individuals reported that they were more likely to be stopped for suspected prostitution and harassed by police than cisgender people. Juliet Dale et al., Sex Work, 25 Geo. J. of Gender and the L. 1015, 1034 (2024). Women of color appear to be disproportionately arrested and jailed for prostitution related offenses. Id. A 2014 report found that in Brooklyn, New York, Black individuals faced 69% of all prostitution-related charges and 94% of charges of loitering for the purpose of engaging in a prostitution offense. Red Umbrella Project, Criminal, Victim, or Worker? 6 (2014).

Changes to Chapter 9 (Theft Offenses) – No major changes to this chapter. We did change one word “woolen” to “wool” when referencing the “woolen industry” in Subsection f. The “Breaking Bulk” Doctrine.

Changes to Chapter 10 (Defenses) – We made a few minor wording changes to the Introduction for clarity.

We re-labeled the section headings on the no-duty-to-retreat rule, the initial aggressor rule, and expanding the scope of self-defense, changing them from numbered to lettered subsections for clarity.

We substantially updated and rewrote the Note following State v. Stewart on evidence of battering and its effects in self-defense cases, as most of the previous references in that Note were more than twenty years old.

We added a new section on “Police Claims of Self Defense” and a new note on the rights of civilians against the use or threat of excessive force, including deadly force, by law enforcement, given the Trump administration’s widespread authorization of force by law enforcement officers who are masked and/or driving unmarked vehicles.

We deleted the Hutchins case on necessity, since cannabis is now legal in most jurisdictions and the Schoon case provides a good overview of the necessity defense.

We added material in the Note following In re Eichorn on the relatively recent Grants Pass decision, excerpted in Chapter 3, since Grants Pass raises both constitutional and criminal law issues.

We updated the Note following State v. Hunter on the use of evidence on battering and its effects in duress cases.

We added a new Note following State v. Crenshaw on the Supreme Court’s Kansas v. Kahler decision on whether a state may abolish the insanity defense without violating defendants’ due process rights.

In the section on the Cultural Defense, we replaced two excerpts on the cultural defense (Leti Volp’s (Mis)Identifying Culture: Asian Women and the “Cultural Defense” and Dorianne Lambelet Coleman’s Individualizing Justice Through Multiculturalsim: The Liberals’ Dilemma) with an excerpt from Cynthia Lee’s Cultural Convergence: Interest Convergence Theory Meets The Cultural Defense.

Changes to Chapter 11 (Attempts) – No substantive changes to Chapter 11 were made. We did make some minor edits to the author notes for clarity.

Changes to Chapter 12 (Accomplice Liability (Complicity)) – No substantive changes to Chapter 12. We made some minor clarifying edits to the introductory text at the start of the chapter.

Changes to Chapter 13 (Conspiracy) – No substantive changes to this chapter. We shepardized the cases to make sure all were still good law.

We also had a Research Assistant review the U.S. Supreme Court cases on conspiracy between the last edition of the casebook and 2025, when we were preparing this edition, and he did not find any significant Supreme Court cases that changed anything we have in the chapter.

Changes to Chapter 14 (Crime and Punishment) – This chapter is substantially shorter than it was in the previous edition and has been updated to address recent public interest in topics such as fines and fees in the criminal justice system and prison abolition.

The introduction to this chapter is slightly rewritten to describe the new material.

The added footnote in the Rothman excerpt updates the citation to incarceration statistics to the year 2025 and alters slightly the Note following the excerpt.

The 2011 article by David Cole on mass incarceration today is replaced with a 2019 article by Andrew Leipold.

Following the Leipold article, a new Note is inserted explaining the term “carceral state,” which is increasingly being used by criminologists and advocates.

The article by Markus Dubber on overcriminalization has been deleted for space reasons.

The note following Natapoff is updated to reflect recent policy shifts.

The article by Pinard on collateral consequences has been deleted for space reasons.

Collateral consequences are explained in the Note following Natapoff.

The article by Jerry Kang et al. on implicit bias has been deleted for space and relevance reasons.

An article on fees and fines in the criminal justice system by Michael O’Hear has been added to reflect the recent interest in this topic by advocates, activists, and scholars.

An article entitled, Creating Crimmigation, by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández has been added to the end of Section B.

The article by Backus and Marcus on the right to counsel has been deleted for space reasons.

The Note following the Mohapatra article on drug crimes has been slightly revised to reflect more recent data and analysis.

The Boldt article on problem-solving courts has been replaced by a 2017 article by Erin Collins that reviews different types of problem-solving courts.

The Umbreit article on restorative justice has been slightly cut back for space reasons.

A new Note following the Umbreit excerpt updates the state of the law on restorative justice and explains the adjacent term “transformative justice” used by some advocates.

A new excerpt on “abolition” by Allegra McLeod explains the use of that term in the context of the criminal justice system.

A new Note following the McLeod excerpt discusses the connection between abolition advocacy efforts and the relevance of those efforts to constitutional law.

The chapter ends with a reference to Rachel Barkow’s work cautioning that calls for abolition may inadvertently result in more harm than good, especially to the incarcerated individuals who will suffer from the rejection of reforms that might improve their lived experiences.

Learn more about this series.