Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
Abstract
The criminal justice system currently functions to exclude black people from full political participation. Myriad institutions, laws, and definitions within the criminal justice system subordinate and criminalize black people, thereby excluding them from electoral politics, and depriving them of material resources, social networks, family relationships, and legitimacy necessary for full political citizenship. Making criminal law democratic requires more than reform efforts to improve currently existing procedures and systems. Rather, it requires an abolitionist approach that will dismantle the criminal law’s anti-democratic aspects entirely and reconstitute the criminal justice system without them.
Keywords
Criminal justice policy, racial discrimination, abolitionism, democracy, social justice, political subordination, disenfrachisement
Publication Title
Northwestern Law Review
Repository Citation
Roberts, Dorothy E., "Democratizing Criminal Law as an Abolitionist Project" (2017). All Faculty Scholarship. 2492.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2492
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Law and Race Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons
Publication Citation
111 Nw. L. Rev. 1597 (2017)