Loyola Hosts the Southern California Criminal Justice Roundtable

On July 29, Loyola hosted the inaugural SoCal Criminal Justice Roundtable, an intensive day-long paper workshop for criminal justice scholars from UCLA, USC, UC Irvine and Loyola. The next Roundtable will be hosted by UCLA. The drafts were fascinating: everyone agreed that the workshop was extremely engaging and helpful, and is looking forward to the next one.

The group discussed five works-in-progress:

Jennifer Chacon is writing about the intersection of immigration and the school-to-prison pipeline, delving into the little-understood impact of school discipline and criminalization on the protective legacy of Plyler v. Doe.

Sharon Dolovich’s draft analyses the doctrinal mechanisms that generate the descriptive and analytic gap between fundamental constitutional norms and the functional reality of the criminal system on the ground.

Ingrid Eagly is writing about the surge in video-conferenced immigration hearings for detainees and their impact on litigants, outcomes, and the entire immigration adjudication apparatus.

Sasha Natapoff is writing about the decriminalization of misdemeanors and how decriminalization policies can quietly exacerbate inegalitarian and punitive aspects of the criminal process.

Dan Simon’s draft addresses how law enforcement actors and practices influence and generate witness testimony in ways that fundamentally undermine the integrity of the evidentiary process.