Law school hosts discussion on U.S. incarceration, criminal justice reform William and Mary Law Review organizes two days of panelists for Spring 2023 journal issue

ABIGAIL CONNELLY AND EMMA HENRY FLAT HAT NEWS EDITORS

Friday, Feb. 24 and Saturday, Feb. 25, the College of William and Mary Law School hosted a symposium titled “Mass Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How it Can Recover.” The William and Mary Law Review, the College’s law journal, organized the panel which featured two days of discussions with various speakers.

Cabell Research professor and Mills E. Godwin, Jr., professor of Law Jeffrey Bellin’s book, “Mass Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How it Can Recover,” served as the inspiration for the symposium.

Law school Dean A. Benjamin Spencer introduced the symposium on Friday afternoon.

Bellin acknowledged that his work aims to cover multiple topics, such as both federal and local prosecution, rather than focusing completely on a singular topic. With this method, he believes that it provides effective knowledge in the potential formation of a solution to mass incarceration.

Professor of Law Margaret Hu moderated Panel One. The panel featured former Attorney General of Virginia Mark Herring, R. Hugh and Nolie Haynes professor of Law and Director of the College’s Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform Kami Chavis, Anne Shea Ransdell and William Garland “Buck” Ransdell, Jr. Distinguished professor of Law at the University of North Carolina Carissa Byrne Hessick and affiliate professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at University of South Carolina School of Law Seth Stoughton.

Herring began the conversation by addressing the interconnected systems behind mass incarceration and called for investments in poverty relief, health care, education and job training. Through these investments, Herring believes that substantial benefits and increased safety in communities can be achieved.

“We still have a lot of work to do, but we cannot let ourselves give in to cynicism,” Herring said. “Throwing up our hands and walking away is not an option. While it is a large problem and it’s going to take a lot of effort, reform can at times be transformative.”

Chavis followed by introducing the topic of the duality, or double consciousness, of Black police officers and the concept of police reform. She mentioned that systemic biases and disproportionate violence against Black communities cannot be addressed until bias within police departments is confronted.

“We really need to think about how we are going to reflect the realities of modern policing, how we are going to address the code of silence,” Chavis said. “Until we address that, we are really not going to be able to make a dent.”

Hessick continued the conversation by recognizing that through her work, she has recognized a frequency of generalizations regarding differences between local and state systems.

“When people try to generalize, to speak about crime in the criminal justice system in America, they tend to overgeneralize and they tend to say things that actually aren’t true or are only partially descriptive of what’s true,” Hessick said.

Chavis continued her speech by assessing the different types of groups invested in crime in America, specifically in reference to those who encourage frequent conviction for misdemeanor crimes and those who push for more serious policing in the country.

“Police forces will go out and engage in law enforcement, but what does that law enforcement look like?” Chavis said. “Is it solving the crimes people are really scared about, or is it sweeping people up in the streets because they’re doing something visibly that is easy for an officer to see and do something about?”

Chavis prompted the attendants to think about the number of resources put towards the legal system and to consider what would occur if these resources were instead shifted to the justice system.

Stoughton concluded the conversation by discussing the issue of oversimplification in relation to mass incarceration.

“We’re talking about complex problems that exist both within the system, that is, problems within policing or problems within the criminal justice system or criminal legal system, but we’re also talking about problems that exist outside of those systems in the society that those systems have to exist in,” Stoughton said.

As an example, Stoughton mentioned that the lack of diversity in the police force can be attributed to a lack of diversity in American society.

Stoughton also encouraged attendants to think critically when considering mass incarceration and issues in the police force.

“As we think of how to address issues within policing or within the criminal justice or criminal legal system, I want to urge you to not just think of it in terms of broad social policy,” Stoughton said. “Be involved in those conversations, but think about specific legal mechanisms. That is our special competency as lawyers.”

Hu concluded the first session by opening the floor to questions for the panelists from online participants.

On Saturday morning, Chavis moderated the second panel. Panelists included Federal Public

Defender for the Eastern District of Virginia Nia Vidal, S.D. Roberts and Sandra Moore professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law Corinna Lain, associate professor of Law at Washington and Lee University Brandon Hasbrouck J.D. and assistant professor of History at the College Brianna Nofil.

Vidal first introduced the impacts and effects of mass incarceration from her perspective as a public defender.

“Congress must recognize that imprisonment is not a means of promoting correction and rehabilitation, and that is actually in the United States Constitution,” Vidal said.

Rather than solely focusing on incarceration as a resolution tactic, Vidal noted the importance of putting things back into the community, such as healthcare resources and substance abuse treatment.

“In terms of the impact on the community and the impact on my clients, it just takes people out of the community without putting anything back into the community,” Vidal said.

Nofil continued the discussion by addressing immigration and border control in relation to mass incarceration. She noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detain an average of 54,000 migrants each day, each distinguished as administrative detainees, which has often separated them from discussions of mass incarceration.

“This distinction has all sorts of consequences for people in removal proceedings. The biggest consequence and one of the most obvious consequences is a distancing of people in removal proceedings from access to legal representation and due process rights,” Nofil said.

Nofil discussed the infrastructure of mass incarceration in relation to immigration detention sites.

“Today, when we think of an immigration detention site, you might think of a site run by the federal government and those pop up for the first time in the 1980s,” Nofil said. “Lurking beneath or behind these slightly more visible sites of detention is a network, currently, of over 600 city and county jails that maintain contracts with ICE to hold people in deportation proceedings in the local jail.”

ICE detainees imprisoned in city or county jails face issues of visibility, especially in relation to crossing custodial lines between private and public and local and federal immigration courts in the case of a singular removal proceeding.

Nofil additionally noted that governments often used migrants as a way to gain revenue from jail systems, since local jails form contracts with the Immigration Service.

In the contemporary scene, Nofil concluded by noting that the vast majority of new criminal cases filed in federal courts on a nationwide scale target people with immigration charges. Migrant incarceration isn’t just an outgrowth of criminal incarceration,” Nofil said. “Migrants share the same physical spaces of incarceration, they often endure deportation proceedings via interactions with local law enforcement and they are similarly affected by racist over policing in communities and financial incentives to keep jails full.”

Lain continued the conversation discussing the perception of “disorder” in relation to crime. Lain circled back to Stoughton’s comments on solving problems of mass incarceration in relation to problems outside the system.

“What I want to talk about is that in the 1970s and beyond — something else happened too,” Lain said. “It foisted upon the criminal justice system a vexing problem that policymakers never intended the criminal justice system to solve, and that is what to do with the severely mentally ill.”

Lain discussed the creation of psychiatric hospitals, dating back to the 1840s, when a schoolteacher, Dorothea Dix, entered a jail and witnessed the sight of a great number of mentally ill individuals suffering in jail settings. Dix pushed for those diagnosed with severe mental illnesses to be placed in psychiatric hospitals rather than prisons.

“She, with other people, succeeded, because 40 years later, in the 1880s, there were over 100 psychiatric hospitals for the severely mentally ill, and slightly less than 1% of mentally ill people actually being jailed,” Lain said.

Though psychiatric hospitals were originally intended to serve as a place for therapeutic care and refuge from subjection, they were not properly funded. Lack of resources led to the release of mentally ill individuals back into the community without proper treatment.

Lain closed her speech by proposing that the road to recovery must also address mental health.

Hasbrouck concluded the panel discussion by focusing on the conclusion of Bellin’s book. Rather than relying on prisons as a solution, Hasbrouck suggested it may be useful to instead focus on provisions of community resources.

“Abolition is also a project of construction. It’s a project of creating better schools, providing supply to housing and access to jobs. It’s a project of creating access to healthcare, including mental health care,” Hasbrouck said.

Hasbrouck noted that it is vital to address the underlying inequalities behind incarceration and pointed out that individuals in the United States have been comfortable with criminalization.

Hot Take: Pens are better than pencils

Crystal Wang

up your stationary with each letter like you would with a pencil. “But what if I mess up and need to erase something?” Just cross it out.

And what’s faster, turning your pencil to erase or just crossing out your mistakes? If you’re insistent on erasing rather than crossing out, get an erasable pen. You won’t even have to deal with the eraser shavings or faint remains of your mistakes. The only downside in terms of speed is that a pen may skip, but that’s entirely dependent on what kind of pen you get. Spend $3 on two decent pens, and you’ll be sliding through your exam.

Pens

How to solve password sharing? Not like this.

Imagine this: it’s 9 a.m, and you just walked into your class to take your midterm. The professor passes out the exam sheet, face down, in front of you. The clock ticks down, your heart slows and speeds at the same time and you flip the page. You start and, immediately, you’re on a roll. You’re in the zone, and nothing can distract you now. You’re an academic weapon. But then, you hear this grating, screeching, scratching sound next to you. Someone’s taking their exam with a pencil, and they’ve decided now is the best time to test out whether they can carve their answer into the desk through the paper.

This anecdote was based on a true story of my experience taking an exam last week. And it prompted this opinion: pens are superior to pencils when taking a written exam. Not only is it better for the test taker, but it’s also more considerate for everyone else as well.

First, pens flow better than pencils. When you’re spending hours writing furiously, you want something that will flow smoothly because it’ll allow you to write faster. You flow from one word to the next, not needing to pick

You’ll also be in less physical pain if you write with a pen because a pen uses ink. A pencil, on the other hand, is made of graphite, which always creates more friction than ink. Not only will you write faster with a pen, but it also takes less effort, and the pressure you need to push down with is lighter. Wonder why your fingers and forearms hurt after an exam? It’s because you’ve been pressing down on a thin object nonstop for the past four pages. If you were to press lighter with a pen instead, it would hurt less.

Now to get to the whole reason I wrote this article: consideration for others. A pen is quieter; because you don’t need to press down as hard, you won’t create that scratching sound that a pencil does. Even if you aren’t writing so aggressively that it sounds like you’re trying to carve into your desk, there will still be a faint scratching sound with a pencil, so a pen remains quieter.

As for those who push down hard on their pens even though they don’t need to, it’s still not as loud as a pencil because you don’t need to rub graphite off to write. As for the pen clickers, the clicking is periodical, not constant like the scratching; you can’t click your pen if you’re writing, which you’ll be doing almost constantly during an exam. Not to mention, the Venn diagram for pen clickers and pencil tappers is a circle — the people clicking their pens are the same ones fidgeting with their pencils enough to be just as noisy. A pen at its worst is just as loud as a pencil and, at its best, absolutely silent.

A pen’s ink also won’t smudge or fade over time. If any of you have written notes in pencil, you know the notes smudge when pages rub together. If you’re writing for an exam, you will be using more than one page, so by the time your professor gets to grading, the graphite would have already made a mess of your exam.

“But ink smudges all the time,” you say. No, it doesn’t — not if you get the right pen.

Pen ink comes in a variety of formulas, including ones that dry incredibly quickly. Once again, spend a few dollars on a pen designed for the way you write (note that pens also have so many more options than pencils) and write without the smudging.

Do yourself and everyone else a favor:

Fuzzy 33: The Fuzzy Revolution of 1789

COMIC BY ARIANNA STEWART / THE FLAT HAT

What’s in a streaming service? To put it most plainly: access. My generation, or myself at the very least, likes streaming services because they provide better access to movies and TV shows that are hard to find on cable and allow you to take your viewing on the go. Streaming services like Netflix are better developed and more widespread than cable TV apps, and they are an altogether superior experience with their curated lists of endless new shows and movies to fit our taste.

However, we’ve had it too good for too long. Over a month ago, Netflix mistakenly published an announcement for United States viewers that said that they would be introducing a program to crack down on password sharing. This new method would require every person on a given Netflix account to log into Netflix from their home Wi-Fi (let’s put aside the scariness of a large for-profit company tracking your IP address for the moment) to stay a part of that account.

If users on a shared plan are found to be in different locations rather than in one household, Netflix will direct the account holders to create sub-accounts (for additional charge) to continue sharing an account with those profiles that don’t make their monthly return to home Wi-Fi. This plan has been laid out as a pilot program in several Latin American countries.

Not only has this tightening of password sharing created widespread backlash among Netflix subscribers, but I also feel like this should be of special concern to college students like those of us at the College of William and Mary. While most of us are in-state students, we still can’t go home every month to make sure we don’t get kicked out of our Netflix accounts.

As college students, we don’t always have the most to look forward to, but it was always nice to be able to fall back into bed and turn on my comfort episode of the “Great British Baking Show.” However, the simple fact of the matter is that this may no longer be feasible. I do not know whether or not Netflix has considered the strange purgatorial existence that is not really living in any one place that is part of attending any college, but if it has, it hasn’t done it well, and if they haven’t, they should.

Netflix doesn’t even offer a student discount right now, so us college students must either wait for one of our creature comforts to be taken away, open our non-existent pockets to pay for an additional Netflix account or hope our parents will be willing to pay extra for us — in addition to the $30,000 or so they already spend on us every year. The third option may, of course, be the most likely, but it seems unfair that this rule will affect students who are away from their hometowns for their education but not so disconnected from home life that they could or should be forced to create their own account.

From a profit perspective, one could understand why Netflix is considering implementing this new rule. After all, while Netflix used to dominate the streaming industry, it is now only one in a huge deck of different options, and one could make the case that they aren’t even the best option anymore. However, this policy change comes at the cost of alienating an entire subset of their subscribers who probably use their service more than the parents whose names are on the account. Unless Netflix creates some sort of exception for college students, the policy it plans to institute will be unfair, either creating a punishment for students merely attending a college away from their native zip code or forcing parents to pay more for people who are (for all intents and purposes) still their dependents and housemates despite temporarily being miles away.

Mollie Shiflett ’26 is an undecided major who will probably end up majoring in History. She plays on the Gold Women’s Club Soccer team for the College of William and Mary and is an avid fan of most sports, except golf.