The Stanford Criminal Justice Center: Throwing Its Hat Into the Policy Ring

The Stanford Criminal Justice Center: Throwing Its Hat Into the Policy Ring

What do sentencing reform, white-collar crime, and the current racial imbalance in prisons have in common? They have all been identified as requiring urgent attention by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center (SCJC). And not just academic attention. Although certainly at the forefront of scholarly work on these and other criminal justice topics, the center is also dedicated to helping forge public policy that actually makes a difference at the local, state, and national levels. • “Our program was founded to bridge the gap—real or perceived—between the academy and the criminal justice system,” says Kara Dansky, executive director of the center. • Take sentencing reform— one of the center’s banner issues. Since its founding in 2004, the SCJC has organized conferences and published scholarly papers on the legal, political, and ethical issues surrounding current sentencing laws. Among other things, the center has pushed for the formation of a state sentencing commission that would collect and analyze sentencing data and restructure the state’s sentencing system. “One goal from the start of the center has been to try to help policymakers reform California’s overly complicated sentencing structure at a time when California’s prisons are notoriously and unconstitutionally overcrowded,” says Dansky.

“It’s clear that both academically and politically, the most important front in criminal justice today is sentencing,” agrees Robert Weisberg ’79, Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law and faculty director of the center. “It’s the crisis point in American criminal justice, and it’s where we’ve always thought we could make a real contribution,” he says.

Indeed, in January 2007, the Supreme Court’s decision in Cunningham v. California held California sentencing laws unconstitutional because they violated defendants’ rights to a jury trial. This overturning of more than 30 years of sentencing practices threw the California criminal justice system into an uproar. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as state legislators, proclaimed the need for an independent, non-partisan body that could examine the complex sentencing issues facing the state as a result of the ruling. Because of its extensive work in this area, policymakers turned to the SCJC for help.

Specifically, the SCJC has been asked by California state legislators for guidance on designing and establishing the mandate of the commission.

“We still don’t know how the Supreme Court decision will affect the California criminal justice system in practical terms, but we hope to play an important role,” says Dansky. Already, Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed creating a sentencing commission in bills that are currently making their way through the state Senate and Assembly. “Experts are optimistic that a sentencing commission will be created this session,” says Dansky.

Part of the movement to create a California sentencing commission includes the recent launch of the Stanford Executive Sessions on Sentencing and Corrections, which will be attended on an invitation-only basis by sentencing experts in the public and private as well as academic realms. By doing this, Dansky and Weisberg hope to spark a debate on sentencing reform that will lead to a transformation of the existing policy and practice of sentencing and corrections in California. The first executive session, held on March 9, laid the groundwork for this body of state and national experts to set out a schedule for the talks.

“Having these discussions in a neutral and private forum, like a university, allows us to move the debate forward in a way that isn’t possible in the messy world of partisan politics,” says Dansky.

The SCJC is focused on issues besides sentencing. Other areas of concern: white-collar crime, prison overcrowding, and racial inequality in incarceration. “I’ve long been concerned that Stanford as a university hasn’t contributed as much as it could toward criminal justice research and policy,” says Weisberg. Indeed, one of his goals for the center is to leverage the law school curriculum to spread the study of criminal law more broadly throughout the university. Already, the center has forged partnerships with other program groups, including the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), and the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS).

Dansky and Weisberg are particularly excited about an upcoming conference to be held in April in conjunction with the CCSRE and IRiSS. The conference will focus on race, inequality, and incarceration within the context of the extreme state of racial imbalance in today’s prison system. Says Weisberg: “It’s the most bizarre anomaly you can imagine about the United States—that we have two million people behind bars, a vastly disproportionate number of them young African-American men. We are just off the charts compared with other developed countries.”

The center has also gotten involved in examining scholarly and policy issues surrounding white-collar crime. In November 2006, the SCJC co-hosted a conference on that subject with the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance. Much of the discussion revolved around the aggressive prosecution techniques the federal government was then using to go after alleged corporate criminals, particularly the Thompson Memorandum—named after its author, Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, which provided guidelines for U.S. attorneys who were seeking indictments against corporations for fraud or other financial “wrongdoing.” With the memorandum’s support, government prosecutors were attempting to compel executives to testify against their companies by threatening them with personal indictments if they refused to cooperate. “There are surprisingly few constraints on the powers of prosecutors in the United States, but the wrong approach is to bring constitutional litigation against the government—that doesn’t work,” says Weisberg, who adds that the SCJC hopes to get a paper published that will capture the current policy choices. In the end, the government reviewed the wisdom of the tactics advocated in the Thompson Memorandum.

“What everyone realized was that if the government wants to be efficacious in stopping corporate crime, it needs to move from a blunderbuss approach to something much more in the negotiating mode,” says Weisberg. “We concluded that the government needs to think more sensibly about its real goals in pursing both individuals and corporations in criminal prosecutions than it is currently doing.”

In addition to research and policy, there is a third aspect to center activities: mentoring students interested in careers in criminal law. A case in point is the way the center works with the student-run Criminal Law Society (CLS). “We got a lot of support from Professor Weisberg when we started the society,” says Tara Heumann, a third-year law student and co-founder of the CLS. “And the center helps us enormously when we’re planning a student event by contacting speakers for us and giving us funding.” Heumann, who became interested in criminal law in her first year of law school after taking a class from Weisberg, has been offered a three-month temporary post-bar clerkship at the San Mateo District Attorney’s office. Her work with the CLS and with the SCJC helped her get that position. “The SCJC is a wonderful resource for the law school,” she says.