Criminal Law

“Kaur’s case should enrage us all. We are not doing nearly enough to identify and support every high-risk domestic violence survivor and victim facing interlocking vulnerabilities,” writes Mallika Kaur author, lawyer and organizer who focuses on gender and minority issues in the U.S. and South Asia. She teaches at UC Berkeley School of Law, including on domestic violence law. She is the co-founder and executive director of the Sikh Family Center.

A commentary about a criminal-justice conference at the University of California, Berkeley organized by Professor John Yoo and Chesa Boudin. 

Andrea Roth, Berkeley Law professor of criminal justice, thinks the current decision to send prosecutors to Alameda County is likely not due to any shortage of prosecutors. Instead, she sees the action as state-oriented. “An alternative possibility is that state officials are understandably concerned about reported crime rates in Oakland for a variety of reasons and have decided to intervene, but don’t want to be seen as overreaching,” said Roth. 

“I’m committed to a life of public service,” said Chesa Boudin, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center. “It’s not an accident that I am working at a public university, but I have no plans to run for office. I’m laser focused on building and growing our center to make sure that it is successful.”

“We didn’t have these professional police forces at the time the Constitution was written, so we did really rely a lot more on citizens for certain types of law enforcement,” said Professor Andrea Roth.

Chesa Boudin, founding executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center discusses his familial experience with incarceration, the backlash he received while in office, building out alternative infrastructures, and rethinking decarceration.

“One of the ironies of the call to a more ‘law and order’ approach is that people often associate it with being more effective at trying to reduce crime,” Jonathan Simon said. “I think we have to live with the fact that the actual effects on crime are going to be marginal.”

The social media claim is “blatantly false,” said Chesa Boudin executive director of the Criminal Law and Justice Center at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

“We have seen climate-related, and certainly fire-related, impacts on jails and prisons across the globe with an increasing level and severity as climate change has picked up pace,” said Chesa Boudin, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center.

Jonathan Simon, a criminal justice professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, said businesses probably do have relatively accurate estimates of how much their inventory is shrinking due to theft. And that it’s possible retail theft has increased partially because of online resale platforms, which serve as a conduit for organized theft for profit.