Group 13: Criminal Law: Issues with Police and Policing
Tyler Dougherty, University of Tennessee
This work in progress (Cop Complexes) considers the municipal bond market’s power in the carceral decision-making arena. It will consider how municipal governments use debt financing and private foundation grants to fund “public safety training complex” projects, or police training centers (https://isyourlifebetter.net/cop-cities-usa/).
Capital investment in these facilities may have profound effects on local policing and prosecutorial capacity. City and counties’ issuances of municipal debt raise pronounced issues of local government, direct democracy, and private influence. With tighter fiscal flexibility than their state counterparts, local decisions to invest in carceral facilities have even more immediate effects on communities. Police training complexes aim to improve policing capacities. Where policing budgets are increasingly political, municipal debt and private foundation grants provides a mechanism for municipalities to circumvent the typical budget process and externalize public safety debt.
The paper will: (1) describe how fundamental decisions about local policing are determined by investment in public safety complexes; (2); argue that these decisions are evading public accountability and undermining local democracy - especially in abandoned communities; (3) consider the limitations of public participation in municipal debt decision-making processes and (4) explore alternatives like “decarceral bond banks.”
Sheriffs and the Mainstreaming of Anti-Federalist Extremism
The rising political power of the “constitutional sheriffs” movement, and the office of county sheriff, is legitimizing ideologies within localized law enforcement rooted in nativism, white nationalism, and federalist extremism. Of the over 3,000 sheriffs in the United States—many of whom are located in rural and less densely populated areas—approximately 400 attest to the label of ""constitutional sheriff"" while others may follow the tenants of this movement without formal subscription. Constitutional sheriffs promote the view that, as elected officials whose powers originate from the state constitution, they are the supreme law enforcement officer in their jurisdiction. As such, constitutional sheriffs believe that they can reject compliance with local, state, or federal laws within their county if these laws violate their interpretation of the U.S Constitution. Sheriffs operate the local jails in their jurisdiction overseeing a daily jail population of more than 750,000 people. More than 10 million people are incarcerated in jails each year. The role of sheriffs in the United States has an extensive history of unchecked and outsized power at the local level. Tactics by sheriffs of violence, intimidation and abuse have long-evaded accountability.
This Article argues that confronting the rising political power of sheriffs is an imperative that requires grassroots, cross-movement building. As an elected office inoculated through its constitutional origins and federalist design, the sheriff wields powers that cannot be penetrated through traditional efforts of criminal reform. Persons most impacted by the powers of the sheriff include individuals with intellectual and developmental disability, persons with psychiatric conditions, the transgender community, and poor Black and brown women. This Article examines the power of the sheriff to erode the civil and constitutional rights of these populations with impunity. It then offers a renewed lens through which campaigns for abolition and de-carceration can confront the power of the sheriff to begin dismantling a system that maintains deeps roots in slavey and white supremacy.
Discussant: Kate Kruse, Mitchell Hamline