Publication Date
8-2017
Abstract
The criminal justice system currently functions to exclude black people from full political participation. Myriad institutions, laws, and definitions within the criminal justice system subordinate and criminalize black people, thereby excluding them from electoral politics, and depriving them of material resources, social networks, family relationships, and legitimacy necessary for full political citizenship. Making criminal law democratic requires more than reform efforts to improve currently existing procedures and systems. Rather, it requires an abolitionist approach that will dismantle the criminal law’s anti-democratic aspects entirely and reconstitute the criminal justice system without them.
Recommended Citation
Dorothy E. Roberts,
Democratizing Criminal Law as an Abolitionist Project,
111
Nw. U. L. Rev.
1597
(2017).
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/nulr/vol111/iss6/11
Included in
Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons