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47 Hastings L.J. 677 (1995-1996)
Unscheduled Departures: The Circumvention of Just Sentencing for Police Brutality

handle is hein.journals/hastlj47 and id is 705 raw text is: Unscheduled Departures: The
Circumvention of Just Sentencing for
Police Brutality
by
ALEXA P. FREEMAN*
Table of Contents
I. Why Police Brutality is a Problem ...................... 684
A .  D efinitions ..........................................  684
B.  Incidence  ...........................................  688
C.  Causes  ..............................................  690
(1) Police Brutality is a Societal Problem ........... 690
(2)  R acism   ..........................................  693
(3) Above the Law ................................. 698
D. The Harms of Police Brutality ...................... 701
(1) Rule of Law is Violated ........................ 701
(a) Police brutality exceeds positive law ........ 701
(b) Police brutality perverts the law ............ 702
(c) Police brutality is treated differently from
other crimes  ................................  703
(2) Police Brutality Intensifies the Racial Divide ... 705
(3)  Social Costs .....................................  707
II. Treating Police Brutality as a Crime .................... 710
A. Significance of Criminal Prosecutions ............... 712
(1) Collective Condemnation ....................... 713
(2) Sentencing Sends a Message .................... 713
B. Police Brutality is Not Treated as a Serious Crime . 717
(1)  State  Neglect  ...................................  717
(2) Inadequate Federal Response ................... 720
* J.S.D. Candidate, Yale Law School. Former staff attorney for the National Prison
Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. I wish to thank Dan Freed for his steady
guidance, Nancy Polikoff for rescuing the project, Rachel Roth and other members of my
writers' group for their help and encouragement, Fred Freeman for his expert editing, and
especially Karla Dobinski for her ongoing support, without which this Article could never
have been written.

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