Faculty in the Media

ON THE REASONS WHY PEOPLE FALSELY CONFESS

“The most prominent is simply that people are subjected to psychologically coercive, very intensive interrogation tactics. To make it stop or secure the best outcome that they possibly can, they’re led to believe that they should just confess, even though they didn’t do it.”

KEITH FINDLEY, WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO

ON REDUCING MASS INCARCERATION THROUGH COMMUNITY-BASED SOLUTIONS

“We have developed, over the past three or four decades, a very narrow sense of what it means to hold people accountable when they do something wrong, and we’ve decided largely, in the American imagination, that punishing someone for crime means locking them in a cage. But there are also lots of other ways that we can hold people accountable and punish them, and move them forward to be more productive members of our society without heavy reliance on jails and on prisons as our primary method of punishment. And when we look at more community-based solutions, we not only reduce mass incarceration, but we allow people to stay in communities where they can do things like get jobs, and continue their education in a meaningful way, and get access to community-based healthcare and take care of all the other problems, that as we know … feed what we call compounded disadvantage in the system.”

CECELIA KLINGELE, CHANNEL 27 WKOW, ABC

ON WHY THE NATION’S LEGAL SYSTEM NEEDS A FULL SUPREME COURT

“An eight-justice court that cannot reach decisions on important questions does a disservice to the legal system. One of the key benefits of having a Supreme Court, rather than simply a series of regional federal appeals courts, is the ability to provide uniformity on difficult legal questions. Without this feature, federal law may differ depending on which court you ask. That makes it hard for citizens, states, and businesses to know what the law is.”

MIRIAM SEIFTER, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL