The Criminal Justice Program (CJP) had an incredibly busy year as we responded to issues posed by COVID-19 in jails and prisons and advocated for decarceration amidst the renewed energy and commitment to reexamine the racial injustices perpetuated by mass incarceration. More than ever, our students were compelled to fight against these injustices and they did that in so many ways while making the transition to remote learning. Students volunteered for the UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project, started and led by Professors Sharon Dolovich and Aaron Littman. Our students helped plan two successful and engaging virtual conferences, on community safety and abolition. And students conducted research to move forward Los Angeles County’s youth diversion work, led by our Youth Justice Policy Lead, Leah Gasser-Ordaz.

Our faculty and staff also took up the mantle of justice in a plethora of ways, challenging qualified immunity, working with students on compassionate release cases, and encouraging the increased use of alternatives to incarceration in Los Angeles County. This unwavering commitment from our entire CJP community during an unprecedented year of loss and upheaval is why I am so proud of the program we have built and the impact we have on the Los Angeles community and beyond. I look forward to another year of learning, action and advocacy, and coming together to fight injustice in the criminal and juvenile legal system.

Alicia Virani

I am thrilled to be joining the Criminal Justice Program as the program’s new faculty director. As a former public defender and now professor studying criminal law topics, I look forward to this new role and to working closely with CJP’s fabulous program Director Alicia Virani. Professor Máximo Langer’s work as the founding faculty director of the CJP has grown and strengthened the program in such important ways. We now have more courses in criminal law than ever before, and a student body increasingly drawn to the study and practice of criminal law. The program has also taken on innovative research projects and hosted engaging programming that engage students in the pressing criminal justice issues of our time. We are deeply thankful for Professor Langer’s leadership in establishing this program and ensuring its success.

As we look forward to the new year on campus, CJP will serve as a central hub for our academic programming, research, and special projects in criminal law and juvenile justice. We are especially excited to be back on campus and to meet our incoming class of students. To our alumni practicing in diverse areas of criminal justice: we hope to connect with you and find opportunities for you to engage with and mentor current UCLA Law students.

Ingrid Eagly

Transforming Los Angeles County's Juvenile Justice System

Since 2020, CJP has participated in the Youth Justice Reimagined (YJR) initiative, which is focused on creating alternatives to probation and incarceration in Los Angeles County that prioritize equity, accountability, and healing-informed responses along the continuum of youth justice system involvement. The initiative’s recommendations are contained in the YJR report. In Spring 2020, Leah Gasser-Ordaz, CJP’s Youth Justice Policy Lead, moderated a panel for our students about YJR and the ongoing work to transform the youth justice system in Los Angeles County.

Shining a Light on Prolonged Detention in Los Angeles County Jails During COVID-19

Sagar Bajpai, ’21, Amy Munro, ’21, and Rodrigo Padilla Hernandez, ’21, authored a report as advanced students in CJP’s Bail Practicum that was released in December 2020. Their report -- “Counting the Days: The Story of Prolonged Detention During COVID-19”-- uncovers that people incarcerated in Los Angeles County jails pretrial were being held for longer periods of time during the COVID-19 pandemic than prior to the pandemic. While 35% of the pretrial population in January had been in custody for six months or longer, in September it jumped to 41%. The percentage of Black and Latinx people in the jails increased during the pandemic. 36% of Black people detained pretrial in January had been in jail for 6 months or longer, but that number jumped to just over 44% by September. The report draws from over 400 declarations submitted by people incarcerated in the County’s jails and data from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

Connecting Art and Law for Liberation (CALL) Virtual Festival

A multidisciplinary team of students, faculty and staff across UCLA’s campus came together to make the virtual CALL festival come alive. This year’s virtual conference was a CALL to action to imagine abolitionist futures. The festival opened with an inspiring conversation amongst artists and formerly incarcerated individuals and was followed by an open mic. Day two of the conference featured workshops led by people from all over the world from South Africa to Texas to here in Los Angeles focused on engaging participants in advocacy through the arts to fight mass incarceration.

Beth Colgan

Professor Colgan authored an amicus brief in a case pending in the California Supreme Court, People v. Kopp. The amicus brief focuses on the questions of whether certain fees and surcharges constitute “fines” for purposes of the Eighth Amendment Excessive Fines Clause and whether the person being fined or the government has the burden of proving ability to pay and constitutional excessiveness.

Professor Colgan had four publications in 2020 including, Revisiting Hate Crimes Enhancements in the Shadow of Mass Incarceration (with Shirin Sinnar) 95 N.Y.U. L. Review Online 149 (2020).

Ingrid Eagly

The Institutional Hearing Program: A Study of Prison-Based Immigration Courts in the United States (with Steven Shafer), 54 Law & Society Review 788 (2020).

The Movement to Decriminalize Border Crossing, 61 Boston College Law Review 1967 (2020).

Máximo Langer

Plea Bargaining, Conviction without Trial, and the Global Administratization of Criminal Convictions, 4 Annual Review Of Criminology 377 (2021).

Penal Abolitionism and Criminal Law Minimalism: Here and There, Now and Then, 134 Harvard Law Review Forum 42 (2020).

Noah Zatz

Better Than Jail: Social Policy in the Shadow of Racialized Mass Incarceration, 1 Journal of Law & Political Economy 212 (2021).

“Any Alternative Is Great If I’m Incarcerated:” A Case Study of Court-Ordered Community Service in Los Angeles County (with Melanie Sonsteng-Person (lead author), Lucero Herrera & Tia Koonse), 48 Criminal Justice and Behavior 32 (2021).