Thinking About Punishment and the Criminal Law

Law to Fact

In this episode...
John Humbach, Professor of Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law discusses the notion that crime is caused by culpable mental states (such as intentions) and describes how criminal justice could be different if we stopped focusing so much on assigning "blame" and paid more attention to how we can best prevent crimes from happening in the first place.
Some key takeaways...

1. 25% of American adults have criminal records.
2. 30% are of young people are arrested by the time they are 23.
3. Our criminal justice system focuses is flawed because it continues to punish based on traditional notions of blameworthiness.
4. Punishment would be much more effective if it took into account more modern findings of neuroscience.

About our guest…
Professor John Humbach is a professor of law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law where he teaches, among other subjects, Criminal Law, Property and Professional Responsibility. He is the author of Whose Monet? An Introduction to the American Legal System; a seminal book for law school orientation. Professor Humbach practiced corporate/securities law for five years on Wall Street before entering law teaching in 1971. Most of his teaching experience before coming to Pace in 1977 was at Fordham Law School, but he also taught at Brooklyn Law School and as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois and the University of Hawaii. He has authored a number of articles in the areas of property law and professional responsibility, as well as computer-assisted instruction programs for first-year property students. He serves as chairman of his community Architectural Review Board, and was active in the preservation of the 22,000 acre Sterling Forest, at the edge of the NYC metropolitan area. Professor Humbach served as James D. Hopkins Chair in Law during the 1993–1995 academic years.
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