Senate Key Terms

Hi everyone, 

Below is a list of key terms and some helpful explanations for our first topic: Ratification of CEDAW.

• Bipartisanship: the agreement or cooperation between two political parties that usually oppose each other's policies

• Ratification: the action of signing or giving formal consent to a treaty, contract, or agreement, making it officially valid

• International Human Rights Treaties: treaties typically passed by the United Nations that protect human rights at a global level, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child

• Domestic Violence Laws: laws that make it a criminal offense if individuals receive physical, emotional, sexual, verbal, or economic abuse from their partner and give them rights to pursue further legal consequences

• Gender Equality: when people of all genders have equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities. Everyone is affected by gender inequality - women, men, trans, and gender diverse people, children, and families. It impacts people of all ages and backgrounds.

• Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations (RUDs): attachments on international treaties made by a ratifying state that clarify or alter the legal effect of treaty provisions.

• Sovereignty: the authority of a state to govern itself or another state.

• Infringement: the action of limiting or undermining something.

Additionally, here is a list of key terms and some helpful explanations for our second topic: Alleviating Mass Incarceration.

• Mass Incarceration: a term for the extremely high rate of incarceration in the United States for both adults and youth.

• Police Brutality: the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement. Police violence includes but is not limited to physical or verbal harassment, physical or mental injury, property damage, inaction of police officers, and in some cases, death.

• Punitive: inflicting or intended as punishment.

• Non-violent Drug Offenses: people arrested for the possession or consumption of drugs or other illegal substances, who are not inherently violent

• Criminal Justice System: the system or process in the community by which crimes are investigated, and the persons suspected thereof are taken into custody, prosecuted in court, and punished if found guilty, provisions being made for their correction and rehabilitation.

• Plea Deals: an agreement between a defendant and a prosecutor, in which the defendant agrees to plead guilty or "no contest" in exchange for an agreement by the prosecutor to drop one or more charges, reduce a charge to a less serious offense, or recommend to the judge a specific sentence 

• Conviction: a formal declaration that someone is guilty of a criminal offense, made by the verdict of a jury or the decision of a judge in a court of law

• Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: a sentence created by Congress or a state legislature, which the court must give to a person convicted of a crime, no matter what the offender's unique circumstances or the offense are.

• Three Strike Laws: a criminal sentencing structure in which significantly harsher punishments are imposed on repeated offenders

• Parole: the release of a prisoner temporarily (for a special purpose) or permanently before the completion of a sentence, on the promise of good behavior

• Defund the Police: a movement that supports divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support

• Recidivism: the tendency of a convicted criminal to re-offend.

I hope these help you during your research! Let us know if you have any questions :)