Trial And Error In Criminal Justice Reform

Download or read book Trial and Error in Criminal Justice Reform written by Greg Berman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revised edition of their concise, readable, yet wide-ranging book, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox tackle a question students and scholars of law, criminology, and political science constantly face: what mistakes have led to the problems that pervade the criminal justice system in the United States? The reluctance of criminal justice policymakers to talk openly about failure, the authors argue, has stunted the public conversation about crime in this country and stifled new ideas. It has also contributed to our inability to address such problems as chronic offending in low-income neighborhoods, an overreliance on incarceration, the misuse of pretrial detention, and the high rates of recidivism among parolees. Berman and Fox offer students and policymakers an escape from this fate by writing about failure in the criminal justice system. Their goal is to encourage a more forthright dialogue about criminal justice, one that acknowledges that many new initiatives fail and that no one knows for certain how to reduce crime. For the authors, this is not a source of pessimism, but a call to action. This revised edition is updated with a new foreword by Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., and afterword by Greg Berman.

Download or read book Punishment Without Trial written by Carissa Byrne Hessick and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a prominent criminal law professor, a provocative and timely exploration of how plea bargaining prevents true criminal justice reform and how we can fix it—now in paperback When Americans think of the criminal justice system, the image that comes to mind is a trial-a standard court­room scene with a defendant, attorneys, a judge, and most important, a jury. It's a fair assumption. The right to a trial by jury is enshrined in both the body of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It's supposed to be the foundation that undergirds our entire justice system. But in Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal, University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick shows that the popular conception of a jury trial couldn't be further from reality. That bed­rock constitutional right has all but disappeared thanks to the unstoppable march of plea bargaining, which began to take hold during Prohibition and has skyrocketed since 1971, when it was affirmed as constitutional by the Supreme Court. Nearly every aspect of our criminal justice system encourages defendants-whether they're innocent or guilty-to take a plea deal. Punishment Without Trial showcases how plea bargaining has undermined justice at every turn and across socioeconomic and racial divides. It forces the hand of lawyers, judges, and defendants, turning our legal system into a ruthlessly efficient mass incarceration machine that is dogging our jails and pun­ishing citizens because it's the path of least resistance. Professor Hessick makes the case against plea bargaining as she illustrates how it has damaged our justice system while presenting an innovative set of reforms for how we can fix it. An impassioned, urgent argument about the future of criminal justice reform, Punishment Without Trial will change the way you view the criminal justice system.

Download or read book Court Reform on Trial written by Malcolm M. Feeley and published by Quid Pro Books. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COURT REFORM ON TRIAL is a recognized study of innovation in the process of criminal justice, and why it so often fails--despite the best intentions of judges, administrators, and reformers. The arc of innovation and disappointment is analyzed through such programs as bail reform, pretrial diversion, speedy trials, and determinate sentencing. The much-maligned system of plea bargaining shifts power to prosecutors away from judges, and formal trials recede in importance--but is that really the problem? Perhaps failure lies in unrealistic expectations, splintered systems and decisionmaking, waning political will, unempowered constituencies, and reformers' hubris. Feeley analyzes the persistent failure and proposes insightful pathways out of the cycle. First commissioned as a study in the influential Twentieth Century Fund series, the book is accessible for today's readers as part of the Classics of Law & Society series of Quid Pro Books. It adds a reflective preface by the author and a new foreword by Greg Berman, Executive Director of the Center for Court Innovation. Calling it an "intellectual touchstone" that's "brimming with energy not resignation," Berman writes that the book "has all of the hallmarks of Feeley's best work. Lucid prose. Idiosyncratic analysis. A willingness to speak truth to vested interests. And a commitment to describing the way the world actually works from a ground-level perspective--as opposed to the official versions of how systems theoretically should function." New ebook edition features active TOC, linked Notes, and proper formatting in a modern digital presentation.

Download or read book Charged written by Emily Bazelon and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned journalist and legal commentator exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis—and charts a way out. “An important, thoughtful, and thorough examination of criminal justice in America that speaks directly to how we reduce mass incarceration.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy “This harrowing, often enraging book is a hopeful one, as well, profiling innovative new approaches and the frontline advocates who champion them.”—Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The New York Public Library • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. That image of the law does not match the reality in the courtroom, however. Much of the time, it is prosecutors more than judges who control the outcome of a case, from choosing the charge to setting bail to determining the plea bargain. They often decide who goes free and who goes to prison, even who lives and who dies. In Charged, Emily Bazelon reveals how this kind of unchecked power is the underreported cause of enormous injustice—and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle. Charged follows the story of two young people caught up in the criminal justice system: Kevin, a twenty-year-old in Brooklyn who picked up his friend’s gun as the cops burst in and was charged with a serious violent felony, and Noura, a teenage girl in Memphis indicted for the murder of her mother. Bazelon tracks both cases—from arrest and charging to trial and sentencing—and, with her trademark blend of deeply reported narrative, legal analysis, and investigative journalism, illustrates just how criminal prosecutions can go wrong and, more important, why they don’t have to. Bazelon also details the second chances they prosecutors can extend, if they choose, to Kevin and Noura and so many others. She follows a wave of reform-minded D.A.s who have been elected in some of our biggest cities, as well as in rural areas in every region of the country, put in office to do nothing less than reinvent how their job is done. If they succeed, they can point the country toward a different and profoundly better future.

Download or read book Good Courts written by Greg Berman and published by Quid Pro Books. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presented in a new digital edition, and adding a Foreword by Jonathan Lippman, Chief Judge of the state of New York, Good Courts is now available as an eBook to criminal justice workers, jurists, lawyers, political scientists, court officials, and others interested in the future of alternative justice and process in the United States. Public confidence in American criminal courts is at an all-time low. Victims, communities, and even offenders view courts as unable to respond adequately to complex social and legal problems including drugs, prostitution, domestic violence, and quality-of-life crime. Even many judges and attorneys think that the courts produce assembly-line justice. Increasingly embraced by even the most hard-on-crime jurists, problem-solving courts offer an effective alternative. As documented by Greg Berman and John Feinblatt—both of whom were instrumental in setting up New York’s Midtown Community Court and Red Hook Community Justice Center, two of the nation’s premier models for problem-solving justice—these alternative courts reengineer the way everyday crime is addressed by focusing on the underlying problems that bring people into the criminal justice system to begin with. The first book to describe this cutting-edge movement in detail, Good Courts features, in addition to the Midtown and Red Hook models, an in-depth look at Oregon’s Portland Community Court. And it reviews the growing body of evidence that the problem-solving approach to justice is indeed producing positive results around the country. Quality eBook features include linked Notes, active TOC, and proper formatting.

Download or read book Truth, Error, and Criminal Law written by Larry Laudan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-05 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the premise that the principal function of a criminal trial is to find out the truth about a crime, Larry Laudan examines the rules of evidence and procedure that would be appropriate if the discovery of the truth were, as higher courts routinely claim, the overriding aim of the criminal justice system. Laudan mounts a systematic critique of existing rules and procedures that are obstacles to that quest. He also examines issues of error distribution by offering the first integrated analysis of the various mechanisms - the standard of proof, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof - for implementing society's view about the relative importance of the errors that can occur in a trial.

Download or read book Convicting the Innocent written by Brandon L. Garrett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-04 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.