Saturday, May 29, 2021

Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free: And Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System - REVIEW


by Jed S. Rakojf

The author, a federal judge, examines the failures of a judicial system that currently incarcerates more than two million people (five times more than four decades ago), forty per cent of whom are Black men. Politicians want to appear "tough on crime," even though incarceration's role in crime reduction is unclear. Harsh sentences lead the vast majority of defendants, including an estimated hundred thousand innocent people, to opt for plea bargains, a process that lacks oversight. Meanwhile, prosecutors fail to hold high level executives accountable for serious offenses. The government is allowing corporations to make gestures toward self-rehabilitation while denying ordinary citizens their day in court.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux
ISBN: 978-0374289997

No comments: