Confronting Underground Justice
Reinventing Plea Bargaining for Effective Criminal Justice Reform
1 of 1 copy available
Because of the failures of public health, the justice system has become a dumping ground for hundreds of thousands of mentally ill, substance addicted and abusing, and neurocognitively impaired offenders. And because of a tough on crime mentality and lack of information and options, the justice system routinely prosecutes and punishes these offenders. The evidence is quite clear that punishment does nothing to improve these circumstances and often exacerbates them. The result, as one would predict, is extraordinarily high rates of reoffending, propelling the revolving door of the justice system. Confronting Underground Justice takes a close look at plea negotiation, criminal prosecution, public defense, and pretrial justice systems and identifies a wide variety of problems and concerns with each. William R. Kelly and Robert Pitman provide key decision makers with the tools to make better, more informed decisions regarding pre-trial detention, prosecution and plea deals, criminal defense, and diversion to treatment. Critical to this effort is redefining roles, responsibilities and the culture of criminal justice by prosecutors, judges and defense counsel accepting responsibility for reducing recidivism and embracing problem solving as a primary decision making strategy.
Kelly and Pitman combine decades of academic research and policy expertise, with real world experience in the court system, as a judge and prosecutor to develop innovative and comprehensive reform. Confronting Underground Justice provides a prescriptive roadmap for how to fundamentally reinvent plea negotiation, pre-trial decision making, criminal prosecution and public defense to effectively reduce recidivism and save money.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 29, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781538106495
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781538106495
- File size: 2119 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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November 5, 2018
Kelly, director of the Center for Criminology and Criminal Justice Research at the University of Texas at Austin, and federal judge Pitman (From Retribution to Public Safety: Disruptive Innovation of American Criminal Justice Policy) cogently analyze a common facet of the American criminal justice system: plea negotiations, which yield more than 95% of all criminal convictions. The prevalence of plea deals developed as a consequence of the massive uptick in arrests in the late 20th century, which made plea bargains essential to keep dockets from backing up with defendants demanding trials. As a result, some defendants pleaded guilty despite their innocence, and some did so in advance of pretrial hearings that would have determined the constitutionality of their arrest and the evidence sought to be used against them. The authors propose a number of reforms meant to address the perceived injustices of the current process, including creating a neutral plea mediator who would “serve the dual purpose of ensuring that each side had an adequate opportunity to consider the consequences of a plea as well as possible alternate outcomes.” But as thoughtful as their suggestions are, as they note at the end, the absence of “political will to make meaningful comprehensive reform a priority” makes this of more intellectual than practical utility. Still, this sobering study deserves a wide readership.
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