Innovations in Criminal Justice

Our criminal justice system is in free-fall: our police are too aggressive, our court system sends innocent people to prison, and our sentencing practices are draconian. This book proposes a reorientation of every major component of the system. It explains how existing caselaw should be interpreted to end stop and frisk practices, remove the police as first responders for regulatory crimes and mental health emergencies, and require recording of interrogations. It shows why a penalty regime that directly sanctions police and departments for constitutional violations makes more sense than trying to deter misconduct through exclusion of evidence. It calls for replacing cash bail with validated risk assessments, fixing our error-prone adversarial system by giving judges more power over the selection and questioning of witnesses, and subverting the system's punitiveness by ending guilty pleas and refocusing sentencing on prevention instead of retribution. It also makes the case for an independent criminal court system. Finally, it explains why these sorts of reforms are preferable to the currently popular movement to abolish police departments, state-run courts, and prisons.