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Criminal Justice on Trial
| Article
# : |
11728 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
2,845 Words |
| Author
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Graham Hughes
Graham Hughes, professor of law at New York University, is the
author of The Conscience of the Courts (Doubleday). He has
practiced criminal law in federal and New York State courts
and is a frequent commentator on subjects related to criminal
justice. |
ESCAPE OF THE GUILTY
Ralph Adam Fine
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986
272 pp., $17.95
If there's anyone worse than criminals, it must be those who run the criminal justice system. At least that's the message that the media has been sending us for some years. Judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and court officials are all apparently locked in some great conspiracy to let criminals get away with their crimes and launch fresh assaults on innocent citizens. These media attacks do not explain why all these officials and lawyers should have such absurd or malevolent goals. Are they all unutterably stupid? Or hopelessly wrong-headed in their policies? Totally lazy and inefficient, perhaps? Every commentator points to the obvious remedy - bad and dangerous people should be put in prison for a long time. Why on earth doesn't this happen?
Ralph Fine, a lawyer who has been a journalist and a television program host and is now a circuit judge in Wisconsin, has written a lively, well-informed, and entertaining book offering a fresh review of the iniquities of our criminal justice system. He examines several features that he takes to be central to the system's failure. The chief of these, to which he devotes a large part of his book, is the practice of plea bargaining. This is good place to start since nobody has a good word to say about plea bargaining, but hardly anyone does anything about it.
Plea Bargaining
Plea
... (1996 of 16932 Characters)
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