The Machinery of Criminal Justice [Hardcover]

Stephanos Bibas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2012

Two centuries ago, the American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But over the last two centuries, lawyers have taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting a plea-bargaining system for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a result, victims rarely hear defendants express remorse and apologize, and defendants rarely receive forgiveness. This lawyerized machinery has purchased efficient, speedy processing of many cases at the price of sacrificing softer values, such as reforming defendants and healing wounded victims and relationships. In other words, the U.S. legal system has bought quantity at the price of quality, without recognizing either the trade-off or the great gulf separating lawyers' and laymen's incentives, interests, values, and powers.

In The Machinery of Criminal Justice, author Stephanos Bibas surveys these developments over the last two centuries, considers what we have lost in our quest for efficient punishment, and suggests ways to include victims, defendants, and the public once again. These ideas range from requiring convicts to work or serve in the military, to moving power from prosecutors to restorative sentencing juries. Bibas argues that doing so might cost more, but it would better serve criminal procedure's interests in denouncing crime, vindicating victims, reforming wrongdoers, and healing the relationships torn by crime.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In The Machinery of Criminal Justice, author Stephanos Bibas presents a bold and inspiring vision of what criminal justice and the punishment imposed in its name can and should be about. Criminal justice is ideally the process, and punishment ideally the vehicle, through which wronged and wrongdoer restore the bond they once shared. Restoration, not retribution or deterrence, is the rock upon which Bibas builds."
--Stephen P. Garvey, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

"The Machinery of Criminal Justice is an exceptional volume that gives us the big picture on a scholarly subject too often hobbled by technical focus and narrow thinking. Always accessible and always interesting, Bibas asks some hard questions and gives some creative answers. Common morality, lay justice, mercy, re-integrative punishment - these are the issues at the cutting edge of today's crime policy debates, but Bibas shows us that they are also the historical roots of American criminal justice."
--Paul H. Robinson, Colin S. Diver Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania,
author, with Michael Cahill, of Law Without Justice

"Th[e] embrace of populism as a counterweight to expertise sets Bibas apart. The academics and professionals who work in criminal justice routinely look for ways to insulate criminal punishment from popular passions; they hope to take advantage of specialized professional insights. Bibas offers a bracing challenge to this received expert wisdom."
--Ronald Wright, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Book Review

"Through a series of articles spanning more than a decade, Professor Stephanos Bibas has proven himself a bold and penetrating critic of America's system of criminal procedure. His theme has been the gap between the morality embodied in our substantive criminal law and the morality (or, perhaps more accurately, the lack thereof) embodied in our procedural rules and practices. This theme now gets its fullest exposition in his provocative new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice."
-- Michael M. O'Hear, University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online

"His vision is a powerful one, he defends it with clarity and grace, and every idea he expresses is capable of starting an important conversation."
--Andrew Taslitz, Jotwell

About the Author

Stephanos Bibas is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he specializes in criminal procedure. As director of Penn's Supreme Court Clinic, he also litigates a wide array of cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. After graduating from Yale Law School and clerking at the Supreme Court, he worked as a federal prosecutor in New York City, where he prosecuted a wide array of criminal cases. He successfully investigated, prosecuted, and convicted the world's leading expert in Tiffany stained glass for hiring a grave robber to loot priceless Tiffany windows from tombs in cemeteries, winning an FBI award for outstanding performance. He has published widely on plea bargaining, sentencing, and how criminal procedure could better serve the substantive moral goals of the criminal law.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 28, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195374681
• ISBN-13: 978-0195374681
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.8 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #966,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A passionate, insightful critique of U.S. criminal justice April 19, 2013

By darryl brown

Format:Hardcover

Bibas is among the very best American criminal justice scholars writing today, and this book sums up and extends much of his critical and insightful work on the transformation of the American criminal process into a assembly line system that puts a premium on low-cost convictions at a price not only to defendants (and to the accuracy of both convictions and sentences) but also to victims and, ultimately, he argues, democracy. One hears in this book Bibas' distinctive voice and strongest arguments that the criminal process has gone wrong in large part because because it has been taken over by professionals--judges, prosecutors and other lawyers--who have displaced a more democratic possibility for the system with meaningful roles for lay people as witnesses, victims and jurors. The book is great combination of a passionately argued point of view and in depth scholarly knowledge about the law, practice and consequences of U.S. criminal justice.