The Collapse of American Criminal Justice
by William J. Stuntz · first published 2011
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A great, empirically based, comprehensive look at the devolution of criminal justice in the U.S. can be found in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by the late criminal law scholar William Stuntz. TL;DR: The trend started nearly 200 years ago, though for various reasons it accelerated in the mid 20th century. Some reviews: "The book is eminently…
on “Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car” ↗There's a very good treatment of these issues in the late Christopher Stuntz's book, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice. Basically he blames a mixture of excessive criminalization/sentencing (eg drug laws), plea bargaining, and lax policing which prefers arresting people for easy-to-convict crimes - not least because law…
on “The Caging of America” ↗…procedural rather than substantive rulemaking under the constitution. I grumble about this too frequently already, so I'll stop here, but (re)cite two books I think make particularly succinct critiques: The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by Christopher Stuntz and Adversarial Legalism by Robert Kagan. In a nutshell, both argue that the fact-finding role of trial courts (civil as well as criminal) is seriously impeded by the ever-denser…
on “Towards Learning From Losing Aaron Swartz: Part 2” ↗…century, which is not too surprising as the solve rate was much lower and so were sentences (an average of 10 years for murder in 1910, whereas by 2003 it's 85). A good reference on this subject is The collapse of American Criminal Justice by William Stuntz.
on “Perceptions haven't caught up to decline in crime” ↗…punishment to people in the out-group, not to people in their community. The late criminal law professor William Stuntz compiled an incredible amount of historical conviction data for his book, "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice". What he found is that conviction rates have been steadily increasing for the past 200 years. One of the threads he identifies is that when the jury has a personal interest in leniency or rehabilitation…
on “Judges Rely on a Flawed $2 Drug Test That Puts Innocent People Behind Bars” ↗…context even in the article, but seems like a good capture of the problems with total dedication to process over discretion and justice described (or so I gather, have only read reviews of yet) in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by William Stuntz.
on “Scores in N.C. are legally 'innocent,' yet still imprisoned” ↗The late Christopher Stuntz made an argument in The Collapse of American Criminal Justice that one of the overlooked good things about alcohol prohibition is that it was instituted and later repealed by amendment of the Constitution, removing major legal ambiguities and allowing the polity…
on “Rand Paul filibustering over drones” ↗Harvard's Bill Stuntz wrote about plea bargains extensively before his death.[1] His last book was the "Collapse of American Criminal Justice." The issue isn't the plea bargain itself, but the incentives to make lots of 'suboptimal' deals. I've seen similar, recent arguments about whether #MeToo perpetrators should be allowed to settle with…
on “Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016)” ↗…neighborhoods or socio-economic conditions as the defendants and therefore lack a more realistic perspective of the risks and benefits of leniency rather than being driven by fear. See, generally, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William Stuntz.
on “Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it, so far” ↗