Which leads to an obvious question: How might things be set right? The solution to the system's many problems has two main ingredients.
The first is a revival of the ideal of equal protection of the laws. Criminal punishment will not control crime at acceptable cost as long as punishment is imposed and the law's protection is provided discriminatorily. The second ingredient is a large dose of the local democracy that once ruled American criminal justice. That second aspect of wise reform is already happening: the rise of community policing has made local police more responsive to the wishes of those who live with the worst crime rates. That trend needs to go farther. Plus, we need fewer guilty pleas and more jury trials in order to give local citizens -- not just prosecutors -- the power to decide who merits punishment and who doesn't. More jury trials in turn require a different kind of criminal law: law that looks more like the criminal law of America's past, and less like the speed limits that give state troopers unconstrained power over those who travel America's highways.
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The article was electronically reproduced by permission of the publisher from "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by William J. Stuntz, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 2011. The author William J. Stuntz was Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at Harvard University. The article was
