Charged, Emily Bazelon

 

Charged: The new movement to transform American prosecution and end mass incarceration by Emily Bazelon has been on my list for a while and, when I acquired it, it moved to my "must read" pile.  It was subsequently buried by a ton of other "must read" books as I tried to understand the Trump administration.

Started: 10/3/2021
Completed: 10/9/2021
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I now understand two sides of what keeps people incarcerated.  I learned about how fees tie people down in A Pound of Flesh and now I understand how prosecutors use heavy charges in order to force guilty pleas.  Through jury duty, I have learned how little evidence is required in some cases and how much evidence in others in order to go to trial.  Through the Innocence Project and Just Mercy I have learned about truly wrongful convictions.  Through books like The Sum of Us, A Peculiar Indifference, and Golden Gates I have come to understand how people are stuck in positions from which they cannot possibly unstick themselves.  People (like James Comey and Sonya Sotomayor) who understand and operate within the system have concluded that it is broken in profound ways and the books I have read explain that in great detail.

This book looks at two people in order to illustrate the nature of problems in the justice system.  Both look at ways of dealing with crime.  The first is a case of divergence--giving someone a way other than jail to deal with criminal activity--and the second is a case of wrongful conviction and withholding evidence from the defense.  Both cases aptly described the broader issues in micro that the whole book addresses in macro.  The book is very well written and extremely compelling.  It would be good for everyone to read this book.