It has been a couple of weeks since I blogged about Inquest, which is "a forum for advancing bold ideas to end mass incarceration in the United States." Though regular readers may tire of my promotion of the must-read essays on the site, I am not tired of spotlighting these recently added pieces:
From Jessica González-Rojas, "Decarcerate Rikers Now: Nothing short of setting people free from the jail complex, and keeping others from going there, will prevent the death and hopelessness now ravaging it."
From Shima Baradaran Baughman, Christopher T. Robertson & Megan S. Wright, "Cracking the Black Box: One way to keep prosecutors accountable and check their carceral impulses is by shedding some light on their vast discretion to charge crimes. Here’s a start."
From Angel Harris, "A Judge on a Mission: Here's how a former public defender elected to judicial office in New Orleans works to chip away at mass incarceration."
The newest posting is a book review by Daniel Harawa of Carissa Byrne Hessick's new book assailing plea practices. The review make the dispiriting point that trials may be so biased against people of color that harmful plea practices may be the best we can hope for. I recommend this piece in full, which is titled "Trials Without Justice: Plea bargaining may be a bad deal overall. But for many Black and Brown defendants, is the alternative any better?". Here is a short excerpt:
Hessick’s portrayal of a plea system that’s out of control is compelling. The solution that Hessick identifies — more trials — is important, but also raises additional questions and concerns that should not be ignored. As Hessick explains, the problems with plea bargaining cut across racial lines, yet Black and Brown defendants have another question they must consider before standing on their trial rights — a question that white defendants can usually breeze past: How will their race affect trial? Hessick acknowledges early on that because the book is “about the criminal justice system, it is inevitably a book about race.” And as she shows, you cannot consider why someone may accept a guilty plea without thinking about why they would not risk trial . But there is an uncomfortable truth underlying the book: Black and Brown defendants may plead guilty because they think (or know) that they will not get a fair trial because of their race. Just as the other coercion points that Hessick describes may push a defendant to plead guilty, so too may a defendant’s race. The decision to go to trial can look very different for Black and Brown people than it does for white people.
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