Volume 30, Number 17 · November 10, 1983
How Bad Are the Courts?
By Graham Hughes
The Limits of Law Enforcement
by Hans Zeisel
University of Chicago Press, 245 pp., $20.00
Court Reform on Trial
by Malcolm F. Feeley
Basic Books, 251 pp., $14.95
A familiar picture of the criminal justice system portrays harried and cynical prosecutors presenting sheaves of cases to lazy, soft-headed judges. Everyone involved has virtually given up trying to contain the rising rate of crime. Defendants are shown either as unregenerate hoodlums who mock the feeble system or as bewildered innocents herded into pleading guilty through fear of vindictive officials and crammed and violent jails. Victims and witnesses are numbed by endless, unexplained delays until they give up coming to court. And all the time crime gets worse, perhaps picking up impetus from the system's incapacity to deal swiftly and justly with criminals.
Review, 3235 words
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