{"id":18771,"date":"2017-03-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=494"},"modified":"2017-03-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T00:00:00","slug":"criminal-justice-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/03\/criminal-justice-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Criminal Justice Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

T<\/span>he late William J. Stuntz spent his life studying the American criminal justice system. In a 2001 article on our \u201cpathological politics of criminal law,\u201d he lays out the institutional barriers to the fundamental reform that we need.<\/p>\n

Most descriptions and prescriptions for criminal justice reform assume that criminal law drives punishment. That\u2019s just the premise that prevents us from making headway, in Stuntz\u2019s view: \u201cIt would be closer to the truth to say that criminal punishment drives criminal law. The definition of crimes and defenses plays a different and much smaller role in the allocation of criminal punishment than we usually suppose.\u201d Criminal law mainly works to \u201cempower prosecutors, who are the criminal justice system\u2019s real lawmakers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Criminal law can\u2019t drive punishment because it is too broad and all-encompassing. There are thousands of criminal prohibitions in the federal code, thousands more in state codes. Together, the two systems are full of overlapping statutes. \u201cA single crime typically violates a half dozen or more prohibitions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone knows this, but knowing it doesn\u2019t stop the trend. Criminal law keeps growing; it has one direction, \u201ctoward more liability,\u201d as legislatures add new prohibitions but rarely remove any. Stuntz claims that the trend is toward \u201ccodes that cover everything and decide nothing, that serve only to delegate power to district attorneys\u2019 offices and police departments. We have not reached that point yet; substantive criminal law has not wholly ceased to operate. But we are closer than we used to be\u2014the movement is very much in that direction. In a criminal justice system that incarcerates two million people, criminal law is becoming a sideshow. It seems like, and is, an unhealthy state of affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The culprit is politics, but not in the usual sense. Stuntz notes that the growth of criminal law started long before voters started demanding, and politicians promising, \u201ctoughness on crime.\u201d The problem isn\u2019t electoral politics but institutional<\/em> politics, the distribution of powers among legislators, prosecutors and judges. Each is supposed to check the other, but that doesn\u2019t happen. What happens is \u201ctacit cooperation between prosecutors and legislators, each of whom benefits from more and broader crimes, and growing marginalization of judges, who alone are likely to opt for narrower liability rules rather than broader ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judges can\u2019t break the alliance of legislators and prosecutors: \u201cProsecutors are better off when criminal law is broad than when it is narrow. Legislators are better off when prosecutors are better off. The potential for alliance is strong, and obvious. And given legislative supremacy\u2014meaning legislatures control crime definition and prosecutorial discretion meaning prosecutors decide whom to charge, and for what\u2014judges cannot separate these natural allies.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lasting solution wouldn\u2019t focus on this or that rule, but would change the way \u201crules are defined and enforced.\u201d One option is to abolish discretion in enforcement, and \u201cto require that the crimes legislatures create are actually punished.\u201d That is, to make law enforcement actually operate the way most people think it does. Stuntz argues that this is \u201cimpossible.\u201d Another solution would attack the problem on the legislative side, curtailing or ending legislatures\u2019 role in deciding how wide to spread the net of criminal law. Depoliticizing criminal law \u201cis as likely to aggravate the system\u2019s current pathologies as it is to mitigate them.\u201d The other option is to empower the courts. This too is a non-starter since any already believe the courts are more powerful than they should be.<\/p>\n

With such political and institutional obstacles in the way, \u201cit seems unlikely that criminal law\u2019s structural problem will be solved, or even addressed, anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Stuntz, \u201cThe Pathological Politics of Criminal Law,\u201d Michigan Law Review<\/em> 100:3 [2001]: 505\u2013600.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The late William J. Stuntz spent his life studying the American criminal justice system. In a 2001 article on our \u201cpathological politics of criminal law,\u201d he lays out the institutional barriers to the fundamental reform that we need. Most descriptions and prescriptions for criminal justice reform assume that criminal law drives punishment. That\u2019s just the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1308,693],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-law"],"yoast_head":"\nCriminal Justice Reform<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The late William J. Stuntz spent his life studying the American criminal justice system. 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