Errors of Justice: Nature, Sources and Remedies

by Brian Forst

Overview

Written by a scholar with extensive research experience, this book applies an original approach to assessing criminal justice policies, based on their impact on errors of justice. The study covers the error of failing to bring offenders to justice as well as the errors of imposing costs on innocent people and excessive costs on offenders. Ultimately, it develops a new framework for each major sector of the justice system: policing, prosecution, adjudication and the jury, sentencing and corrections.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521821308
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/17/2003
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Criminology
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.94(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. The problem; 2. Errors of due process; 3. Errors of impunity; 4. Frameworks for analyzing the incidence of justice errors; 5. Assessing the cost of justice errors; 6. Standards of evidence; 7. Police-induced errors; 8. Prosecution policy and justice errors; 9. The jury; 10. Sentencing and corrections; 11. Homicide; 12. A matter of legitimacy; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

'Brian Forst tackles the topic of errors of justice in a balanced manner that has been absent from the scholarly debate on the effects of the criminal justice policy on outcomes … no other book that addresses such a range of important criminal justice topics using the critical yardstick of analysis, and that is indeed the book's major strength … long overdue. The book provides a blueprint for the kinds of data we need to better estimate the extent and costs of real errors associated with criminal justice policy. Dr Forst is ideally suited to write this book. His expertise on statistical inference, criminal justice information systems, policing, prosecution, and the death penalty is put to powerful use here. The book is immensely readable, rigorous and thorough, yet it will be accessible to non-technical readers. This is a valuable scholarly contribution. I loved it!' Joan Petersilia, University of California, Irvine

'Errors of Justice provides a powerful, well-grounded framework for analyzing some of the great topics of our day: wrongful convictions, the rights of suspects in terrorist investigations, the overuse of prison as a sanction, and reform of the exclusionary rule, to name just a few. Brian Forstas application of the principles of statistical inference and welfare economics to reducing criminal justice error is cogent, fresh, and interesting. This is an important book.' Philip J. Cook, Duke University

'… very accessible …'. The Times

From the Publisher