Errors of Justice: Nature, Sources and Remedies

Product Description


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.


Review


'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


Book Description


Written by a scholar with extensive research experience on the ground, this book takes a fresh new approach to assessing criminal justice policies, based on their impact on errors of justice: both the error of failing to bring offenders to justice and the errors of imposing costs on innocent people and excessive costs on offenders. The book borrows from principles of error management in statistical inference and the simulation of quality control processes to develop a new framework to each major sector of the justice system: policing, prosecution, adjudication and the jury, sentencing and corrections.


About the Author


Brian Forst joined the American University faculty after twenty years in nonprofit research, including positions such as research director at the Institute for Law and Social Research and the Police Foundation. He is the author most recently of Terrorism, Crime, and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2009), After Terror (with Akbar Ahmed, 2005), Errors of Justice: Nature, Sources, and Remedies (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and The Privatization of Policing: Two Views (with Peter Manning, 1999). He is a member of the American University Senate and chairs the Department of Justice, Law, and Society's doctoral program. He is also a voting member of the Sentencing Commission for the District of Columbia.