Charged Advocacy: A Critical Review of Emily Bazelon’s Charged
Charged Advocacy: A Critical Review of Emily Bazelon’s Charged, 29 KAN. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y ONLINE 13 (2020).
7 Pages Posted: 22 May 2020
Date Written: April 26, 2020
Abstract
This is a critical review of Emily Bazelon’s 2019 book, Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. This review primarily focuses on the book’s negative aspects, but overall, Charged is an effective advocacy piece. While the book covers a variety of criminal justice topics and at times makes strong points, this review is primarily limited to critiquing the book’s problematic aspects. Although there are issues with the overall structure, the most severe problem is that the book is not a neutral assessment of potential criminal justice reforms. Rather, Bazelon uses the book to promote her preferred criminal justice policies. Her approach results in frequently presenting misleading information and ignoring important counterarguments.
Keywords: Emily Bazelon, Criminal justice reform, Charged, innocent, wrongfully convicted, race criminal justice, Mass incarceration, Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
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