The closest thing the book has to a thesis comes toward its end, when Bharara describes the process as “an inquiry fairly conducted, an accusation rightly made, a judgment properly rendered.” This is a stunningly sunny take on our criminal justice system, optimistic to the point of being dangerously misleading. It’s a shame, because Bharara’s insider status would give any criticisms significant heft. Yet not only does he celebrate the current system, he does so without even confronting any of the major criticisms that have been leveled against it.
To be fair, Bharara acknowledges that the system is imperfect. But he explicitly rejects the possibility that the problems are at all systemic, arguing instead that the errors that occur are essentially the product of a few bad apples. “False allegations, wrongful convictions, excessive punishments, miscarriages of justice are often wholly the result of human failings, not flaws in the impersonal machinery of justice,” he writes. The idea that failings are individual, not structural, is a theme that permeates Doing Justice.
Over and over, Doing Justice perpetuates the problem at the heart of our criminal justice system: the dehumanization of the people subjected to it. With only a few exceptions, including a welcome chapter devoted to lambasting Rikers Island, the New York City jail, for its infamous cruelty, Bharara ignores the complicated lives of those who come into contact with the system. Far more typical is when Bharara reduces defendants to one-dimensional “bad guys” squaring off against the “good guys” in his office.
Preet Bharara’s Willful Blindness
0Professor John Pfaff wrote a post in Washington Monthly, where he takes a critical look at the new book, Doing Justice, written by Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and how it resonates within the broader efforts currently taking place in justice reform.