How bad prosecutors fuel America’s mass incarceration problem

How bad prosecutors fuel America’s mass incarceration problem​
Vox.com by Sean Illing
5/15/19

There are a lot of reasons why America’s criminal justice system is broken, but if Emily Bazelon is right, one of the biggest is overzealous prosecutors.

A legal reporter for The New York Times magazine, Bazelon explores the near-unregulated power of American prosecutors in her new book, Charged. It’s a deeply reported look at a failing justice system that does not function the way most people think it does.

We have this idea of a legal system in which prosecutors and defense lawyers are equal, with dispassionate judges presiding over everything. But Bazelon argues that this balance has been lost over the past several decades.

Now prosecutors wield limitless power, deciding whom to charge, who gets a second chance, and, in some cases, who lives and who dies. If there’s an underreported piece of the mass incarceration puzzle, Bazelon says this is it.
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