Rehabilitating Criminal Justice offers bold yet sensible proposals for reforming every major component of the US criminal justice system. The first third of the book explains how existing caselaw can be interpreted to end over-policing, better regulate interrogations, and replace the exclusionary rule with direct sanctions on officers and their departments. The second part of the book, on the post-arrest adjudication process, calls for replacing cash bail with validated risk assessments and proposes to reorient our error-prone, hyper-adversarial system by ending convictions via guilty pleas and giving judges more power over questioning of witnesses and the selection of experts. The final chapters show how the harshness of the system can be leavened by refocusing sentencing on prevention rather than retribution and by creating an independent criminal court system. They also explain why these reforms are preferable to the currently popular movement to defund police departments and abolish prisons.

‘Rehabilitating Criminal Justice is an important book with many valuable reform proposals by one of the leading thinkers in America on criminal justice. It is an important addition to the literature on criminal justice reform and offers a package of solutions that are bold but feasible, thus presenting itself as a realistic alternative to calls for abolition. We need more scholarship like this, which aims for dramatic changes to address mass incarceration but that is attuned to the need to continue to provide a regime that will keep the public safe and be politically palatable.’

Rachel Barkow - author of Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration and Justice Abandoned: How the Supreme Court Ignored the Constitution and Enabled Mass Incarceration

‘Christopher Slobogin is one of the nation's most sophisticated thinkers about criminal justice policy. He has spent decades advocating as a scholar and a law reformer for changes to our broken system, which fails to adequately respect individual rights or optimally prevent crime. Now he offers a comprehensive tour of his vision for lasting change in everything from policing to prosecution, adjudication, and sentencing. No one will agree with every single thing that Slogobin proposes, but absolutely everyone should read him.’

Carol S. Steiker - Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

‘This timely book, from one of the country’s most thoughtful and respected voices on criminal law and procedure, is sweeping in scope - explaining the system’s many interconnected parts -but also pragmatic and concrete. Slobogin is a heterodox scholar in conversation with abolitionists, reformist reformers, and law enforcement, and more than anyone I can think of, has a real chance of establishing common ground on these vexing criminal justice issues. His ideas have never been more necessary.’

Andrea Roth - Barry Tarlow Chancellor’s Chair in Criminal Justice, UC Berkeley School of Law