Errors of Justice

In this book, Brian Forst takes a fresh new perspective on the assessment of criminal justice policy, examining the prospect of assessing policies based on their impact on errors of justice: the error of failing to bring offenders to justice, on the one hand, and the error of imposing costs on innocent people and excessive costs on offenders, on the other. Noting that we have sophisticated systems for managing errors in statistical inference and quality control processes and no parallel system for managing errors of a more socially costly variety - on matters of guilt and innocence - the author lays the foundation for a common sense approach to the management of errors in the criminal justice system, from policing and prosecution to sentencing and corrections. He examines the sources of error in each sector, the harms they impose on society, and frameworks for analyzing and reducing them.

• Draws together well-established principles of error management from other domains to the problem of managing errors in criminal justice • Relates the error management framework to more conventional frameworks for assessing policy • Presents new findings on the effects of justice policy on errors

Preface; 1. The problem; 2. Errors of due process; 3. Errors of impunity; 4. Frameworks for analyzing the incidence of justice errors; 5. Assessing the cost of justice errors; 6. Standards of evidence; 7. Police-induced errors; 8. Prosecution policy and justice errors; 9. The jury; 10. Sentencing and corrections; 11. Homicide; 12. A matter of legitimacy; Bibliography.

‘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, Professor of Law & Society, 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, ITT/Sanford Professor of Public Policy, Duke University

‘… very accessible …’. The Times