sustained, ongoing relationship with a m who. he is attracted to the kind of women his mother directs him to who are the beauty queens, who are the ones who are flirtatious, who are attractive. and that's really where his eyes have been. until he comes back to yale law school. there he meets hillary rodham. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> and now, more from booktv's college series. we sat down with ste nose bibas at the university of pennsylvania's annenberg school for communication to discuss his book, "the machinery of criminal justice." he argues that our criminal justice system has become a process that values efficiency and speedy processing over reforming criminals and healing victims and their families. it's about innocents. it's about ten minutes. >> host: and now joining us on

booktv is author and professor stephanos bibas whose new book, "the machinery of criminal justice," is published by oxford university press. professor bibas, do we have an efficient criminal justice system? >> guest: we've got a system tahas moved from what people expect it to be, a public morality play where we blame and punish and then reintegrate people who do wrong and heal victims to one that's been taken over by the lawyers. we have professionals who have maximized the speed of the system. it's hurried plea bar gaining that disposes 19 out of 20 cases. it's cheap, but it's bargained-for justice, and so the victims have no say, defendants feel like they've copped a plea or gotten away with something, and the public wonders why is this about a deal rather than a ringing jury trial and a verdict? we've become very busy in the

last two centuries from before this nation was founded criminal justice was about right and wrong, pain and blame and apologies and healing. and we have too many criminal cases, and so the lawyers have just sped things up by pleading cases out one after another after another as a cookie cutter or you might say an assembly line system. and so lawyers, the insiders who run the criminal justice system, think the system makes sense. it's cheap, it deals with staggering caseloads. but they don't understand why it is that the nonlawyers are frustrated. it seem like justice has been bought and sold and modified -- comodified. so you get voters clamoring for tougher laws and lawyers bargaining these provisions away so that some people get special deals and other people who are just stubborn enough to vote at trial wind up getting heavier

punishments. and the voters react because it seems like it's hidden, and it's low visibility, and it depends on your connections or your lawyer rather than on what you did. and the frustrating thing here, of course, is we have a democracy, and the system should be run for what the people think it's about which is blaming and punishing. but instead we have a system where people don't even understand what's going on in this their own system. we can't go back to an era where every case was tried by a jury. our system is too clogged, trials take far too long today. over the past half century, we have made them too complicated. but what we can do is try to include ordinary people. let the victims have a say at the trial. let the defendants speak rather than have everything going go through their lawyers, at least at the sentencing hearing. offer more encouragement and opportunities for remorse or and apology and restitution because victims and defendants have to go back to living with each

other. often their friends, relatives, and try to figure out a way to fix the broken punishment system. right now it's just a warehouses for other criminals in prison. instead find ways to get them involved in work, to work, to gain skills so that they can come out again, maybe even serve in the military and find ways that once they've done their time and paid their debt, they can come back out to a law-abiding job and apartment instead of being exiled to go right back to drug dealing, say. >> host: well, professor, did we ever have a criminal justice system where we did focus on punishment and then reintegrationing and these good things as you see them? >> yes. in the 17th and 18th centuries in colonial america you had a system where it wasn't just the middle and upper middle class people punishing the poor as a permanent exiled under class. people of all races, economic

backgrounds, etc., committed wrongs, got pun you shoulded temporarily in the town square -- got punished temporarily in the town square. everyone saw them get what they deserved. and then after that they came back. actually, many respectable citizens went on to hold high office after that. and what happened is with prison, which was meant to be a humane reform where people in penitentiaries could repent, it didn't turn out that they leshed anything, and they -- they learned anything, and they just networked with other criminal convicts and came back out. and so we have to move towards making prisons something other than just a warehouses, and we have to move towards making criminal process about something other than plea bargain deals, but about declaring what's right and wrong and finding a way people can do something productive is so they pay their tet to society, to the victim, pay back some restitution and apologies and others and come back into society forgiven. ..

frustrated that the lawyers just don't seem to list the. >> so often did you push for a plea bargain or how often we approach for a plea bargain? >> and every case out of say a hundred there were three jury trials, one bench trial in one year which spree typical. we cannot do away with that system. what we can do is sentencing

offer up opportunities for people to talk and try to focus punishments on something more productive like working and making restitution and apologizing. >> did you ever suggest that as a federal prosecutor? >> i did. the people who seemed the most willing to fess up and make amends sometimes wound up with a misdemeanor charges that a felony charge, and the ones who seemed stubborn or in the nile or were sorry only if they had got caught were more likely to face the full weight of the law. at interest more that could be done to encourage that kind of acceptance of responsibility. >> one of the political sidelines of this is being soft on crime, be considered soft on crime, not good for politicians. >> right. add the this is a unique opportunity to reassess coral justice. states are spending ten, 15, 20 percent of their budgets on prison and law enforcement. recognize they cannot keep blocking more people up. so oregon and a washington and

revisited. the victims are not demanding. people in california kinglet 25 years in prison for stealing a piece of pizza as the third strike. the young male impulsiveness. but there are a lot of people were nonviolent drug offenders the and opportunity for them to take punishment but to make amends so that the themes, the shoplifters, the non-violent burglars, a lot of them who are not already set on the life of crime than we need at least a chance to give an opportunity to plant themselves. >> the book talks about and the ways prosecutors manipulate them

. their rig to be much more broad and the people who have in violence and the record and the latest current is not have to be a violent one. the villains are stupid enough to go to a trowel to reject a plea bargain offer. >> the machinery of criminal justice, professor of law at university a pencil mania. >> every weekend book tv has 48 hours of programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. watch it here on c-span2.