>> now, more from book tv's college series. we sat down with stephanos bibas at the an anyone burg school of -- mr. bibas argues our criminal justice system has become a process that -- over reforming criminals and healing victims and their families. it's ten minutes. >> host: now joining us on book tv is author and professor,

stephanos bibas, whose new book, the machinery of criminal justice, is published by oxford university press. professor, do we have an efficient criminal justice system? >> guest: we have a system that has moved from what people expect it to be, a public morality play where we blame and punish and then reintegrate people who do wrong 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 bargaining disposing with 190 out of 20 cases. but it's bargaining for justice so the victims have no say, often don't know what happens in their cases. defendants feel lime they have copped a plea or gotten away with something, and the public wonders, why is this about a deal rather than a jury trial and a verdict? we have 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 the apologies and healing, and we have too many criminal cases so the lawyers have just sped things up by pleading cases out, one after another after another as a cookie cutter or assembly line system. so lawyers, the insiders who run the criminal justice system, think the system makes sense. it's cheap. deals with staggering case loads but they don't understand why the nonlawyers are frustrated. seems like justice has been bought and sold and seems like people have gotten away 0 with something so you have voters clamoring for higher sentences and tougher three strikes laws, and lawyers undercutting these provisions by bargaining them away so some people get special deals and other people, who are just stubborn enough to go to trial, wind up getting heavier punishments and the voters react bought is feels like it's hidden

and departments on your connections or your lawyer rather than on what you did. the frustrating thing here 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 understand what going on in their open system. we can't go back to an era where every case was tried to a jury. our system is too clogged. too expensive. trials take too long. over the past half century, we've made him that too complicated. but we can try to simplify and include ordinary people. let the victims have a say at the trial. let the defendants speak rather than everything through the lawyers, at least at the sentencing hearing. offer more encouragement and opportunities for remorse 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, which right now is gist a warehouse for criminals in prison to network with other people for when they come out again. instead find ways to get them involved in work, to work to gain skills so 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 and going back to drug dealing. >> host: did we ever have a criminal justice system where we did focus on punishment and then reintegration and these good things as you see them? >> guest: yes inch he 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 underclass. people of all races and economic background, commit wrongs, got

punished temporarily in the town square. everyone saw them get what they deserved. and then after the temporary punishment they came back. actually many respectable citizens went on to hold high office after that. what happened is, with prison, which was meant to be a humane reform, where people in penitentiaries could repent, they didn't learn anything and just networked with other criminal convicts and came back out. and so we have to move towards making prisons something other than just a warehouse. we have to move towards making criminal process about something other than plea bargained deals, but about declaring what is right and wrong and fining a way people can do something productive so they pay their debt to society and to the victim, pay back restitution and apologies and others, and then come back into society forgiven. >> you're currently teaching law at the university o pennsylvania, and director of the university supreme court clinic. what's your practical experience

with the law? sunny was a federal prosecutor in new york city and i saw every kind of case. i saw people who were sorry for what they'd done and wanted a chance to make amends and the system didn't do anything to encourage it. i saw people angry and in denial and the system didn't confront them or make them fess up to what they'd done. i saw a lot of good well can meaning lawyers and professions who took it for granted ited a to be an assembly line but the defendants and jurors and victims were frustrated that they weren't listened to. >> host: how often were you approached for a plea bargain? >> guest: in every case. out of 100 cases, there were three jury trials and one person trial in a year, which -- one bh trial in a year which is typical. we can't do away with that system but at sentencing we can allow people to talk and focus

on working and making restitution and apologizing. >> host: did you ever suggest that as a prosecutor. >> i did. the people who seemed most willing to fess up and make amends wound up with a misdemeanor charge instead of a felony charge, and the ones who steamed stubborn and in denial or were sorry only because they got caught are more likely to face the law. >> host: professor, one of the political sidelines is being considered soft on crime. not good for politicians. >> guest: right. i think this is a unique opportunity reassess criminal justice. states are spending ten, 15, 20% of their budgets on prisons, and on law enforcement, and they recognize they can't keep locking more people up. so oregon and washington revisited, what do we do with people with marijuana? legalize it? do we decriminalize it?

win when the victims are heard, the victims often aren't demanding the longest sentence. people in california recognize 25 years in prison for stealing a slice of pizza as a third strike is too much. there's a slice of people we need to like up until they're no longer dangerous, in their 40s or 50s. once they're past the young male impulsive years. but there's a whole lot of people where nonviolent drug offendedder, et cetera, we need an opportunity for them to take punishment and make amend so the thieves, the shoplifters, the nonviolent burglars, a lot of them who are not already set on a life of crime and we need at least a chance to give them an opportunity to reclaim themselves. >> host: in your view, do the three strikes and you're out laws -- do they work? no the book talks about the ways in which prosecutors manipulate them. voters think they're going to automatically lock up the third time dangerous felons but they're written to be broader

than the people who have any violence in their record or the latest crime doesn't even have to be violent, and the prosecutors routinely bargain those away, bargain them down-manipulate them. so the people who get it are not the most dangerous. they're were the ones who were stupid enough to go to trial and reject a play bargain offer. >> the machinery of the criminal justice by stephanos bibas, from the university of pennsylvania. thank you. >> you're welcome. >> university of pennsylvania professor stephen