Stephanos Bibas analyzes key problems with American criminal justice system in latest book

In his new book The Machinery of Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press), Stephanos Bibas, a Professor of Law and Criminology and the Director of Penn Law's Supreme Court Clinic, explores how lawyers have taken over the criminal justice process over the past two centuries, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting a plea-bargaining system for the voice of the jury. Bibas surveys how victims and defendants have lost their day in court as a sacrifice in a quest for efficient punishment - and suggests how to move away from a "plea bargaining assembly line," instead re-integrating victims, defendants, and the public back into America's trial system.