Free Market Criminal Justice explains how excessive faith in democratic politics and free markets has undermined the rule of law in the US criminal process. It argues that, to strengthen the rule of law, American criminal justice needs less democracy, less market-inspired process, and more law.

Acknowledgments 1: Introduction--Justice in a Minimal State 2: Criminal Justice and Democracy 3: Criminal Justice by the Invisible Hand 4: The Free Market Law of Plea Bargaining 5: Private Responsibility for Criminal Judgments 6: The High Cost of Efficiency 7: Criminal Justice and the Security State 8: Epilogue--The American Way of Criminal Process Endnotes Index

"Free Market Criminal Justice is a major advance on past work that has tried to link US punitiveness to its political economy. Recognizing that both democracy and markets operate as regulative ideals in American government, Brown shows us how they combine to produce a criminal process dominated by private ordering and remarkably indifferent to either law or truth. Essential to understanding why our system is both excessive and inadequate. It is hard to see how we can escape mass incarceration without revisiting these constitutive political choices." -Jonathan Simon, Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Center for the Study of Law & Society, UC Berkeley School of Law "Darryl Brown presents an original and convincing diagnosis of the distinctively American ideologies that have produced catastrophic dysfunction in our criminal justice system. His insightful and cogently argued book will prompt fresh thinking among all who are seeking a way out of our addictive reliance on "efficient" procedure and grossly excessive punishment as the solution to every social ill." -Stephen J. Schulhofer, Robert B. McKay Professor of Law, New York University School of Law

Selling point: Offers a unique analysis of the role of free market ideology in the law and practice of criminal process Selling point: Provides a wide-ranging account of how American trust in democratic and political control pervades constitutional doctrine and statutory law as well as institutions such as elected prosecutors Selling point: Offers insightful comparisons to criminal justice systems in other common law countries Selling point: Explains how a commitment to efficiency in criminal process has led to privatization of key aspects of justice administration and has worsened the caseload burdens on courts Selling point: Integrates this new account of criminal process law with contemporary accounts of the government's ever-growing role in providing a greater degree of security against risks for its citizens Selling point: Concludes with proposals for reforms to rebuild the rule of law in the criminal process

Darryl K. Brown is the O. M. Vicars Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, and the E. James Kelly, Jr. Class of 1965 Research Professor of Law. He specializes in the teaching of criminal law, criminal adjudication, and evidence. Previously, he was the Class of 1958 Alumni Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Professor Brown has held visiting scholar appointments at the Criminology Centre and the Rothermere American Institute of Oxford University, and served as a visiting professor on the University of Georgia, University of California-Los Angeles, and University of Münster (Germany) law faculties.

Selling point: Offers a unique analysis of the role of free market ideology in the law and practice of criminal process Selling point: Provides a wide-ranging account of how American trust in democratic and political control pervades constitutional doctrine and statutory law as well as institutions such as elected prosecutors Selling point: Offers insightful comparisons to criminal justice systems in other common law countries Selling point: Explains how a commitment to efficiency in criminal process has led to privatization of key aspects of justice administration and has worsened the caseload burdens on courts Selling point: Integrates this new account of criminal process law with contemporary accounts of the government's ever-growing role in providing a greater degree of security against risks for its citizens Selling point: Concludes with proposals for reforms to rebuild the rule of law in the criminal process