This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchez, spending time with Paul Lark and at the Heritage Foundation,

John and Barbara and Victoria Rumpel, Senior Legal Research Fellow.

Paul has written for Civitas Outlook, Civitas Institute, remarks about a new book Justice Abandon in which Professor

Barkow of NYU faults the mass incarceration system as as unnecessary, overwhelming, and clearly

the result is hundreds of thousands of young people, including young men of minority basis, are incarcerated and it could be done better.

But they're there because they took a plea deal and had to go to jail.

Something wrong with the plea deal suggests Professor Barco.

So we come now to what's wrong with the plea deal and what her

alternative would be. And I want to get to Plato soon enough, so I'll mention that some of

these recommendations, perhaps all of them, strike me as asking for people who are guardians.

That was the word that Paul reminds all of us, Plato used for his

republic, guardians of the public interest. In other words, wise men, sages, I don't know,

something beyond ordinary in seeking justice. Paul, the recommendations of Professor Barcold

makes seem attractive, but at the

same time, who's going to make these judgments? For example, she wants a decision that's the least

burdensome to the defendant. How does she explain that? Well, what she says is this.

First, she doesn't think all plea bargaining should come to an end.

But she does think it has to be far more rigorously and analyzed than it is now.

For example, the government should be allowed to engage in plea bargaining only when there is a compelling interest on its side and only when a plea is the

least restrictive means of attaining the government's end. The problem is there is nothing in

legal education or legal practice that educates lawyers, judges, or anyone else in a criminal justice system,

what a compelling state interest is.

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