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Book Review: Crime and punishment, by Paul Butler

Let's Get Free

Photo: The New Press

The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners; a prison opens in the country every week. Yet this doesn’t make Americans any safer, writes former federal prosecutor Paul Butler in Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice. He argues that crime increases when an extraordinarily high number of people is incarcerated as is the case in the U.S. Why? Because petty offenders pick up more serious crime techniques from fellow inmates; because so many prisoners are unemployable on release; because kids with a parent locked up are seven times more likely to get locked up.

Butler, a professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., outlines a better way. His most controversial idea is advocating jury nullification, a juror’s right to disregard the evidence and vote "not guilty" if prosecution seems unfair. Used strategically, Butler says, this act of civil disobedience will send the message that the U.S. has gone too far in its "lock ’em up culture." In Butler’s words, The freedom we save will be our own."