Let's get free

Before he became a law professor, Paul Butler worked as a federal prosecutor after leaving a high-paying job at a corporate firm, having graduated from Harvard Law School. Those years in the courtroom led him to conclude that the American criminal justice system is badly flawed. In his view, it neither makes neighborhoods safer nor protects the people he had hoped to serve.

Butler examines the points where everyday people meet the justice system: serving on juries, witnessing crimes, and dealing with the police. Along the way he asks what it means to act ethically when the system itself may be compromised.

He puts forward several unconventional proposals. Jurors could vote not guilty in some nonviolent cases as a form of protest. Citizens could refuse police requests to search them. People could also decline to work within the criminal justice system. The book includes a hip-hop theory of justice, which reads crime and punishment through the lens of popular culture. Butler argues that ending mass incarceration and excessive police power would benefit everyone.