Justice Defiled: Perverts, Potheads, Serial Killers, and Lawyers

Geoff Hamilton, a former columnist for the Queen’s Journal, is a
Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

Alan N. Young is a well-known criminal lawyer and professor of law at
Osgoode Hall. In this provocative and wide-ranging indictment of our
legal system, he satirically examines its misplaced priorities and
glaring failures, advocating radical reforms intended to create “a
justice system that is responsive to the needs of ordinary people.”
Chief among Young’s targets are the emphasis placed on prosecuting
“moral” crimes such as prostitution and drug use, the
drama-mongering and inefficacy of adversarial justice, and the
insensitivity toward both accusers and the accused throughout the legal
process. A self-proclaimed heretic, Young compares himself with the
Unabomber in seeking to “shake the foundation[s]” of corruption.

This is a very unusual book. Dedicated to Young’s late father, along
with Lenny Bruce, Abbie Hoffman, and Frank Zappa, it wears its
irreverence like a gaudy badge of honour (readers offended by foul
language beware). The writing is intended as trenchant satire, and
indeed it does lay bare alarming inadequacies in our courts and law
schools. Young’s complaints about the misallocation of police funds
toward “lifestyle crimes” are compelling, as are his discussions of
the problems with adversarial justice, the perils of plea bargaining,
and the inanities of political correctness on campus. As Young argues,
“Criminal justice will never be able to adequately respond to violent,
predatory conduct if it continues to pursue trivialities and crimes of
moral offense.”

This book is, however, a little uneven in its analytic rigour, often
repetitious, and not always as insightful as it pretends to be.
Young’s glibness about complex problems is sometimes pointlessly
audacious and simple-minded, as in his recommendation that we would be
infinitely better off if all manner of consensual sex and recreational
drug use were decriminalized. He also fails to discuss judicial reforms
that have already taken place or are under way—for instance, in
conditional sentencing—and he offers no detailed plans for
implementing significant changes beyond his “kill all the lawyers”
rhetoric. Nevertheless, this remains an entertaining and intriguing book
for its impassioned insider’s condemnation of the status quo.