The Book Prize Index

Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration

Emily Bazelon

"A renowned investigative journalist exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America's mass incarceration crisis, and also offers a way out. The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. But in fact, it is prosecutors who have the upper hand, in a contest that is far from equal. More than anyone else, prosecutors decide who goes free and who goes to prison, and even who lives and who dies. The system wasn't designed for this kind of unchecked power, and in Charged, Emily Bazelon shows that it is an underreported cause of enormous injustice--and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle. But that's only half the story. Prosecution in America is at a crossroads.

True Crime & JusticeTrue Crime & Justice · medium confidenceTrue Crime & Justice81 signalsLlm Classifier: True Crime & Justice -> True Crime & JusticeKeyword Classifier: American History -> American HistoryAward Category: Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism -> Journalism & ReportagePrisons & IncarcerationCrime, Policing & ViolenceCourts & Trials

Award History

1 wins · 3 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current InterestMajor2019WinnerSecondary source
Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism2020FinalistSecondary source
J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize2020FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (3)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • America45%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    Prosecutors’ unchecked power—undermining an assumed equal contest between prosecution and defense—is an underreported driver of America’s mass incarceration injustice, and the book argues for a way out as prosecution reaches a crossroads.

    Model confidence 77%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    38 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 78%.