MISDEMEANORLAND.

• Author: Ciaramella, C.J.
• Position: BOOK - Brief article - Book review

Yale sociologist Issa Kohler-Hausmann's Misdemeanor/and is a deeply researched and reported look at the operations of New York City's misdemeanor courts, where thousands of turnstile hoppers, pot smokers, and other low-level offenders churn through every year.

It's an area ripe for study. While felonious activity captures much of the attention of academia and journalism, focusing on incarceration "understates the reach of the criminal justice system and, in some sense, misrepresents the modal criminal justice encounter," she argues.

What Kohler-Hausmann finds is shocking. The rate of misdemeanor convictions in New York City dropped sharply during the era of "broken windows" policing, even as arrests for misdemeanor offenses spiked.

The reason convictions fell, she argues, is that the city's misdemeanor courts stopped performing their regular function--establishing facts and adjudicating guilt. Instead, they turned into an elaborate machine that marks, manages, and monitors offenders. It's a system for social control; convictions are somewhat beside...