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Misdemeanorland
Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing
By (author)
Issa Kohler-Hausmann
Genres:
Crime & criminology, Sociology, Judicial powers, Criminal justice law, Sentencing & punishment
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Synopsis
An in-depth look at the consequences of New York City's dramatically expanded policing of low-level offenses
Felony conviction and mass incarceration attract considerable media attention these days, yet the most common criminal-justice encounters are for misdemeanors, not felonies, and the most common outcome is not prison. In the early 1990s, New York City launched an initiative under the banner of Broken Windows policing to dramatically expand enforcement against low-level offenses. Misdemeanorland is the first book to document the fates of the hundreds of thousands of people hauled into lower criminal courts as part of this policing experiment.
Drawing on three years of fieldwork inside and outside of the courtroom, in-depth interviews, and analysis of trends in arrests and dispositions of misdemeanors going back three decades, Issa Kohler-Hausmann argues that lower courts have largely abandoned the adjudicative model of criminal law administration in which questions of factual guilt and legal punishment drive case outcomes. Due to the sheer volume of arrests, lower courts have adopted a managerial model--and the implications are troubling. Kohler-Hausmann shows how significant volumes of people are marked, tested, and subjected to surveillance and control even though about half the cases result in some form of legal dismissal. She describes in harrowing detail how the reach of America's penal state extends well beyond the shocking numbers of people incarcerated in prisons or stigmatized by a felony conviction.
Revealing and innovative, Misdemeanorland shows how the lower reaches of our criminal justice system operate as a form of social control and surveillance, often without adjudicating cases or imposing formal punishment. New & Used
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What Reviewers Are Saying
"Winner of the Herbert Jacob Book Prize, Law and Society Association" "Winner of the Albert J. Reiss Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, Crime, Law, and Deviance Section of the American Sociological Association" "Winner of the 2019 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, Eastern Sociological Society" "Finalist for the 2018 C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems" "Misdemeanorland is going to be the must-read criminal justice book of 2018."---Chris Hayes, "Kohler-Hausmann, who worked as a criminal defense lawyer in New York, peppers her book with surprising statistics and case histories drawn from her field work and interviews. She raises intriguing questions, both as a legal scholar and as a concerned citizen. . . . [An] eye-opening account of the criminal justice system's often overlooked creaky gears. . . . For anybody the least bit concerned about the subject, however, it is a worthwhile read."---Sam Roberts, New York Times "An in-depth study of misdemeanor justice in New York City. In 1994, the city initiated 'Broken Windows' (or quality-of-life) policing, under which low-level offenses-noise complaints, panhandling, public drunkenness, etc.-became important enforcement priorities in an effort to restore a 'society of civility' and prevent minor criminals from growing into major criminals. The approach, championed by Police Commissioner William Bratton, has since been widely adopted elsewhere. . . . This startling scholarly debut . . . explores what happened to all those arrests when they arrived in the criminal courts. . . . An important, first-of-its-kind book." * Kirkus * "While there has been much attention paid to the overt ways that our criminal-justice system has affected poor communities of color-both on the front end (policing) and on the back end (mass incarceration)-less attention has been directed toward what happens in the middle, when people are funneled through a confusing, bureaucratic court system that is designed to address minor crimes. Issa Kohler-Hausmann, a professor of sociology and law, helps bring this middle zone into focus in her new book, Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing. As she compellingly demonstrates, just as the police and prisons play a central role in broken-windows policing, so, too, do the courts."---Clio Chang, The Nation