Working in Misdemeanorland

This chapter explores why criminal court actors turn to using the tools of criminal procedure and criminal law to sort, regulate, test, and manage the populations that flow through misdemeanorland. It looks at why this is done instead of adjudicating individual guilt and innocence. Drawing on organizational and field theory, the chapter examines those features of misdemeanor justice that allow for the flourishing of a managerial as opposed to adjudicative modality of criminal law administration. The analytic of the field is helpful because it allows us to understand how a pattern of activity and logic of action emerge not just from the formal goals of organizations, but from the structure of constraints actors face in a particular setting and from the precise ways individual and collective actors interact in their daily affairs. The disposition patterns and reliance on marking, procedural hassle, and performance as penal techniques can be understood as a result of creative problem solving in the face of the specific dilemmas and practical circumstances of doing legal work in misdemeanorland in the era of Broken Windows policing.