ABSTRACT
The tactics of the New York Police Department (NYPD) have become so ubiquitous that well over 40% of the nation’s black and Latino men will be arrested by the age of twenty-three. Yet, a high percentage of these cases are simply dismissed, including 50% of all misdemeanor cases in New York City. There is, nonetheless, a logic to this seeming madness. Courts have adopted a managerial model of law enforcement which seeks to figure out the rule-abiding propensities of people. This judicial approach corresponds with the proactive police model of crime prevention. The fear expressed in that 1971 skyjacking case, of “using scientific research to predict who might commit crimes and giving them the special attention of law enforcement agencies,” has become the guiding principle of our entire criminal justice system. The propensity of people to commit crime is measured through a “marking” process and thus even dismissals mark a defendant for a subsequent period of time. The longer it takes for judicial resolution, the longer the mark remains. In New York City, criminal felony defendants who plead not guilty can sit in jail for years before their case is heard. Even misdemeanor defendants unable to make a modest bail spent an average of two weeks living on Rikers Island, amidst accused rapists and murders, and over six months of repeated court dates before their cases were eventually resolved. Civil penalties may be even worse because criminal records are available in every state on commercial databases. Most employers run background checks, while landlords, educational institutions, loan officers, and many others routinely check an applicant’s criminal record. By tracing the experience of one individual, a security guard who was falsely arrested for trespassing, Chapter 9 illustrates how the “Bronx Gulag,” as locals call it, imposes not forced labor, but forced unemployment.
