courts

The court I chose to visit was New York County Criminal Court, located on Centre street. I sat in on arraignments, which were being handled as if they were on a converor belt. This process is the first opportunity a defendant has to encounter a judge after being arrested. Most of the individuals had been arrested the day before and were then being arraigned on the following day, which goes with our notion of a …

…imagined that criminal court would come to a stand still, where the judge would be reading a newspaper. I guess this is yet another piece of evidence that crime has in fact fallen in our city. I found the thing going on when I entered the court room across the hall and found the judge to be sitting and drinking his coffee. Although I didn’t see any murder arraignments, my visit was quite pleasurable.