Injustice Every Day

Amy Bach's new book: "Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court" provides a rare and important look into the daily grind of the American justice system and the repercussions even a minor criminal charge can have on a person's life.

Bach spoke about the book this week with Matt Straquadine at AM Law Daily, and she offered an example of the toll this broken system can take. She says:

There's a story in my book about a woman in Troy, New York, who is arrested for loitering on a stoop where she'd stopped to braid a friend's hair. The judge arbitrarily set her bail at $20,000, which she couldn't afford, so she sat in jail for eight days without speaking to a lawyer. Meanwhile the grandmother moves in to take care of her five kids and she might lose her job as a nurse's assistant because she's suddenly absent from work. Later she applies for public housing but doesn't get it because of the misdemeanor charge, and she has to move away from her hometown, because now she can't afford to stay. Nobody has taken the time to add up these collateral consequences.

Bach goes on to say she wrote this book because America's court system is the country's "most unexamined public institution." While we have stats and scientific measurement for many aspects of our public life, we just assign a public defender to a case and hope it turns out ok. This kinds of measurement and reporting in absolutely crucial, and it take times and resources to do.

Bach was supported earlier in her career by a Soros Media Fellowship. This is further evidence of the need for outside resources I wrote about yesterday. Without philanthropy investing in opening up our court system, and without new media models to examine the everyday life of our courts, our justice system will continue to be opaque, unmonitored and unjust.

One of my favorite books on the court system in America - "Courtroom 302" by Steve Bogira - takes a similar approach to covering American courts. Bogira spends a year in one felony courtroom in Chicago, and through the process learns and shares more about the functions (and malfunctions) of American courts than many comprehensive studies.

And I've written here before about Courtroom Confessions by Steven Hirsch, a great blog that tells the day-to-day stories of people caught up in the system in New York City - in their own words. Take a look - only by listening to the stories of people in the system can we work on improving it.