When petty crimes are committed in New York, it’s usually in the offender’s own backyard. Yet those who are most impacted—commonly residents and workers of high-crime neighborhoods—have virtually no role in determining the punishments, even though they have the most at stake to keep offenders from breaking the law again.
This disconnected feeling extends to offenders, who are often not deterred by traditional responses to low-level crimes because overburdened courts can seem bureaucratic and indifferent as they hand out damaging criminal records for minor offenses.
