Steve Bogira offers a stark look at the American legal system. By tracking cases in a single courtroom over the course of a year, the author makes it clear that the problems he uncovers are systemic and long-term, not a few exceptional cases or worst-case-scenarios.

The racism of our laws and enforcement is laid bare here, as well as the inanity of modern prohibition. The deals cut by prosecution and defense, dictated by overcrowding of jails and courtrooms, is revealed as damaging to individuals and society. Few reporters take the time to fully explore their subjects, to invest the time that this author has lent to his subject.

As an investigative reporter, I am well impressed by Bogira's work and product. We need more of his brand of reporting and we need legal reform -- for instance, an end to plea bargaining which clears dockets but does nothing for the rule of law or justice. Hopefully this book will encourage more of both.

Bogira has his biases and they are imbedded within the narrative, sometimes to the detriment of the story. However, the stories are so compelling (at least to anyone with an interest in the subjecet matter) that the book does not really suffer. Plus, by focusing on at least a dozen different cases, the action moves too quickly to get bogged down in preaching and a fairly accurate picture of the system shines through in technicolor.

Full disclosure...I clerked at 26th and Cal in law school working on the State's Attorney side. I agree that criticism of the office is warranted (an insular culture does exist) and that personal career aspirations motivate more prosecutors to wake up every morning than a true belief that the system works.

The idea of the system as a "growth industry" hits a perfect tragicomic note. As long as drugs are illegal and ghettos exist within the city, the "demand" which creates the industry will keep many of the sons and daughters of Chicago's insular and politically adept south side gainfully employed. Meanwhile the ghetto kids of the south and west sides have a higher wall to climb. The thing about this "industry" is that the public officials who pass our laws are the masters of this "business" in ways they can't master any other market. It won't ever change until the public elects officials who campaign on the issue of rehauling the system. The book seems to suggest this but the tone is much more journalistic instead of solution-oriented.

There are tough questions to deal with here, so I'm not inclined to follow the biases of some people who have posted on this book or perhaps Bogira himself that the system can be written off as an "injustice" or that we should all just up and legalize drugs tommorow and fund a bunch of afterschool programs. This book does not leave the courthouse much, so there isn't a whole lot of reporting from the front lines of these ghettos where the violence and drug markets exist.

Further, the book tends to delight in reporting any racially-charged remarks made by the state's attorneys, the judges and the deputies. Obviously this will cause all the righteous suburbanites in California, New York, the North Shore or wherever to get all worked up about the racist system of whites oppressing blacks. Hopefully, that won't be the only thing people get out of this book. The truth is that the men and women who work there and the men and women who walk the halls as defendants or family members of the defendants are on the frontlines of the American race problem and probably have a much more comprehensive understanding of race in this country than anyone who's going to lament the injustice of all the racists and then move on to the next book their book club will read. Also, what people don't get from this book is that most of the racial joshing that goes on at 26th and Cal is done to people's faces- it's a white guy to a black guy, or a Hispanic guy to a white woman, or sometimes even a judge to a defendant- some people see this as abhorent, personally I see it as realistic and honest. This is America and the race problem is real...at least to those of us who live in a diverse community.

Anyways, I applaud and recommend the book for jumping into the criminal justice system, compiling the stories and presenting a fairly accurate portrayal of life in the system. I'm sorry if my antennae is always up when it comes to racial hypocrisy.

Bogira has his biases and they are imbedded within the narrative, sometimes to the detriment of the story. However, the stories are so compelling (at least to anyone with an interest in the subjecet matter) that the book does not really suffer. Plus, by focusing on at least a dozen different cases, the action moves too quickly to get bogged down in preaching and a fairly accurate picture of the system shines through in technicolor.

Full disclosure...I clerked at 26th and Cal in law school working on the State's Attorney side. I agree that criticism of the office is warranted (an insular culture does exist) and that personal career aspirations motivate more prosecutors to wake up every morning than a true belief that the system works.

The idea of the system as a "growth industry" hits a perfect tragicomic note. As long as drugs are illegal and ghettos exist within the city, the "demand" which creates the industry will keep many of the sons and daughters of Chicago's insular and politically adept south side gainfully employed. Meanwhile the ghetto kids of the south and west sides have a higher wall to climb. The thing about this "industry" is that the public officials who pass our laws are the masters of this "business" in ways they can't master any other market. It won't ever change until the public elects officials who campaign on the issue of rehauling the system. The book seems to suggest this but the tone is much more journalistic instead of solution-oriented.

There are tough questions to deal with here, so I'm not inclined to follow the biases of some people who have posted on this book or perhaps Bogira himself that the system can be written off as an "injustice" or that we should all just up and legalize drugs tommorow and fund a bunch of afterschool programs. This book does not leave the courthouse much, so there isn't a whole lot of reporting from the front lines of these ghettos where the violence and drug markets exist.

Further, the book tends to delight in reporting any racially-charged remarks made by the state's attorneys, the judges and the deputies. Obviously this will cause all the righteous suburbanites in California, New York, the North Shore or wherever to get all worked up about the racist system of whites oppressing blacks. Hopefully, that won't be the only thing people get out of this book. The truth is that the men and women who work there and the men and women who walk the halls as defendants or family members of the defendants are on the frontlines of the American race problem and probably have a much more comprehensive understanding of race in this country than anyone who's going to lament the injustice of all the racists and then move on to the next book their book club will read. Also, what people don't get from this book is that most of the racial joshing that goes on at 26th and Cal is done to people's faces- it's a white guy to a black guy, or a Hispanic guy to a white woman, or sometimes even a judge to a defendant- some people see this as abhorent, personally I see it as realistic and honest. This is America and the race problem is real...at least to those of us who live in a diverse community.

Anyways, I applaud and recommend the book for jumping into the criminal justice system, compiling the stories and presenting a fairly accurate portrayal of life in the system. I'm sorry if my antennae is always up when it comes to racial hypocrisy.

It seems to be an exciting look behind the scenes of a typical big city courthouse. And it is, the reader will be given an interesting and sometimes spellbinding look into the lockups, the backrooms and chambers where justice is being sought, sometimes found, sometimes not. Having spent many years in New York City courtrooms I can agree with the descriptions in this book.

However, every page is dripping with bias. You will find every liberal prejudice that ever was invented: The deputies are pretty much heartless sadistic roboters, the prosecutors overzealous apparachicks who waste taxpayers' money -and always are white, which is pretty unbelievable-, corruption among the judges is rampant -which is even more unbelievable-, and the defendants always are poor, disadvantaged minorities, who in the author's view are only victims of society and should not be held responsible for their crimes. Luckily the author found a judge, who pretty much shares this attitude.
The author only changes his view where the defendants are white. Here the judge cannot throw the book hard enough at them.

Once the reader has been numbed enough to just ignore this mantra, the book is mildly interesting. Sadly, as in most liberal descriptions of our justice system, you read a lot about the defendants, the judges, the lawyers, but almost nothing about the victims of the defendants' crimes.

Sadly, after a few pages you have already had all the information you will get. The rest of the book will only repeat the author's ideology. That makes reading this book pretty much a waste of time.

Courtroom 302 was clearly written by a journalist. It reads like an in depth newspaper article--a good one. Bogira writes as a fly on the wall, following Judge Locallo around from case to case through the Chicago criminal justice system, observing the real world facts of murder, extortion, corruption, heartache, and betrayal, while also bringing in the big picture facts of a social scientist.

Myriad stories are interwoven to show the bigger story of "justice," America style. (The quotes seem may seem more appropriate after reading the book.) The in depth investigations of each story show all the relevant sides and seem to bring out the truth almost every time. Bogira gives an honest effort at a fair showing of the facts.

He also does a great job with the statistics--de-humanized and telling. The occasional chapter of big-picture facts and statistics helps to fill out the human stories and show that they are not isolated exceptions, but mundane reality. The statistics indicate that nothing is special about these tragic stories, and that is precisely the point that Bogira wants to make.

Courtroom 302 is a frank look at the shocking injustices built into the very foundation of the criminal justice system. The judge and laywers portrayed are identified as some of the best of their class, and they can still be seen turning a blind eye to injustice for the sake of expediency. A word of warning: Courtroom 302 will shake your faith in the great institution of American justice. If you want to maintain your fragile illusions, do not read this book.

This book is a candid look at life in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse. It covers the day-to-day actions of accused criminals, court officers, public defenders, prosecutors and judges from inside the courthouse and lockups.
The book is well-written and fascinating, but at a certain point I felt that I had learned all I needed to know, and I was only halfway through te book. As much as I love hefty books, this would have been great if it hadn't been quite so long.

I found this book to be a good book to read but it also made me realize more than ever how unjust our justice system can be. The author portrays the people involved in the criminal justice system as being so mechanical at their jobs that justice just doesn't seem to enter the picture very often. Sadly the book is probably an accurate account of the Chicago court system, or any other court system in our country, but reading it made me wonder, if all this injustice is so evident to everyone involved, why is it being allowed to continue. These people who have other peoples futures and freedom in their hands seem to just find it easier to follow their routine than to do the right thing and create a criminal justice system that really does protect us and consider everyone innocent until proven guilty. This book definitely reaffirms the sad state that our court systems have become.

A must read for anyone remotely connected to or interested in the criminal justice system. It is at once informative and depressing. What makes it so valuable is that you get the back story of each participant (judge, DA, PD and defendent). The reality of a system that treats defendents with disdain and offers justice for a price should open a few eyes. I made it required reading this summer for my students doing internships in the court system.

A must read for anyone remotely connected to or interested in the criminal justice system. It is at once informative and depressing. What makes it so valuable is that you get the back story of each participant (judge, DA, PD and defendent). The reality of a system that treats defendents with disdain and offers justice for a price should open a few eyes. I made it required reading this summer for my students doing internships in the court system.

While Courtroom 302 provides an interesting look into Chicago's criminal Court, the author's style limits the book's appeal. Grammatical errors abound (whatever happened to good editing?)and there are several instances where the author contradicts his earlier statements. More importantly, the author never explores comments made by the key characters, asking why they felt certain ways or to explain and support their position. This is a glaring omission; especially when judicial misconduct or corruption is alleged.

My advice - check to book out of a library rather and spend your money on one of the other book recommended by reviewers.

This is not TV. A particular place dispensing day to day "justice" and a study of the players. Realistic look at the system. Must reading for those who wish to participate.

"Courtroom 302" is the story of one year in one courtroom in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse - the busiest felony courthouse in the country. It provides parallel perspectives from the judge, defendants, prosecutors, public defenders, and support personnel throughout this time period. Cases ranged from failure to complete community service assignments to double murders.

Clearly Bogira has his biases in this book - way too much focus on minor drug crimes (37 of 43 in one night's processing), the system's bias favoring those with private lawyers instead of overburdened public defenders, the system's bias against blacks, the vulnerability of defendants to abusive police, and the hard life of those born with mental/psychological problems and/or home abuse. However, that does not prevent him from being at least reasonably objective throughout. I was also quite impressed with how hard Judge Locallo, assigned to #302, worked, and how vulnerable judges subject to retention votes could be to political pressure when those with political clout are involved.

Interesting statistics were sprinkled throughout the book. For example, about 75% of those brought to the felony court were convicted, and of those just over one half sentenced to prison - the rest mostly received probation. About 80% of the guilty please come from plea-bargains, generally associated with lighter sentences than likely otherwise.

Summarizing, "Courtroom 302" was difficult to put down, and well worth reading.

I found this book to be a deeply revealing look at our criminal justice system. Most parts, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry as it became evident that there's very little justice that really goes on in our justice system. All of the hidden agendas uncovered on the part of the judges, attorneys, police officers and even courtroom clerks is very disturbing when we consider that we are at their mercy to administer laws, justice and legal representation fair and impartially. It is depressing to me that I have now become so disillusioned with the quality of our legal system and realize that it is over-wrought with flaws that are so historically embedded, that it seems unrepairable.

At his best, the author is like a responsible judge. He makes sure we, the jury, hear all of the relevant facts; and a fascinating, three-dimensional story about a year in the life of this courtroom emerges: full of injustice, justice, evil, good, and of course, contradictions. Ultimately we can't help but reach a fair verdict about the shortcomings of our criminal justice system.

At his worst, the author is like a bad prosecutor. He is building a case, carefully selecting anecdotes or studies from outside the doors of Courtroom 302 in order to draw conclusions about everything from the war on drugs to police brutality-conclusions that we probably would have reached on our own had he just allowed us to hear the whole truth.

The author does a remarkable job of drawing you in to the mechanics of a court in the 'real world'. It is true that the writer has a liberal viewpoint but this does not dampen the impact of the direct quotes he uses. The writing is thoroughly engaging and the 'story' kept me interested. Being from Chicago I understood the racism and corruption inherent in the system so I may have read it with more ease than others. It is an unflinching look at a system that tries to work and would be valuable reading for anyone interested in the field of criminal law.

More people should read Steve Bogira's COURTOOM 302: A YEAR BEHIND THE SCENES IN AN AMERICAN CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE. Bogira is well known here in Chicago for the thoroughly researched, incisive and penetrating long articles he writes for Chicago's READER. The book format--plus actually more than a year's research--lets Bogira stretch out and build his case. Conclusion: the exciting and appalling world of Chicago justice makes us draw exciting and appalling conclusions about the justice system throughout the USA.

To begin, Bogira introduces us to the hard realities of criminal justice in the Windy City, "the biggest and busiest felony courthouse in the nation." Civics classes teach us that justice in the USA is a matter of The Individual, confronting his accusers. But in reality the overloaded system makes more sense when analyzed as a flow, a long and never-ending stream of the freshly arrested who have to be processed before they can be prosecuted -- usually for fairly minor drug-possession charges.

We get to get inside the head of one of Cook County's best jurists, Criminal Courts Judge Daniel Locallo. Locallo is thoughtful, caring and sensitive, but nobody is perfect in this highly imperfect system. The accused's day in court is rarely more than a mumbled exchange between state's attorney and state-supplied defense lawyer, setting dates and usually plea-bargaining out. It does indeed seem to be the case here that many people who could probably survive a not-guilty plea in open trial are urged to plead out and take a relatively minor length of imprisonment. And, in our politicized Cook County system, judges must run for re-election, entailing the consequent fund-raisers and appeals.

Much of the book deals with two accused criminals who face Locallo's bench, whose reception and treatment couldn't be much different. One is an African-American man who might get sent to prison for most of the rest of his life for dealing with a few grams of crack cocaine. The other is a white teenager from Bridgeport -- Mayor Daley's home neighborhood -- who viciously attacked and left for dead a prepubescent black boy from the projects whose only crime was being in a de facto whites-only area on a late summer afternoon.

Laws are applied scrupulously, but maybe the law is the problem -- that and the fact that Cook County judges have wide sentencing latitude. Dealing small amounts of drugs can send the accused to jail for decades, yet the path--including public protest--that the Bridgeport youth's trial takes ultimately leads to a pseudo-conviction that in no way carries the distinguishing marks of justice.

Of course, Chicago isn't alone in these types of glaring hypocrisies. Consider that under California's "three strikes" concept of sentencing, a bicycle thief can go to prison for most of the rest of his life while corporate white-collar criminals who have ruined the life pensions of thousands go scot-free.

The sad truth is that the system is growing every day, while more and more public prosecutors are hired, more and more "zero tolerance" laws become statutory, and more and more downstate towns vie to host the latest minimum-security prisons. And in Chicago, despite or because of Bridgeport support and publicity, a youth who already has something of a record can beat a black kid half to death and walk. Because of the way the laws are written -- AND interpreted -- there is indeed one standard of justice for white homeowners and another for minorities.

Brilliantly told and realized, I give COURTROOM 302 my highest recommendation. Anyone who wonders just how the American justice system has gone so nuclear will find cogent answers in this book.

Happily, Amazon offers COURTROOM 302 at a substantial discount, because the retail price I paid for this shortish book was way too much in terms of physical presentation; it's deckle-edge pages, simplistic cover and perfunctory binding do not justify a physical product in the mid twenties of dollars. For those who might wish to save a little more yet, a trade paperback is in the works. I hope lots of people read this book, and that it finds a secure home in book-discussion groups and classrooms throughout the country.

Steve Bogira chooses to live in Evanston, the same town I live in. Evanston is a prototypical "liberal" community. Anchored by Northwestern University, the town is filled with do-gooders who don't do a lot of thinking, but do make a lot of pompous gestures, such as declaring the city a "nuclear-free" zone, banning handguns and a enacting a host of other feel good laws and resolutions. Evanston is safely separated from the real world of inner-city Chicago some 12 or so miles distant. Inner-city Chicago has a very high minority population, a large percentage of which is black and the product of one-parent households. Unemployment among this community is high, education low, drug use high. The result is what Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted in 1964: crime and poverty. (Moynihan, a political liberal, was widely jeered for his study which basically held that the deterioration of black family structure would lead to disaster, including - amazingly - crime and poverty.)

If Bogira could have kept stereotypical leftist bromides out of his book and retained an objective point of view, he could have produced a serious and valuable study of the operation of a single, unusually large criminal court system. Everyone in Cook County, Illinois knows that its court system, like its political structure, is corrupt, inefficient and dysfunctional. The indictment, trial, conviction and carting off to prison of Chicsgo politicians, goverment workers, police officers, lawyers and the more than occasional judge are no more remarkable than robins in spring.

Bogira has been a staff writer for The Chicago Reader, a so-called alternative newsweekly for 23 years. The Reader is what you would expect of a publication that aims for young adults, delights in four-letter words, exposes of how evil and corrupt the system is --- while never going so far as to offend the amazing number of advertisers whose pandering to materialism and fad spiritualism render the folded tabloid almost two inches thick every week. In other words, the Reader is a mecca of hypocrisy: social "conscience" with ads for the trendiest hair salons and places to be seen.

Bogira's work must be read and viewed in this context. The biases of the author must be filtered out. For Bogira, all too often, life is a collection of stereotypes. African-Americans are victims of racism. Bogira pays scant attention to victims. They are forgotten almost out of hand. He lacks the capacity for reflection and doesn't seem to grasp that the defendant in one of his vignettes is the teen-aged son of a woman who herself hasn't reached the age of 30 is also the child of a teen mother. Another of Bogira's defendants is small time drug dealer, uneducated, unskilled. For him it's "deal or steal." Bogira would have us believe that it is society that has failed the defendant, even while repeating the words of the defendant that he knows he must either shake the drug habit he supports through criminal acts or go back to prison. The contradiction appears to escape Bogira and he never asks who this criminal might be selling drugs to and what they might be doing to "earn" the money for their purchases. Instead Bogira heaps scorn on the "war on drugs."

In short Bogira pays no attention to the nature of criminals; he does not reflect at all on why a 16 year old girl stole a gun from her father and uses it to kill one of her lovers. He does not examine the psychology of his thieves, murderers and drug-dealers, thinking it enough to lament how cruelly society treats them. (A balance for Bogira's sympathetic treatment of criminals is "A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun : The Autobiography of a Career Criminal by Razor Smith," an excellent autobiography of a British career criminal that reveals the utter selfishness of the criminal mind."

Bogira, aside from his politics of blaming everyone but the criminal, does well at telling the myriad stories of the forces and dynamics of a big city criminal court. It is not pleasant. There is no happy ending. Bogira is correct that the criminal court system in Cook County, Illinois is dysfuntctional. It does not dispense justice: it meets quoatas for "dispos" (dispositions). Those who can't afford a lawyer - which includes a broad swatch of the population, including all races - don't receive the Constitutional promise of fair trials. The police often lie as, of course, do the defendants. The judges are not necessarily thoughtful or compassionate.

Overall, Courtroom 302 is a worthwhile read for anyone concerned with the state of our society. Thoughtful readers approaching the book without an agenda may be moved to demand reform of the system so criminals are taken out of our society and that the criminal justice system works to protect us, not the criminal.

Jerry

I lived for several years in southside Chicago, so I thought a book about the criminal justice system would just be fascinating. And it was. For a while. After about half the book, it was so depressing I could not go on. The miscarriages of justice, the pure volume of criminals, juries being juries and the overall sorry state of affairs in southside Chicago was just too much. I thought the writing was sharp and interesting, but it was like watching 20 straight episodes of Law and Order, but there is never a happy ending (ok, there were a couple okay endings, but not enough to revive me).

I think this is a must read for anyone considering either a career in criminal justice or being a criminal (though my advice to criminals is not likely to reach its audience). It's a very interesting read for everyone, but be forewarned: it is pretty depressing.

I found "Courtroom 302" exceptionally interesting and most decidedly revelatory. Steve Bogira reports the true, on-going story of abnormally distributed justice from within our nation's busiest criminal courthouse. "Courtroom 302" uncovers the good, the bad and the ugly realities of our criminal justice system and Bogira's story-telling style makes the book an exciting page-turning read. I found it difficult to put down and I read it in three sittings. I predict Pulitzer.

Steve Bogira's profile of Chicago's Courtroom 302 shows American justice as any thinking person might imagine it to be -- that is, at once civilized and enlightened and terribly human. Everyone involved in the court's proceedings, other than the defendants and observers outside the plexiglass barriers, are there to do a job -- and as with any job, workers are in a position to think not only of their own personal moral and ethical codes, but of the codes of other people and institutions involved (the police, probation officers, judges' associations, politicians, etc.). Bogira's job, it seems, has been to observe and report on not only the goings-on each day in this courtroom, but to unearth the layers of complexity that such competing values have in our justice system. In doing so, he's provided a richly detailed and nuanced look at a subject we all take for granted is simpler, until we ourselves are ensnared in it.

And ensnared is what we become in "Courtroom 302." Bogira draws the readers in with innumerable trainwrecks for rubberneckers to gawk at -- cases from present and past that could easily fill the season's lineup cards for TV's cop-and-court shows. The one narrative-thread defendant we see most often is a small-time drug abuser named Larry Bates, a 40-ish black man who can't stay on the straight and narrow even when his life makes promising turns. While the larger cases in Bogira's tale hold our attention most, it's Bates who holds the key to the primary message of the book. Bates becomes Bogira's exemplar of the cog in the machine -- while the court most often shows mercy on Bates, the interminable waits he must endure because of his poverty and the limited help he gets in solving his problems show how little that mercy comes to mean when one is dependent upon our bureaucracy of social assistance.

If Bogira uses Bates to show readers the perspective of those who typically stand before the bench, he also provides a detailed and surprising look at someone behind the bench, in the person of Judge Daniel Locallo. While Bogira gives short-shrift to the backgrounds and complex lives of the Chicago cops, prosecutors and public defenders he mentions in the story, he gives ample space to the details of defendants' circumstances -- as if to stress continually the pity we ought to feel for most of those caught in the dragnet of police enforcement. Still, I thought these tales-of-woe weren't completely convincing because Bogira doesn't get a clear picture of these defendants -- mostly he gets what they tell him. But with Locallo, he provides a fuller view -- the fullest view in whole book. Because of he has access to details of Locallo's background (his father was a Chicago PD detective), his career milestones and goals (as prosecutor and judge), his countless (and written) decisions, as well as access to so many people's experience with Locallo in the courtroom, Bogira is able to provide a complex portrait of this justice that the writer can't carry off with any other characters here. Here, we see Locallo at his most callous and ass-covering and willfully obtuse (bordering on corrupt) -- but we also see him as exceedingly fair-minded, thoughtful and merciful, often in the face of trying and even threatening circumstances. The complexities of the court exemplified in Locallo are why this book is really worth reading.

Overall, I was disappointed in Bogira's simplistic conclusions about those charged with crimes as well as those who work within the less heralded parts of the criminal justice system (cops, correctional types, PDs, probation officers, etc.). He seems to come at his subject believing that cops are corruptible, violence-prone racists and that all "perps" are misunderstood victims of circumstance. For example, the author implies more than once that police likely frame defendants by themselves dropping packets of dope at the site and saying the perp dropped them. This is some seriously mixed up logic, especially when many of the drug arrests in his book turn out to be repeat offenders. Bogira himself seems surprised when he discovers (and he reveals to us) that almost all of the defendants in his profile are guilty of what they've been charged with and, further, continue to break the law once out of jail.

Bogira's answer to this seems to be to criticize laws themselves as well as enforcement initiatives -- specifically, the war on drugs. He implies throughout "Courtroom" that the innumerable drug arrests clogging Chicago's courtroom dockets and jails are wastes of the court's time and taxpayers' money, and neglects to round out his personal (and preconcieved) conclusions with a recitation of facts and studies about the damage drug dealers and drug users do to individuals, communities and society in general. The answer is not to simply arrest drug users and dealers and process them through the criminal justice system. But neither is the answer to wink at people taking drugs or selling small amounts in order to fund their own habits. The scope of Bogira's book is limited such that he can't address necessarily complex solutions to any of the problems he reveals.

Perhaps in the end, one whole year in the life of this courtroom is too long a time span. Bogira can only give us quick looks at issues here before moving on to other cases, other people, other problems. Perhaps a "Mrs. Dalloway"-day-in-the-life is taking it too far, but by limiting the scope of this profile, Bogira may have been able to draw more balanced portraits of the people he includes here -- and as a result may have been able to see himself how much more complex situations are than he portrays.

To this end, I think some supplemental reading is in order. Readers might want to look into Ted Conover's "New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing" and "Blue Blood" by Ed Conlon, for starters. Conlon's profile of NYC cop life is full-bodied and as complex a portrait as I've ever read. And he's not anti-anyone, but rather balanced and fair in his perspective on police, criminals and politics.

Warning - this book will definitely get you depressed about the American crimial justice system. Other reviews have elaborated on this book, and I agree with most of their analysis. This book really makes you question how "justice" is carried out in this country. No, I am not a flaming liberal, but a die-hard Republican. If this book can convince me that things need to change, I believe that is a pretty good indicator as to the depth of the problem. There are broader implications of this book - bottom line is that the world, not just the United States, needs to be spending LOT'S more money on education vs. the penal system.

The criminal courthouse in the City of Chicago sits as an enclave of legal activity in a downtrodden neighborhood on the western boundary of the city. Located within its environs are buildings that accommodate the court system, a jail that houses nearly 10,000 prisoners, and office facilities for the Cook County State's Attorney and Public Defender, two of the largest legal offices in the nation. While walls do not surround the complex, it nonetheless remains a facility unto itself. It is known by many names, from "26th and Cal" designating its address at 2600 West California to the title given it by a former presiding judge of the facility as "The Center of the Universe." Having been privileged on occasion to perform judicial duties within the confines of the courthouse, I still find it difficult to accurately portray activities in the nation's busiest criminal court facility.

But now, a far better writer than I has accomplished that task. COURTROOM 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, by Steve Bogira, is a dazzling yet disturbing view of the day-to-day activities occurring in one American courthouse and, perhaps most troubling, a chronicle of events that repeats itself in courthouses and courtrooms across the United States.

Bogira is a reporter for the Chicago Reader, a weekly independent publication. He gained access to the Cook County criminal courthouse by persuading Judge Daniel Locallo to allow him to observe the day-to-day activities in the courtroom occupied by the Chicago jurist. In that courtroom, as well as in the entire courthouse, the prosecutors, public defenders, and courtroom staff work together on a daily basis. All of these individuals shared their thoughts with Bogira. Courtroom 302 is one of dozens of courtrooms in the Criminal Courthouse grinding out roughly 30,000 criminal cases annually. Observing how that work is accomplished in this representative courtroom serves as a sobering lesson to anyone with even a minimal concern for the American criminal justice system.

The operations of Courtroom 302 represent a microcosm of criminal law in its glory and its squalor. Judge Locallo is chiefly responsible for the success or failure of the assembly line that produces the results in his courtroom. He is a hardworking and highly competent judge. He has the respect of his fellow Illinois judges, and he annually provides us with updated legal developments in criminal law. But even a hardworking jurist like Daniel Locallo can find the enormous number of cases on his docket to be overwhelming. The major offenses and brutal criminals get the vast majority of attention. For the rest, several minutes of justice are all the attention that the system will allow.

Several individual cases wind their way through the year-long narrative of proceedings in Judge Locallo's courtroom. In any judge's life the occasional significant case appears on the docket. Known in the parlance as a "heater," it is a highly publicized case involving either a sensational crime or a well-publicized defendant. For Judge Locallo it will involve three white teenagers charged with a brutal beating of two young blacks who wandered into the wrong neighborhood. The racial overtones of the crime coupled with the political connections of one of the defendants bring substantial pressure to bear on the Judge. Because judges are elected in Illinois, the case has serious implications for Locallo's career. How such a case impacts the independence of our judiciary raises important questions for anyone concerned about that issue.

Other cases raise equally important issues touching the criminal justice system. Larry Bates, a small-time drug offender, also will spend substantial time in Courtroom 302. Like many other drug offenders, Bates must confront a legal system that cannot adequately deal with the drug problem in our society. Treatment facilities cost far too much to maintain, and politicians are more eager to spend money on prisons than on treatment. For a repeat offender such as Bates, prison may be the only alternative. The system seems all too eager to meet the cost of prison in the range of $25,000 a year rather than spend far less money for treatment. Drug offenses are the gristle that clog the criminal system and prevent the wheels from turning smoothly.

COURTROOM 302 obviously is a book for a specialized audience. Those who are not attracted to the criminal justice system will not enjoy this insider's look into the law. Nonetheless, this is an important book, raising important issues that should concern many people in society. There are Courtroom 302's across the nation, and in each of those venues the effort to combat crime while still seeking justice endures on a daily basis. To those engaged in that battle or concerned about how America will confront criminal law issues in the twenty-first century, this is a book to be read and studied.

--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman