BOOK NOTES: Ukrainian American author's account of a year in a U.S. criminal courthouse (06/12/05)

BOOK NOTES

Ukrainian American author's account of a year in a U.S. criminal courthouse

"Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse," by Steve Bogira, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, 401 pp., $25 (hardcover).

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Ukrainian American author Steve Bogira, a staff reporter with The Chicago Reader, spent a year profiling the biggest and busiest felony courthouse in the country. The result is a highly acclaimed new book, "Courtroom 302," an intriguing story of life behind the scenes at a criminal courthouse in Chicago.

The book has been favorably reviewed by a number of mainstream newspapers, including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and New York Newsday.

Patrick T. Reardon, who reviewed "Courtroom 302" for The Chicago Tribune, said the book "is a meticulously researched examination of the workings of the criminal courts building," located in Chicago at 26th Street.

"It focuses on the people, particularly the defendants, who moved through this one courtroom over a 12-month period," Mr. Reardon wrote.

Mr. Bogira's book takes an interesting and insightful look at the day-to-day workings of one particular courthouse - dubbed 26th Street by many of the locals - and chronicles the work of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, clerks and guards in courtroom 302. The finished product is at points unflattering to its subjects, though reaction from many of them, including the court's judge, Daniel Locallo, after having read the book has been positive.

But this is not a glamorous made-for-television courtroom story, where attentive jurors lean forward to follow the legal arguments of skilled attorneys while a scholarly-looking judge presides, the author notes in the book's prologue.

It is the story of the criminal justice system in the United States as told by an author who went daily into Courtroom 302 to look at how the criminal justice system works.

"The system is run by people, but as with many systems, it often seems the other way around," Mr. Bogira writes in the prologue. "The courtroom staff works as it must, reflexively, not reflectively. The workers have no time to give much thought to any but the most extraordinary case, or to examine what they are doing."

Ultimately, the author argues that the root of the crime problem in the United States is poverty and the problem could be solved by providing people with better jobs, better schools, better housing and better health care. Instead, he says, the criminal system and the courts are content with handling crime just as they always have, through the courts.

"The book intends to show more of what's typical about a courtroom," Mr. Bogira writes. "It is about how justice miscarries every day, by doing precisely what we ask it to."

In a review of the book, author Ted Conover, writing for The New York Times, called the book "excellent" and said "Courtroom 302 also shines in its intimate portrait of a judge and his work."

The book can be purchased at most large book sellers.

| Home Page |