THE AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
VOLUME V SEPTEMBER, 1899
Number 2
THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF NEW YORK POLICE COURTS.
Upon this subject there is no accurate printed information : the law requires a statistical report to be made yearly by the city magistrates, but upon examination it appears that the reports are made up by a police clerk of limited statistical ability, with an apparent intention to give as little useful information as possible. Owing to an oversight both in the laws of 1895 ^"d the charter of 1897, the Board of Magistrates of the second division of Greater New York (Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond) is not required to make such a report, so that the figures available are for the first division only.
Since the docket of cases is not open to the public, it is not only impossible to find out what cases are called on a particular day, but equally so to learn what has been the disposition of each case. Cases come on with great rapidity, sometimes one a minute, averaging from forty to seventy per day in the different district courts ; not infrequently several of a similar nature come on simultaneously — in batches, as it were — as where two or three women are brought in together for soliciting on the streets. The offenses may not have been committed at the same time or place, but it is more expeditious to dispose of them in a lump. In addition, there is the confusion created by a dozen or two police officers, five or six police clerks, roundsmen, attendants,
145
