Urban Politics and the Criminal Courts

Urban Politics and the Criminal Courts is an ambitious attempt to explore the "urban political connection" to the dynamics "Of case disposition in the criminal courts.Levin notes that most previous studies of local courts have focused on the consideration of alternate methods of selecting judicial personnel, with little attention given to the consequences of adopting one or another selection scheme. 1 Newspapers and bar leaders exhort cities to "remove politics from the courts" and to adopt a "merit" method of selection to replace the venal, pernicious political-machine way of doing things.But the assumption that somehow "better justice," or, indeed, even "more efficient justice," will emerge from these changes is just that-an assumption.Levin attempts to test this assumption by comparing-in a way to be discussed below-two courts with very different methods of selection and by attempting to evaluate the consequences of these alternate schemes.This section of Levin's book, standing alone, is a valuable contribution to the literature.Levin, however, chooses to go beyond this single important problem and address two other issues--criminal court sentencing policy and court delay.The consequences of this trifurcated approach are mixed.On the one hand, he often provides important insights, or at least new ways of thinking about these problems; on the other, he fails to develop completely the "'urban connection" analysis in these latter areas and to integrate the three topics systematically.Indeed, I wonder if it was worth the effort to attempt to link these three matters at all or if it would not have made more sense simply to present the book as a series of essays on problems of the criminal courts. 2 In any event, the somewhat confusing presentation does not substantially detract from the contributions of this book.Time and