Waiting for Justice: Measurable and Experienced Time in Courts and Prosecution

• In Event: Violence, Policing, and Criminal Law

Abstract

“Doing time” is a key feature of theoretical perspectives of the court system as primarily concerned and occupied with “managerial justice,” or the use of the criminal legal system to manage marginalized and disadvantaged populations rather than adjudicating guilt (Feeley 1979; Kohler-Hausmann 2018). However, the following aspects of criminal legal process and experience sit in tension with another: the right to a speedy trial, strategies that leverage time to pursue favorable legal outcomes, and the reality that “time is currency,” and unequally so among those who find themselves in court as defendants. In this study, we focus on this earlier-stage and common type of criminal legal contact–prosecution–to contribute to our understanding of time and temporality in the context of managerial justice and inequality: How do subjective and objective components of time and waiting shape the experience of prosecution? Through a mixed methods analysis of qualitative courtroom observations and administrative case management data, we find that waiting is central to the prosecutorial process, with effects that exacerbate the already punitive nature of the process.

Authors

• Youngmin Yi, Wellesley College

• Jamie Rowen, University of Massachusetts-Amherst