Rough Justice

Heilbroner, an assistant district attorney in New York City from 1985 to 1988, here charts his disillusionment with the criminal justice system. Initially he was assigned exclusively to misdemeanor cases, of which there were tens of thousands a year, almost all of them settled through plea bargaining or dismissal of the charges. He advanced to handling felonies, and often even these more serious cases were resolved by plea bargaining. Sensitive to the plight of the defendants, most of them minorities and from deprived backgrounds, Heilbroner found that he could not develop the requisite professionalism to continue in the job. His book, although filled with the workaday details of the prosecutor's role, contains no revelations and remains a one-time ADA's undistinguished probe of a system that ``did not lend itself easily to analysis or reform.'' (Aug.)