期刊名称：Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review
印刷版ISSN：0017-8039
电子版ISSN：1943-5061
出版年度：2013
卷号：48
期号：1
出版社：Harvard Law School
摘要：The majority of Americans, if they have contact with the criminal justice system at all, will experience it through misdemeanor courtrooms. More than ever before, the criminal justice system is used to sort, justify, and reify a separate underclass. And as the system of misdemeanor adjudication continues to be flooded with new cases, the value that is exalted over all others is efficiency. The result is a system that can make it virtually painless to plead guilty (which has always been true for low-level offenses), but that is now overlaid with a new system of increasingly harsh collateral consequences. The hidden consequences of a conviction may never be explained to the person choosing to plead guilty, leading to unjust results that happen more regularly and with more severe consequences than ever before.
