NYT-

To sit on the bench in Manhattan Criminal Court is to feel the embarrassment that comes with watching fellow New Yorkers get deeply humbled.

A bailiff calls out names and charges: disorderly conduct, possession of marijuana, violating a park curfew. Men and women shuffle forward, heads hung low, and listen as a prosecutor offers more or less the same deal — whatever time they have already served in a sweaty lockup and a fine.

The judge poses a final question to each defendant: Do you acknowledge guilt?

Do you?

An hour passes, and I hanker for a more ambitious, not to mention less repentant, class of wrongdoer. Enough with the teenage mother who smoked a joint, the jewelry salesman who loitered past midnight in a park or the multiply pierced young woman who stole a ham to pay for a heroin fix.

I board the No. 4 train and ride north to a gorgeous Beaux-Arts building with a mansard roof on the corner of 40th Street and Fifth Avenue. This is the American headquarters for HSBC.

[NEW YORK TIMES]

Comments

comments