Nearly half a century after Thorsten Sellin (1928) first introduced the topic for research, the issue of discrimination in judicial sentencing is still very much with us. Thus, Richard Quinney (1970: 142), among the more provocative critics of our system of criminal justice, observes that

The mass public is often depicted as indifferent to and unaware of many facets of political life which elites deem essential to understanding the political process (Converse, 1964: 209-14, 231-41; Key, 1964: 182-85, 199-202). Yet despite its indifference to political reality as defined by elites, the general public does hold its own version of political reality - albeit a more emotional, more symbolic, and less concrete reality than elites view (Prothro and Grigg, 1960: 276-94; Edelman, 1967: 1-7, 12-19, 178-81; Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 31-34). Popular perceptions of the United States Supreme Court follow this pattern: on the one hand, most observers take for granted that the public appreciates the Court on a symbolic or mythical plane while, on the other hand, most research concludes that the masses lack factual information on this institution.

People and organizations make demands on the civil courts to settle their disputes, enforce the performance of obligations, and direct the redistribution of resources. Although the potential number of users of civil court proceedings would seem to be as numerous as individuals and organizations in a society, only some individuals and some groups use the civil courts. Furthermore, from the entire catalogue of remedies provided by law, users differentially present matters for litigation. Not all types of legal actions are demanded. Nor are the most frequent plaintiffs the most frequent defendants; some litigants predominate as plaintiffs, while others appear most often as defendants. Because of this nonrandom appearance of litigants and subjects of litigation, civil courts of first instance are daily exposed to claims of some, but not all of the people. The object of this paper is to locate and describe the principal users of the civil court system and the matters these users want adjudicated.

The social processes involved in the development of criminal laws have been studied by several scholars (Jeffery, 1957; Hall, 1952; Chambliss, 1964; Lindesmith, 1965; Sutherland, 1950; Becker, 1963). Generally, two major perspectives have guided these studies. One orientation has been the functionalist perspective (Pound, 1922, 1942; Durkheim, 1964) which stresses the emergence of moral consensus and the functional interdependence of the law with other institutions. Dicey (1920) suggests that public consensus is preceded by the origination of such ideas among elites, and is only later accepted by the mass of citizens. Such consensus, he claims, supplies the foundation for eventual legal change. An alternative view is the conflict . orientation (Quinney, 1970; Vold, 1958: 203-219; Engels, 1972; Laski, 1935) which views law as the instrument through which one interest group dominates another. In the development of workman's compensation laws, Friedman and Ladinsky (1967) trace the history of conflict and eventual accommodation between workers and factory owners.

. . . [F] ear is being swept from the streets of somethough not all- American cities.

John Mitchell, September, 1971

New York Times, 1971: IV, 16

Enterprising police are making news rather than history in the preparation of their annual reports. Dry tabulations are giving way to charts, pictures, and other illustrations that catch the eye and tell the story of the problems and accomplishments of the department.

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1966a: 58

During the 1960's, “crime in the streets” emerged as a major political issue. 1 Consequently, measurement of changes in the amount of crime also became politically important. As a candidate in 1968, Richard Nixon, recognizing this, proposed the use of the District of Columbia as a site for an evaluation of his anti-crime proposals by means of crime statistics: There is another area where the Federal Government has an opportunity to make a dramatic demonstration of its concern with the problem of crime, its commitment to new solutions and the efficacy of its proposals. That is in Washington, D.C.the nation's capital where the authority of the Federal Government is great and its prerogatives many. Washington, D.C. should be a model city as far as law enforcement is concerned-a national laboratory (New York Times, 1972).

The police have taken a suspect into custody and booked him. After the arrest, what next? At first glance, this rather simple question seems to imply an equally simple answer - the arrestee will be formally charged with a crime. Inattention to post-arrest proceedings has reinforced the assumption that judicial proceedings follow an arrest. But being booked in the police station is not the same as being charged in court. Despite the swelling of interest in the police and their use of the arrest power, there has been relatively little interest in or concern with what happens to the suspect after the arrest.