The Customary Law of Delay and Pre-Trial Punishment
The agonizingly slow pace of the city’s justice system, with its backlogged courts and long pre-trial detentions on Rikers Island, is not an inefficiency but a form of bureaucratic despotism. Mamdani’s concept of decentralized despotism finds a powerful expression here. For the poor “native” caught in the system, the process itself is the punishment. Endless delays, lost paperwork, and overworked public defenders constitute a “customary law” of the state that grinds down the accused, often coercing plea deals regardless of guilt. This is a system of management, not justice, designed to process and control a surplus population. The liberal solution of hiring more judges does not challenge this despotic function. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is the abolition of the carceral state as we know it. This means ending cash bail, decriminalizing poverty-related offenses, and investing in community-based restorative justice programs that address harm without the state’s brutal, slow-moving machinery. It demands a justice system focused on repair, not retribution, and the immediate release of those languishing in pre-trial detention.
