When a court handles huge numbers of minor cases, defendants often go without lawyers, judges spend only minutes on each case, and nearly everyone pleads guilty. At that volume, the court stops weighing guilt and simply moves people along to a conviction.
In the petty-offense system, the harm starts at arrest, long before any conviction. The pressure to get it over with pushes innocent people to plead guilty. Defenders keep the system going by claiming that these hearings are fair, that innocent people never plead guilty, and that the penalties are minor.
A minor conviction looks trivial on paper but brings fines and fees, a criminal record, and the loss of a driver's license, a job, or housing. These side effects trap people, most of them poor, in lasting disadvantage. Small offenses end up feeding much larger cycles of punishment.
When courts fund themselves through fines and fees charged to defendants, the system starts working as a way to collect money rather than to deliver fairness. The people who can least afford to pay are the ones it squeezes hardest.
Loosely defined 'order-maintenance' crimes give police and courts wide discretion over everyday behavior. That discretion lands mostly on poor people and people of color, so the lowest-level offenses quietly widen racial and economic divides. Because these offenses are ignored as minor, they are an overlooked engine of the whole punitive system, and enforcing them can turn deadly.