proven you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  Any questions about what a jury trial is? All right, if you wish to plead guilty you will not have a jury trial, you can sign on that piece of paper your lawyer’s giving you...”

The words flow in a high pressure torrent like the legal disclaimers at the end of a car commercial as Judge Porter races to fulfill the requirements of the Constitution. Each staccato burst of legalese is punctuated by, "You understand?" Then finally, “Anything you want to tell me, Mr. Thomas, before I sentence you? All right, sentence of three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections...” He checks the documents. “You’ve been locked up since April 29th?  The defendant is credited with 197 days in custody. All right, good luck, Mr. Thomas.”

Eleven minutes, thirty-nine seconds. Not a record by any means but right in there.

The success of Cook County’s night drug courts immediately attracted the attention of the federal government, and the Justice Department looked into it in 1994 and issued a highly favorable report. But buried in the accolades were some troubling footnotes. The researchers noticed that defendants often got probation but almost never got treatment: “This is a quick way to get rid of cases, but not necessarily in the best interest of defendants who have serious drug problems...” In other words, addicts who are given a pass on Monday will go back to the streets and get busted again on Tuesday, this time for violation of probation. Which, as Dwayne Thomas just discovered, is a cinch for three-to-five in Joliet. Thus probation, instead of an act of compassion, becomes a trap door that guarantees a trip to the pen. “They give them just enough rope to hang themselves,” says Lohraff.

The other unsettling note in the government report was the commentary from the people who work there, the lawyers, probation officers, and judges: “Night court is a production line...” “... a cattle call...” “...a mill, not a court of law.” But these reservations were far outweighed by the practical

advantages of cranking out 14,000 verdicts a year without any new real estate. Several other cities are preparing to follow Cook County into the night.

The man who, more than anybody else, is responsible for the spectacular caseload at 26th & Cal is a decorated Vietnam vet who did a tour with the first helicopter unit sent into that ill-starred war. Still lean and hungry, Commander Mike Hoke is now the top narc in the Chicago Police Department. His operation is based in an old gymnasium southwest of the Loop. The reason the narcotics squad is headquartered in the departmental gym is an interesting sidebar in itself. The building needed a new roof and the narcotics squad had a barrel of cash from confiscated drug assets. In the unerring logic of the City That Works, these two facts fit together hand in glove.

Set in the shadow of the Sox Park grandstands, the aging brick building offers no hint of its contents, and the three bearded guys in plaid shirts stashing their bowling satchels in the trunk of the blue Pontiac would not tip you off unless you were familiar with the habits of undercover cops. Up the narrow stairway, past the battery of secretaries at computer terminals, Mike Hoke issues orders from a panelled office lined with the wall plaques, photographs, and awards that speak of a career still on the move. At 45, he commands a company of 190 troops with a budget of $8 million, an operation that by itself is larger than most of the police departments in the country.

“I send out anywhere between two to ten teams a day,” says Hoke, “and we ride up to a corner where we've got a complaint.  And an undercover police officer gets out of the car, buys a small amount of narcotics, he gives a signal to an enforcement team, they ride up and take the person off to court.  It's a felony to deliver narcotics. Our conviction rate's 94 percent.”

But while this impressive level of success plays well downtown, Hoke himself is uneasy. He knows that practically everybody his guys will bring in tonight will be black or Hispanic. Like