Excerpt taken from The Best Things To Do in New York City: 1001 Ideas
I've gone to night court twice and I've gotta say - it's actually kind of a neat thing to do in this city. Neat and free. I didn't even know this was something that the public could attend, so of course I was into the idea after first reading about it.
Does this seem like a crass thing to want to go to? In any case, I really wanted to go purely to see what kinds of crimes most people were in for, since that seemed the most interesting to me - and it was. Some people were brought it just hours after their arrest (those were the more heated cases) and it was definitely something to see. Lot of assault cases. One guy lit someone on fire. Just madness. Definitely go and see for yourself if this kind of thing intrigues you at all. It's crazy that they just let you in to witness this stuff.