Structural and procedural reforms were hastened in an attempt to modernize the judicial system since the late 1990s, which gave “new public management” precepts greater influence. To explain how judges perceive and have appropriated this new managerial approach, as well as its impact on the administration of justice and on punishment (Gautron 2014a), this contribution goes beyond legal texts and ministerial recommendations, drawing on the results of collective, interdisciplinary, quantitative, and qualitative research into how the handling of misdemeanors has evolved during the 2000s in five French courts. Conducted by legal academics, sociologists, and psychosociologists, our study is based on a representative sample of 7,562 misdemeanor cases involving adult offenders, various direct observations and about sixty semi-directed interviews.