Bernard Kerik made out pretty well for a convicted criminal. He was this close to spending time in the jail that bore his name until he became eligible to become an inmate.

Mr. Kerik’s lawyer repeatedly emphasizes that his client pleaded guilty only to two misdemeanors, not the more serious category of felonies. This is substantial for several reasons: He can vote, he can keep his coveted pistol permit, and he can keep being referred to as “Mr.” in newspapers that drop the “Mr.” for convicted felons but not for misdemeanor-ites or whatever they’re technically called.

Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty for not reporting a $29,000 loan to buy a Bronx apartment and not reporting a subsequent $165,000 in free renovations underwritten by a company that wanted a city permit. He was correction commissioner when both transactions occurred, well before he became police commissioner in the summer of 2000.

Just 19 months ago, Mr. Kerik was a national hero. His leadership after the September 11th attacks won him a presumably permanent place at Mayor Giuliani’s side and ultimately persuaded President Bush to try making him the secretary of homeland security. Then Mr. Kerik’s nanny problems derailed his cabinet ambitions, and ultimately the nanny problems proved to be the least of his problems.

This is all too bad for the rest of us, because Mr. Kerik would surely have been a better homeland secretary the Michael Chertoff, who bungled Hurricane Katrina and now seems to care more about terrorism funding for his native New Jersey than those of us really at risk across the Hudson.

But Mr. Kerik’s shady side kept him out of Washington, and put him on the defensive here. For more than a year, Mr Kerik has protested that he’d done nothing wrong and bragged about his time-consuming cooperation with prosecutors who thought perhaps he those apartment renovations were an old-fashioned bribe. Mr. Kerik did provide prosecutors with plenty of documents, but taking the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions isn’t exactly the model of cooperation — although the maneuver was perfectly legal and in Mr. Kerik’s case quite clearly advisable.

Just before the holiday weekend, Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty, and hours later the Kerik Detention Center was renamed in honor of Manhattan, which has hosted plenty of misdemeanors but never actually committed one. Whether Mr. Kerik should have been ordered to spend some time in the jail that bears his name is open to debate. But there’s an open-and-shut case that he got away with a puny fine that ultimately allows him to profit from his deceit.

Mr. Kerik’s $195,000 condo renovation was arranged by a New Jersey company with alleged ties to the mob. Mr. Kerik says he paid all the bills he received, totaling $30,000. Not bad. Mr. Kerik should have contacted Architectural Digest for a profile of the cheapest renovation if history, if he really believed the apartment fix-up only cost such a small a fraction of the actual value.

City officials pursued a hunch that Mr. Kerik received the discounted renovations as part of a deal to help the company, Interstate Industrial, win a garbage-hauling deal in the city. You can’t blame the Department of Investigation for being suspicious — after all, Interstate employed Mr. Kerik’s brother and his one-time best friend, and then just happened to fund his apartment upgrade.

Mr.Kerik was cleared of any other wrongdoing as part of last week’s plea agreement. The aggressive Department of Investigation can’t even issue a standard final report under the deal, and the Bronx grand jury looking into the case will also fade away without a formal goodbye message that could outline sketchy but legal behavior.

Bronx prosecutors pursued a bribery investigation and came up empty. He didn’t exercise the best judgment by making his office available for Interstate officials to meet with the head of the Trade Waste Commission, Ray Casey, who’s also Mr. Giuliani’s cousin. But Mr. Casey has said Mr. Kerik never tried twisting his hand, and there was no proof of any kind that Mr. Kerik did what it looked like he did. As Mr. Kerik’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said, “There was never any issue of Bernie selling his office, there was never any quid pro quo.”

This leaves open the question, then, as to why Interstate paid $165,000 for Mr. Kerik’s apartment renovations and made jobs available for his friend and brother. Perhaps Interstate thought Mr. Kerik would return the favor. Perhaps, though, is not proof.

The investigation commissioner, Rose Gill Hearn, alluded to evidence of “significant wrongdoing” that her investigation uncovered. That evidence wasn’t good enough for a courtroom, despite 18 months of hard work looking for proof hard enough to convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.

Mr. Kerik’s apartment renovations were a steal, but not nearly as good a deal as the plea deal that lets him walk away with barely a criminal record.

Reasonable observers might think Mr. Kerik was ordered to pay a stiff fine — if only to set an example for other public servants who might think about forgetting to fill out some forms. And given that Mr. Kerik’s public service wound up making him a multi-millionaire in the private sector, a hefty fine would hardly be a hardship.

But the actual amount of Mr. Kerik’s fine, above what he would have paid for the full value of the renovations, is just $13,000.

The fine is technically $221,000. But if Mr. Kerik had paid for the renovations himself, he’d have been out the full $165,000. And if he’d taken out a mortgage at the prevailing rate of 8% in early 2000, Mr. Kerik would have had to shell out a total of $208,000 including interest to pay off the loan this year.

His wrongdoing — serious enough to merit a criminal guilty plea — cost him only $13,000 beyond the fair market value of the renovations with a short-term loan. What’s more, Mr. Kerik actually profited from the experience. He sold the illicitly renovated Riverdale condo for a $290,000 profit, easily covering the total cost of the renovations and fine. Mr. Kerik’s lawyer, Mr. Tacopina, could barely muffle a chuckle when presented with the figures yesterday, saying: “We were obviously satisfied with the resolution.”