Criminal Justice Reform
By: Baher Hussein
Tags: Race Relations, Politics, Criminal Justice, Inequality, Criminal Justice Reform

More than any other developed nation, the U.S imprisons its population for crime control. Although the prison boom in the U.S is only a recent phenomenon; many argue that prison is a systemically racist institution that overwhelmingly targets African Americans and other minorities so as to keep them from enjoying equal opportunities in the economic and social fabric of society. Here, the literature shows us that African American’s, more than any other group, are more likely to be pulled over and targeted by the police. What the literature does not show us is that African Americans are culturally and genetically pre-disposed to commit more crime — this is sometimes an argument made on the political right. There has been no viable evidence for this racist paradigm.

The 13thamendment states the following: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”. The phrasing of the 13thamendment begs the question: Why is it that slavery is still permitted for punishment for things such as “crime”? The danger of the language here is evident: the word “crime” can be used as an incentive for law enforcement and other institutions to conspire against African Americans by putting them in jail, so they can ensure their role as 2nd class citizens.

As a matter of fact, the useless so called “War on Drugs” (initiated by Richard Nixon and continued by Ronald Reagan) — has shown us how institutions have historically hindered the progress of the African American community. To expand, it is proven that during the Nixon years and onward — the CIA put drugs into African American homes to keep them less powerful and economically active. In other words; the C.I.A kept African Americans from politically, socially and economically flourishing by associating them with heroine. This served as a mechanism to keep African Americans disenfranchised after they gained basic and mandatory freedom after the civil right era.

Today, many argue that the days of institutionalized racism are over and that we live in a post racial world — a world in which the prison system only disadvantages those who commit crimes. However, this is not entirely evident — as law codes from the war on drugs era are still prevalent today. Notably, many of those in our prison system are locked up for non-violent “crimes” — and an alarming number of these subject are African American men. This in itself inhibits the progress of many in the African American community; since disenfranchising one group only leads to the stagnation of that particular group. To expand, when African American men are locked up and pushed out of the family for a non-violent drug offense — How will the son or daughter of the person convicted be expected to flourish politically, socially and economically?

So, who profits from mass incarceration and slave labor in public prisons? Big corporations’ profit of off cheap labor in American prisons. The term for this phenomenon is the Prison Industrial Complex — which describes the bureaucratic and political interests that encourage increased spending on prison, regardless of the actual need (Schlosser, The Atlantic, The Prison Industrial Complex). From the perspective of an intellectual like Antonio Gramsci, this so called “Prison Industrial Complex” would be an invention of the bourgeoisie class to keep the proletariat distracted and disenfranchised from revolution. Here, it may be African Americans that are taking the place of the proletariat, since they are being distracted from revolting through mass incarceration. This may seem far-fetched, but keep in mind Nixon and Reagan tried to keep African Americans from political, economic and social empowerment through the War on Drug’s.

As of December 1998, the prevalence of illegal drug use among white men was approximately the same as that among black men, black men are five times as likely to be arrested for a drug offense. As a result of this, about half the inmates in the United States are African-American. One out of every fourteen black men is now in prison or jail. One out of every four black men is likely to be imprisoned at some point during his lifetime. As of 2018, how much have these numbers really shifted? Here, I argue that the poisonous crime bills that have historically been passed by both sides of the political isle have overwhelmingly disadvantaged the African American community. An example of this is Bill Clinton’s Violent Crime Control Act.

In all, we need a criminal justice system that only locks up the most barbarous and cruel human beings; not those who have not harmed the public safety or infrastructure. The more we lock people up, the more the trust between law enforcement and poor communities erodes. When our institutions are incarcerating people in mass numbers, we are creating a generation of children without parents. Not only this, when people are locked up for petty crimes, they lose vital opportunities in the free market.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a perverse incentive for corporations to profit of off people going to prison. Shockingly, the privatization of public prisons is a common phenomenon around the United States. As a matter of fact, prisons have become similar to businesses. Private prisons even have interest groups that represent them in congress. Perhaps the beginning of this phenomenon we call the prison industrial complex came with the Rockefeller drug laws — which was a set of laws enacted by Governor Rockefeller — which ensured that those who committed drug crimes would serve life sentences with no chance for parole. Obviously, the social and economic consequences of such legislation was detrimental.

The Rockefeller drug laws put young minority males and females behind bars for carrying small amounts of drugs. This policy obviously inhibits the political, economic and social growth of poor children. Meanwhile, rich white wall street executives sniff cocaine in their offices without consequences. Our approach when combating drug problems is to treat excessive drug use as a national health and social issue. Here, we must provide the adequate support services needed to overcome our current drug epidemic. Our approach should not be to break up families and communities — it should be to promote growth in poor communities and create a healthy relationship between citizens and law enforcement.

The Barbaric Policing of People of Color

The Racialization of Crime and Punishment, results in a culture of fear and intimidation in communities of Color in the Chicago area. For its part, Chicago holds a grotesque legacy of police brutality against People of Color, hence, one could effortlessly explore historical instances of police brutality in the city. Indeed, Chicago will provide us a useful framework for deconstructing and exploring the mass incarceration and degradation of minority communities (specifically African Americans) apropos the oppressive security apparatus.

Surely, it is very challenging to dispute the dramatic escalation in criminalization and incarceration in the United States these past 35 years — as a consequence of the War on Drugs and the rise of mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and other felonies(Brewer, R. M., & Heitzeg, N. A., 2008). Unfortunately, the poor and People of Color, particularly African Americans, are dramatically overrepresented in these statistics at every level of the criminal justice system. Even now, as the city of Chicago is planning to put behind its inhuman and intolerant drug laws — Marijuana arrests in Chicago have plummeted, but blacks are still the ‘vast majority’ of cases (Main, F, 2018).

Noticeably, the barbarity of the Chicago Police Department is both a historical and a modern widespread epidemic that unanimously effects black, brown and poor citizens. For instance, in 2014, Chicago paid 54.2 million dollars in settlements for police misconduct (most of the cases affecting People of Color and the poor), (Ackerman, S, 2015).Sadly, police inhumanity in Chicago often takes physical forms and is nothing unfamiliar.For instance, Historian Jeffery A. Alder claims that from the years 1910 to 1920, African American’s made up 3% of Chicago’s population, but were 21% of police homicide victims (Gershon, L.2019).

Regrettably, the savagery of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has always been relentless — as an online 10,000-document-strong archive published in 2016 shows us — the use of torture by officers has been widespread from the years 1972 to 1991(Lantigua-Williams, J, (2016). In fact, in this time frame, the most inhuman cruelty in CPD history was curated by Ex-Chicago police commander Jon Burge, who was linked to the torture of more than 100 suspects. Burge once led a crew of rogue detectives accused of torturing mostly black men with cattle prods and guns (Press, A. 2018).

To expand, in the book: My Midnight Years: Surviving Jon Burge’s Police Torture Ring and Death Row, Ronald Kitchen paints a haunting picture of Burge’s lack of humanity, stating that: “Burge and his men used whatever lay at hand to perpetrate their enhanced interrogations: people in custody were suffocated with plastic bags, burned against radiators, pistol whipped, had gun barrels placed in their mouths, took beatings with baseball bats and flashlights, had their fingers vised in bolt cutters, and felt nooses tightened around their necks. Burge’s favorite implement was an electrocution device he had used against enemy prisoner in Vietnam. A rewired telephone unit called the Black Box, it was employed on dozens of victims who received electric shocks all over their bodies: ears, chest, armpits, testicles and penis” (Kitchen, R., Jones, T., & McBride, L. M. (2018).

The case of Burge’s sadism and malice illustrates to the exploitation and degradation of People of Color in Chicago — as well as the lack of accountability in the CPD bureaucracy and the courts. This begs the question: How could such an inhuman phenomenon occur in the land of institutions and constitutional exceptionalism? Indeed, it appears that the CPD only applies constitutional principles to the wealthy, white skinned citizens in higher income areas.

To prove this, one may not need to look beyond the investigation published on December 7, 2015 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), along with the Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, into the conduct of the CPD and the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). Indeed, the parties involved in investigating the CPD fiercely attacked the departments misconduct, cruelty, excessive use of force and constitutional negligence (Investigation of the Chicago Police Department, United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of Illinois January 13, 2017).

Specifically, the DOJ and the other parties involved in investigating the CPD found reasonable cause to believe that the CPD has and still is engaging in tyrannical and unlawful practices, such as the use of unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects from unlawful searches and seizures. Indeed, the chaos and thuggery curated by the CPD is never ending. As a matter of fact, the CPD has been found guilty of using deadly and unnecessary force in certain incidents. Specifically,the CPD has earned a reputation for using dangerous and unnecessary foot pursuits and other unsound tactics that often result in the unnecessary shooting of unarmed citizens.

To further document the plight of People of Color under the brutal governance of the CPD apparatus — A September 2014 report by the grassroots effort, We Charge Genocide, prepared for the United Nations Committee against Torture, examines police violence against Chicago’s Youth of Color and confirms the narrative that the CPD is one of the most unethical, unprofessional and corrupt police departments in the nation (U.N, We Charge Genocide, 2014).

Specifically, the report cites tremendously alarming statistics. For instance, in 2012, of the 22,877 arrests made by The Chicago Police Department of youth under age 18, 79% were Black/African American. Similarly, from 2009 to 2011, 92% of taser uses involved Black or Latino targets, including 49 youth ages 8 to 16. Moreover, Black citizens are 10 times more likely than white citizens to be shot by a Chicago police officer. Lastly, in the first 6 months of 2014 in Chicago, of the 27 citizens that were shot by police, 23 of them were black.

These statistics are haunting and gruesome on their own, and to make matters even worse — accountability and justice never manifest as a result of them. For instance, of the 1,509 excessive force complaints made against the CPD, only 2% resulted in a penalty of any kind, and of the 10,735 general complaints, again, only 2% resulted in a penalty of any kind.

Truly, the ferocious and callous behavior of many CPD personnel is inexcusable. It’s physical and psychological effects on young people of color is tremendous. For instance, a 22-year-old Black man explains in vivid details in the following passage how CPD officers physically assaulted him, causing permanent bodily injury that will impact the rest of his life:

“And so last year, I flame up the blunt, they hit the sirens… I come out, put my hands behind my head “Get on the ground, get on the ground!” Cool, I get on the ground. Next thing I know, I wake up in the back of a police station, and I don’t even know what happened to me to be honest with you, that’s how bad they beat me. I guarantee you. I’m sitting in the Cook County Jail…with twenty-two stitches in my tongue, two facial fractures, bruised ribs, scrapes all over the body, I still can’t talk right to this day. I can’t eat certain things… I had an orbital fracture, a nasal fracture, like, say that had to stitch my tongue back together, I almost didn’t have no tongue. Like it was literally hanging on by a thread, I could feel it, like, I could feel my tongue at my chin…Yea it’s stuff that I shouldn’t have done but at the same time, I came out willingly. I came out with my hands up, giving myself in. There’s no reason to use force like that… now I can’t even go back and file reports or sue the police officer, get the badge numbers or nothing. Like the scarred me outta my whole life (U.N, We Charge Genocide, 2014)”.

This heartwarming passage revealsto us the predicament of People of Color, as this story sounds way too familiar to People of Color in Chicago and elsewhere. Noticeably, all of this cruelty against African American’s both historically and presently and the general citizenry’s complacency with it can all be linked back to the concept of stereotyping. To be more specific, Kelly Welch of Villanova University, claims that:

“The stereotyping of Blacks as criminals is so pervasive throughout society that “criminal predator” is used as a euphemism for “young Black male.” This common stereotype has erroneously served as a subtle rationale for the unofficial policy and practice of racial profiling by criminal justice practitioners” (Welch, K., 2007).

This passage illustrates to use the importance of deconstructing ideological stereotypes of Blacks as criminal predators — as this will help deprogram many CPD personnel to understand that People of Color, specifically African Americans, have a rich cultural heritage that has been hijacked by their white oppressors that has imagined them as criminals.

Moreover, to combat police brutality in the CPD apparatus, we must properly dissect the problem — which entails understanding that the problem does not just concern a couple of bad apples but is instead an institutional one. To expand, an institutional and organizational dissection into CPD conduct will provide us a richer explanation as to why such atrocities are taking place. This will help us answer a vital question: Is the CPD’s blatant disregard for the lives of the poor and people of color a product of institutional racism? The answer is undoubtably, yes. To prove this statement, one needs to look no further than the “investigatory stops”, which are a key source of racial differences in police-citizen interactions, as well as the “administrative evil” that disproportionately effects People of Color.

To combat these implicitly racist policies, police departments and the institutions surrounded by them must adopt formal and informal processes that create a culture that has a positive implication for people of a particular race or status, instead of the negative ones we see now. This can perhaps be achieved by removing incentives for police officers to make formal and informal contact with citizens and suspects, and this could be achieved by removing ticketing and arrest quotas (Menifield, C. E., Shin, G., & Strother, L. (2019).

Moreover, treacherous and irresponsible training in the CPD and in police departments around the country promote a lack of trust between police and local communities. To expand, police should have better methods of training and tools at their disposal that will help them deescalate situations more safely and effectively, therefore, they will be less likely to engage in unnecessary foot pursuits and treacherous shootings of unarmed civilians. This will build a healthy relationship between police and People of Color that has been so desperately fractured right now.

Noticeably, young Black residents are tired of being stopped and suspected of engaging in criminal activity just based on their appearance, and similarly, Latino’s are also tired of the guilt by association tactics of the CPD. Again, a dialogue must ignite between law enforcement and People of Color, thus resulting in a healthier and more productive relationship between law enforcement institutions and People of Color. In other words, law enforcement and People of Color should not be at odds with one another, but should instead work together to make our beautifully diverse communities safer and happier. It will take a lot of work for police to regain the trust of People of Color.

Most importantly, the accountability that People of Color have been denied forever is desperately desired on all levels of the criminal justice system. This can be achieved through enforcing police body cameras, diversifying police departments, and disrupting as well as reforming traditional bureaucratic police procedures that have been traditionally at odds with the interests of the poor and People of Color.

Unfortunately, CPD does not investigate or review incidents of excessive use of force, and this promotes the continuation of tyrannical behavior. Again, the use of body camera’s, the removal of ticketing quotas and a complete end to the useless War on Drugs will only help communities of color to achieve the safety and prosperity they deserve in their communities.

As a matter of fact, the whole ethical compass of the CPD needs to be reformed, as many of their personnel are rotten to the core. For instance, many CPD officers seem to be engaging in any behavior they like, and the many reports of sexual assaults by CPD personnel prove this to us. For instance, one woman describes the horrible and grotesque creepiness that one CPD officer manifested:

“I was walking to the bus when a police officer called out and said, “Hey you, come here girl with all of that ass.” I ignored the comment unaware of where it was coming from until he pulled up on the curb to block my path in his undercover cop car. He jumps out and yells “Didn’t you hear me calling you girl?” I replied simply by saying, “No my name isn’t girl with all of that ass.” He got very mad and slapped me saying I was disrespectful and saying, “Don’t you know who I am?”…I began to fear him so I slowly backed away and he ran up and choke-slammed me saying I insulted an officer and was under arrest, when people started to come and look he handcuffed me, placed me in the back seat, and drove away. When we stopped at an alley, I realized he wasn’t taking me in . . . He got out of the car, came to where I was and tried to rape me” (U.N, We Charge Genocide, 2014).

This passage illustrates to us the lack of accountability and conscious embedded in the CPD ethos. Often, CPD personnel behave like brutes and receive no consequences, and in this case, when the women tried to report the police officer for his misconduct, she was sent to prison (Giroux, H. A., 2016).Again, the behavior of the CPD is often laissez faire and treacherous, which is why the community must have the power to monitor and report such conduct, and, in turn, those responsible for such egregious behavior must be held accountable. Perhaps the CPD should focus more on training and applying valuable ethical systems into their work, instead of wasting all their time engaging in reckless behavior and fulfilling arrest and ticketing quotas that effect the poor and People of Color.

In conclusion, detailing instances of mass incarceration and inhumane police brutality has helped us paint a picture of the struggles of people of color (especially African Americans) with living in freedom, safety and harmony in their own communities, due in part by the repressive security apparatus in the city of Chicago. Examining historical records and deconstructing policy and old ideological notions against People of Color has helped us fully grasp the brutality and institutional racism of the Chicago Police Department.

FILM REVIEW

When They See Us, Netflix, 2019, 40 minutes, Director Ava DuVernay

A timely example of Institutionalized racism in America is the 1989 Central Park Jogger case. In this case, the New York Police Department (NYPD) employed unethical methods to generate false confessions. In addition, various media institutions constructed innocent Black and Latino boys as bestial savages. Indeed, the Racialization of crime and punishment, the stereotyping and racial profiling of Blacks, as well as the overrepresentation of Blacks in local television news stories helps construct young innocent black boys as bestial savages.

Released in May 2019, When They See Us documents the wrongful conviction of Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaa, Korey Wise and Raymond Santana — a group of schoolboys in Central Park on the night of April 19th, 1989 — the same night 28-year-old Trisha Meili is violently raped while going on a night jog. These schoolboys are taken into NYPD custody and are forced to make false confessions. In these eerie and unsettling moments, DuVernay employs gruesome reenactments to successfully convey the feeling of terror and intimidation that NYPD officials instilled into these innocent young boys so as to force false confessions out of them.

Later on, these same brave victims of abuse by the NYPD decide to withdraw these forced confessions and go to court to prove their innocence. In the chilling court room reenactments, we see the lengths Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer is going to construct innocent Black and Latino boys as bestial criminals, even though she and the Manhattan District Attorney Sex Crimes Chief Linda Fairstein know deep down that these innocent boys are not involved in the crime.

In one chilling scene, Lederer confronts Fairstein on the lack of evidence and heavy use of fabrications involved in the case against the young teens — and Fairstein is thrown into a frenzy about how Black and Brown citizens are thugs and are turning our streets lawless, hence, they should be prosecuted anyway. Indeed, DuVernay’s masterpiece is filled with chilling racial overtones that could not be timelier — as it perfectly captures the negative effects that the fictitious fears of lawlessness that the George H. W Bush and the later Bill Clinton years have had on People of Color in our criminal justice system. Most strikingly, the call for the return of the death penalty to punish the innocent children by current U.S President Donald Trump signifies to us that a so-called “post racial” America is nothing but a fantasy.

Again, all of the NYPD’s illegal activities against the boys as well as Trump’s barbaric calls for the return of the death penalty are instances that DuVernay employs to effectively signify the power White America has in constructing the false narrative that Black and Brown bodies engage in a common pattern of criminality. Indeed, DuVernay utilizes realistic and accurate reenactments to accentuate the fact that African Americans are overrepresented at every level of the criminal justice system — as one in every eight Black men between the ages of 25 and 34 are in jail and approximately 50% of all prisoners are Black (Brewer, Heitzeg, 2008).

In When They See Us, DuVernay expertly faults White America’s institutions like the NYPD and the media as central curators of stereotypes about Black and Brown criminality. Unfortunately, the constructions and stereotypes of Blacks and Browns as being primitive criminals eventually leads to the sentencing of the innocent young Black and Brown boys in the show. Notably, the NYPD’ and the media’s false narrative of Blacks and criminality as being culturally intertwined is a result of the sheer number of Blacks overrepresented in crime statistics and the criminal justice system — and even though most crime is actually committed by Whites, the common perception is that the majority of it is perpetrated by Blacks (Welch, 2007).

Interestingly, DuVernay has deconstructed the theme of Black’s being primitive criminals and rapists before. Specifically, in her excellent documentary film 13th, she used the example of the highly racist 1915 film Birth of a Nation as a constructor and celebrator of false narratives about Blacks that have been prevalent in White American society for centuries. Indeed, it is truly shocking how she invokes this same theme in a mini-series that is taking place in 1989.

Notably, the role of the media in the Central Park Five cases is crucial for DuVernay when she is constructing the powerful narratives in When They See Us. Specifically, the media outlets in the show seem to be invoking the old stereotype that primitive Black and Brown boys once again raped an innocent white woman, even though this stereotype is completely false and bigoted. Indeed, the media does play a huge role in shaping Black and Latino citizens as criminals. For instance, Blacks and Latino’s are more likely than Whites to appear as perpetrators than as officers on television news (Dixon, Linz, 2000).

In a very touching moment in the miniseries, a woman asks the father of Raymond Santina: What would you say to those who call your son a rapist? In a brilliant answer, he responds angrily by telling her that she should stop sensationalizing and lying about the life of his innocent young son. Likewise, DuVernay brilliantly critiques the sensationalism of the media in the Central Park Five case through the character of Yusef Salaam’s mother, who asks the timely question of: “Why do the media keep giving this Bigot Donald Trump airtime? He wants to kill my baby”.

To conclude, I highly recommend this miniseries as a chilling, accurate and timely portrayal of the bigotry and ignorance of the NYPD and the media in constructing Blacks and Latino’s as criminals in the barbaric Central Park Five convictions and elsewhere. DuVernay employs incredibly effective reenactments to deconstruct stereotypes of Bestial blackness and to critique the media’s complacency with white narratives and unjust institutions such as the NYPD. Employing her effective techniques with laser sharp focus, DuVernay is inviting her viewers to deconstruct false narratives and to create a new and inclusive media space that shuns the ideological bigotry of the past.