7 minute read
Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice
Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice ARTICLES
How the Law Killed Ahmaud Arbery | Boston Review In many states, legal regimes sanction the predictable murder of innocent black men. Justice will not be served until the law changes.
Advertisement
How a 50-year-old report predicted America’s current racial reckoning | VOX Media The 1968 government-sponsored report reveals that demands from activists around policing are nothing new.
An Insurance-Based Typology of Police Misconduct | John Rappaport This article surveys the universe of police malfeasance from the perspective of an important but underappreciated regulatory regime: liability insurance. Nearly all but the very largest municipalities buy insurance that covers claims alleging police misconduct. In assuming the financial risk of bad police behavior, the insurers become motivated to prevent it. Criminal procedure scholarship almost entirely overlooks the salutary regulatory influence these insurers may have on police activity. Yet insurance is no panacea.
How Police Abuse the Charge of Resisting Arrest | Boston Review We must reject the current legal regime under which resisting arrest is so widely accepted as a justification for police brutality and officer shootings.
Police Use of Force Project | Campaign Zero How police use of force policies can help to end police violence.
Police Killings Have Harmed Mental Health in Black Communities, Study Finds | John Eligon Long expressed concern that headline-grabbing police killings of Black Americans is causing mental health issues within African-American communities.
Racial Justice Research Document | Rachel Cargle “I created this free document to guide readers through gaining knowledge of various heartbreaking cases of police brutality and murder in the United States. This document is to be used like a syllabi—an introduction to the work but not the work itself. Value to the Black community is not simply in the knowledge you gain, but the action you take to ensure Black bodies are protected.”
ARTICLES (continued) Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. | Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito They find that African American men and women, American Indian/Alaska Native men and women, and Latino men face higher lifetime risk of being killed by police than do their white peers. They also find that Latina women and Asian/Pacific Islander men and women face lower risk of being killed by police than do their white peers. Risk is highest for Black men, who (at current levels of risk) face about a 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police over the course of life. The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women. Risk peaks between the ages of 20 and 35 years for all groups. For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death.
Who Gets to be Afraid in America? | Ibram X. Kendi This article provides perspective on how we can build an existence wherein the fearful stop fearing Black men, and terrorizing Black men with their fear. It was written in response to the death of Ahmaud Arbery.
BOOKS
Chokehold | Paul Butler Chokehold powerfully demonstrates why current efforts to reform law enforcement will not create lasting change. Butler’s controversial recommendations about how to crash the system, and when it’s better for a Black man to plead guilty—even if he’s innocent—are sure to be game-changers in the national debate about policing, criminal justice, and race relations.
The Condemnation of Blackness Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America | Khalil Gibran Muhammad The idea of Black criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban America, as were African Americans’ own ideas about race and crime. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded notions of Black people as a dangerous race of criminals by explicit contrast to working-class whites and European immigrants, Khalil Gibran Muhammad reveals the influence such ideas have had on urban development and social policies.
BOOKS (continued)
The New Jim Crow | Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans being locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement. Since its publication in 2010, the book has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year; been dubbed the “secular bible of a new social movement” by numerous commentators, including Cornel West; and has led to consciousness-raising efforts in universities, churches, community centers, reentry centers, and prisons nationwide. The New Jim Crow tells a truth our nation has been reluctant to face.
Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys | Victor M. Rios Rios followed a group of 40 delinquent Black and Latino boys for three years. Ultimately, he argues that by understanding the lives of the young men who are criminalized and pipelined through the criminal justice system, we can begin to develop empathic solutions which support these young men in their development and to eliminate the culture of punishment that has become an overbearing part of their everyday lives.
PODCASTS/VIDEOS
American Police | NPR Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. A truth many Americans are acknowledging since the murder of George Floyd, as protests have occurred in all 50 states calling for justice on his behalf. But this tension between African American communities and the police has existed for centuries. The origins of American policing and how those origins put violent control of Black Americans at the heart of the system.
The Code Switch Guide To Race And Policing | NPR To help explain how the United States got to this point, Code Switch looked back at some of their coverage of race and policing, both from the podcast and the blog.
The Hate U Give | George Tillman Jr. Starr Carter is constantly switching between two worlds—the poor, mostly Black neighborhood where she lives, and the wealthy, mostly white prep school that she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is soon shattered when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer. Facing pressure from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and decide to stand up for what’s right.
How We’re Priming Some Kids for College and Others for Prison | Alice Goffman In the United States, two institutions guide teenagers on the journey to adulthood: college and prison. Sociologist Alice Goffman spent six years in a troubled Philadelphia neighborhood and saw first-hand how teenagers of African American and Latino backgrounds are funneled down the path to prison—sometimes starting with relatively minor infractions. In an impassioned talk she asks, “Why are we offering only handcuffs and jail time?”
Who Polices the Police? | NPR ProPublica’s Eric Umansky explains how the New York Police Department’s Civilian Complaint Review Board has struggled for decades to hold the NYPD to account.
MOVIES
13th | Ava DuVernay Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation’s prisons are disproportionately filled with African Americans.
Just Mercy | Destin Daniel Cretton World-renowned civil rights defense attorney Bryan Stevenson works to free a wrongly condemned death row prisoner. A powerful and thought-provoking true-story, Just Mercy follows young lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) and his history-making battle for justice.
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes | Brett Story The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is a film about the prison in which we never see a penitentiary. Instead, the film unfolds as a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the USA where prisons do work and affect lives, from a California mountainside where female prisoners fight raging wildfires, to a Bronx warehouse full of goods destined for the state correctional system, to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs.
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls | Monique Morris Black girls and other girls of color are often subjectively punished and criminalized for their communication styles, their expressions, and the trauma they have experienced. It is imperative as policy leaders to advocate for the necessary resources, laws, policies and practices that work to create supportive learning environments, where all students have the opportunity to succeed; and where Black girls—who have for too long been subjected to racist, sexist, and discriminatory practices—have access to a robust array of targeted services and supports able to propel them to a lifetime of success.
When They See Us | Ava DuVernay When They See Us is based on events of the April 19, 1989, Central Park jogger case and explores the lives of the five suspects who were prosecuted on charges related to the sexual assault of a female victim, and of their families.
