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Steve BogiraA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain extensive discussion of mass incarceration, systemic racism, and substance use disorders. They also touch on topics of sexual assault, domestic and child abuse, and hate crimes. This guide obscures the n-word when reproduced in quotes.
“Those marched into the basement are cloaked in the presumption of innocence—in theory. The prevailing wisdom down here, however, is: if they’re so innocent, why’d they arrive in handcuffs?”
This quotation elucidates both the tendency to prejudge people accused of crimes before understanding the circumstances of their lives—a prejudice frequently explored in the narrative—and the bias that causes people to regard them as incorrigible underworld figures. The language in the quotation reflects the latter sentiment. The fact that the defendants are “marched” in makes them appear uniform. Even their presumed innocence is a “cloak”—a word that implies disguise and therefore subterfuge. Bogira poses the rhetorical question, which reflects the views of the deputy officers, to invite readers to confront possible prejudices.
“‘They act like slave masters,’ one of tonight’s prisoners, Terrance Evans, says later of the deputies. But at least they don’t play favorites, Evans says. ‘You could be black or white, crippled or mental—they still treat you like a dog.’”
Evans’s assessment of the deputies is paradoxical. He compares them to enslavers, which suggests the justice system is a new means to entrap Black people in unpaid labor, but he also embraces the idea of impartial justice by saying that the deputies are equally contemptuous of all convicted of crimes. They view such people as subhuman, which is a different form of prejudice from racism or biases against those with mental illnesses.
“Most of tonight’s allegedly violent offenders—the nine men here for domestic battery—are sitting in the misdemeanor lockup, it being a graver offense in Illinois to possess a minute amount of cocaine or heroin than to beat a wife, girlfriend, or a sister.”
Bogira illustrates the severity of the War Against Drugs, initiated in 1970 during the Nixon Administration. The demonization of controlled substances—and of the people who possess them—led to a tendency to excessively prosecute both people who use drugs and those who deal small amounts. The tradition of treating these people worse than domestic abusers is also a testament to how commonplace misogyny is in American society.
“This book intends to show more of what’s typical about a courtroom. It is about how justice miscarries every day, by doing precisely what we ask it to.”
Courts of law have long been regarded as places where justice prevails—particularly in the United States, where the public has frequently been less enlightened in its willingness to dole out justice, fairness, and civil rights to certain groups. In this quotation, Bogira undermines the myth that courts are untainted by the forces of popular opinion, and he spends the succeeding chapters showing why that is so, developing the theme of The Injustices of the US Justice System.
“I don’t know nothing. I’ve been stuck here, going back and forth to court. I don’t know what I’m here for or what I’m supposed to have done. I’m just up against something I don’t know nothing about.”
Tony Cameron’s story is exemplary of how the justice system’s supposed impartiality is a fault. Its inability to see Cameron’s circumstances beyond his crimes makes the system unable to prevent Cameron from committing future crimes, thereby ensuring that he will perpetually be cycled through correctional facilities. Cameron’s repeated assertions of ignorance could reflect the reader’s own confusion about the intricacy of the justice system, which holds millions of people convicted of crimes—many of them non-violent—and rehabilitates few.
“Cameron says he spoke up during the plea conference because ‘I wanted someone to understand where I was coming from. We all got a story to tell. And some people had a rough life and some people didn’t. I think they should find out why people do the things they do. And see who the person really is. And see what you could do to make him not do the things they do, instead of always just locking ‘em up.’”
Cameron’s story continues with his expressions of frustration over the justice system’s disinterest in the circumstances that lead people to commit crimes. Though Cameron has an intellectual disability, he expresses great intelligence and insight, illuminating both bias and the unwillingness to redress the conditions—poverty, child abuse, addiction, and lack of access to mental healthcare—that create future crime and funnel those who commit crimes through the prison system.
“Not that crime doesn’t pay for Cook County as well. The multitudes brought to 26th Street in handcuffs, whether they’re eventually deemed exportable or not, help cover mortgages, car payments, and tuition bills for jail guards, prosecutors, public defenders, private lawyers, judges, clerks, court reporters, deputies, probation officers, police officers, psychiatrists, social workers, translators, cooks, janitors. Jail guards here sometimes greet batches of new prisoners by saying, ‘We’d like to thank you for committing your crimes in Cook County.’”
This quotation illustrates The Prison-Industrial Complex—that is, the system that depends on the existence of criminal offenders to continue to turn a profit. The jail guards, who are among the least educated and the lowest paid in this food chain, are openly honest about how imprisonment creates jobs. Job creation starts at the Cook County Jail, but it doesn’t stop there. Corporations also profit by producing the products and services that are essential to the maintenance of prisons and their populations.
“Rockwell Gardens was one of the score of vertical slums that Chicago erected in the 1950s and 1960s, when city officials dealt with housing shortages for the poor by planting high-rises in ghettoes rather than forcing white Chicagoans to live with blacks nearby. The concentration of poverty made the projects dreadful places to raise children and incubators for the state’s penitentiaries. For decades, young black males would graduate from teeming projects to teeming prisons, pausing at 26th Street to pick up their diplomas.”
Rockwell Gardens is the result of Chicago’s history of de facto housing segregation. White residents resisted the possibility of Black neighbors with various methods, some of which were violent, and enjoyed the complicity of the government in allowing them to exclude Black people from their predominantly white neighborhoods. Racial discrimination in mortgage lending made it more difficult for Black people to acquire homes and, in instances in which they did secure loans, they were subjected to much higher rates of interest, making it nearly impossible to pay off their homes. Furthermore, they were only allowed to purchase homes in prescribed areas. This practice of providing mortgages only on homes in neighborhoods in which Black people’s presences were permitted was known as redlining. Bogira uses the projects to illustrate how a lifetime of confinement within project housing, which was overcrowded and poorly maintained, prepared many young Black males, particularly, for prisons.
“The minimum $380,000 that taxpayers spend to keep Harris locked up until 2014 is far more than ever was invested in him before, or that ever will be spent on either of his children, probably, unless they too end up in prison.”
Bogira illustrates both the extreme expenditures required to keep each person incarcerated and how these expenses could easily be reduced or even reallocated by investing early in decent housing and education and by ensuring that everyone, regardless of economic status, has access to nutritious food. Bogira subtly alludes to the prison-industrial complex, thriving on feeding bodies into prisons—particularly private prisons—which have proven to be very profitable for corporations.
“Locallo, likewise, considers poverty no excuse for crime […] His mentor, Judge William Cousins, ‘came out of poverty. He came out of some small town in Mississippi. His parents didn’t graduate from grammar school, but they showed him the right way. My dad was poor. My mom was poor. Why did they make that jump and get out of that situation? Because they wanted to.’”
Though Judge Locallo prides himself on his sense of justice, using Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird as inspiration for his decision to pursue law as a career, he is not without biases. He embraces a narrative of self-sufficiency that overlooks systemic biases. He uses the example of William Cousins to argue against the notion that race is an obstruction to social advancement, deciding that Cousins is the rule though statistically, his path to success is exceptional.
“Locallo is less critical of his uncle Victor, the one who spent his life working for the mob. He didn’t freely choose to take the low road, Locallo says; there were circumstances that compelled his illicit career. The judge explains that his dad’s and his uncle Victor’s parents divorced, after which their father didn’t contribute financially to the family. ‘My uncle Vic was the oldest child, and he got into bookmaking to support my dad, his brother, and their mother. Maybe it’s because I loved my uncle Vic, but I never looked down on him because of what he was involved in. You do what you have to do sometimes.”
Locallo is empathetic toward his own relatives who have committed crimes but doesn’t extend that same empathy toward the Black defendants who stand before him on drug-related crimes. He explained that poverty is no defense for crime, but in this instance, he excuses involvement with the mafia on the basis that his uncle had no other means of supporting his family. This argument in favor of a member of his own family undermines his harsh condemnation of those who made similar choices.
“Betts believes that middle-class people tend to trust the authorities, whereas poor people know from experience that law enforcement officers will lie to make a case.”
Kevin Betts, the defendant in a murder case, is worried about the fact that most of the jurors who will decide his fate are white, half of them are suburban, and none of them come from anywhere near his poor neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. Betts doubts these jurors could identify with the corruption and brutality he and others from his neighborhood experienced at the hands of police. With this comment, Betts addresses how poor people of color experience a police force that antagonizes them and treats them like enemies in their own communities, whereas middle-class people, who represent property and business interests, regard the police as friendly protectors.
“But ‘justice is being sure of things, not going in and trying to slip something in quickly,’ Massey says.”
Bill Massey was the lone juror who held out on convicting Kevin Betts, due to what he deemed insufficient evidence. Massey took seriously his role as juror, refusing to bend to peer pressure or the desire to dispose of the case so that he could continue with his life. He remembered that a man’s life was at stake. He is one of the few characters in the book to demonstrate moral fortitude in a flawed and deeply corrupt justice system.
“He marvels at Massey’s fortitude. ‘I know the judge was mad. I know the state’s attorney was mad. I know my lawyer was mad. I know the other jurors was mad. Anybody that don’t conform to the rules of these people here or to this system, they’re not gonna like him. For a person to stick to his beliefs regardless of what everybody else is thinking—you definitely admire a person like that.’”
Kevin Betts, the defendant in the case, expresses admiration for the juror Bill Massey. Massey—a white middle-class man—upended Betts’s belief that no white person would take serious interest in his case or sympathize with him. Not only did Massey take great interest in the case, but he also worked to ensure that justice was served for Betts, despite everyone else’s assumptions about the case based on Betts’s race and impoverished background.
“Blacks are incarcerated for drug crimes at a rate fourteen times of whites. While the imprisonment rate for white drug offenders doubled between 1986 and 1996, it quintupled for blacks. Bates is one of 133 drug defendants on Locallo’s docket in March 1998. Five are white, fifteen Hispanic. Bates is among the 113 who are black.”
Bogira uses individual cases to illustrate the statistical point explained in this quotation. He seeks to elucidate the racial bias impacting judges’ decisions regarding drug convictions—even judges who consider themselves enlightened on such matters, such as Dan Locallo. The crack epidemic, which disproportionately impacts Black communities, played a role in the different convictions. White people were more likely to be in possession of more expensive powder cocaine, while Black people were more likely to be in possession of crack cocaine. The laws have also disproportionately impacted people who use drugs rather than deal them, and these people are more likely to be poor and Black.
“Drug treatment is no panacea, especially for addicts from impoverished backgrounds, who often have a host of other troubles to overcome. Even if they can get probation and treatment instead of prison, and even if they successfully complete the program, they usually return to the same neighborhood and circumstances that led to the addiction in the first place.”
Larry Bates is a prime example of how people with addictions tend to relapse. The problem for many people is not always the lure of the drug itself but an inability to escape a set of circumstances. The inability to change circumstances connects to the inability to find decent employment as someone convicted of a crime. This inability makes it impossible to move to a better neighborhood.
“‘The first question that has to be asked—which is never asked—is ‘Why are all these people using drugs?’ Adams says […] Locallo thinks he knows why the problem is occurring. ‘Unfortunately, there are individuals in our society who can’t get a high out of life itself, so they seek alternatives,’ the judge says. ‘That’s foreign to me. I’ll have a drink every once in a while. But if somebody told me, ‘For the rest of your life you’ll never have another beer’—so what? Now, if they said I couldn’t have an Italian beef with peppers…”
Locallo’s question is a pertinent one—though phrased in a crude manner. The “high” people who use drugs cannot get out of life is akin to an inability to cope with untenable circumstances—high rates of unemployment, drug-afflicted communities, and a sense of being unable to improve one’s circumstances. Locallo, having never had contact with such desperation, attempts to identify in the only way he can—feeling deprived of something that he loves, which is not the same thing.
“‘Student who “had it all” charged in rape slaying,’ read the headline of the front-page story in the Chicago Tribune on May 18, 1981, five days after Jones was jailed.”
The headline describes the case against George Jones, who was charged with the rape of 12-year-old Sheila Purvy. Though it was highly unlikely that Jones was guilty of committing the rape, the headline is evidence of how stories of sexual assault often focus more on the alleged rapist than on the victim, even providing sometimes flattering portrayals of the accused, as in this instance.
“‘A normal person would hear some of these stories, and they’d go, ‘Holy shit,’ deputy Guerrero says. ‘I’m like, ‘Yeah? So what?’ You hear this stuff every day, and you’re like, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s get this over with and go to the next thing.’ What actually am I supposed to do? Should my heart go out to every person we hear about getting hurt? My heart would be going out every single day—I wouldn’t have a heart left.’”
Deputy Guerrero speaks to the assembly-line aspect of the court system. He and the other deputies frequently hear personal tragedies but steel themselves against the stories to avoid being too personally affected to do their jobs. Being a public servant thus requires a degree of insensitivity.
“Any Chicagoan who wants to stay safe needs to be aware of the variations in ethnicity and attitude from neighborhood to neighborhood, he says […] ‘I mean, you can say you should be able to go wherever you want, but c’mon—this is Chicago.’”
Deputy Guerrero refers to the de facto segregation that exists in Chicago, because of stratifications in the housing system. He is not excusing the crime that occurred against Lenard Clark but, like many people of color, he is certain that he can’t change the system, so he simply creates a means of surviving within it.
“Nolan, thirty-four, has been a prosecutor for eight years. The main thing he’s learned is that ‘everybody lies.’ Defendants, witnesses, defense lawyers, prosecutors, judges, cops—‘we all have our own agenda. It’s part of the game, I guess.’ It bothers him at times.”
Nolan explores the moral quandary of his work: He wants to win his cases, as everyone else does, but he feels uneasy with the ethical breaches people are willing to make to win. Nolan is a foil for Marijane Placek, who claimed to have no qualms at all about being dishonest if it meant winning.
“The truth is a nebulous thing, hard to determine under the best of circumstances: ‘How do I feel about the fact that the truth never comes out in court? The truth never comes out in life.’”
Public defender Marijane Placek undermines the notion that the courts can uncover the truth of what happened during a crime. The system’s emphasis on objectivity cannot uncover truth, which often relies on personal recollection.
“A front-page story in the city’s African American daily, the Chicago Defender, quotes several furious black Chicagoans: ‘The justice system always leans toward white people.’ ‘We all know that if the tables were turned and three black men would have jumped on a white kid, the three black men would have gone to jail.’ Newspapers across the country and in other nations make note of how two white men, charged with beating a black boy unconscious in Chicago, have been ‘let off’ with probation, as the Independent of London puts it.”
The article alludes to the belief among many African American communities that justice is unevenly meted out when attackers and victims are of different races, with Black victims’ pain regarded less seriously than that of white victims, and with Black assailants of white victims more harshly punished.
“Whenever a defendant pleads guilty, most parties are satisfied, even if the defendant happens to be innocent. It’s a conviction for the prosecutor and a dispo for the judge, a fee for the private defense lawyer or one fewer case for the PD. The defendant is relieved he didn’t get something worse.”
Bogira reveals how compromise works in the US court system. The goal, contrary to expectations, is not to prove that a client is not guilty but to ensure the best possible outcome for all parties.
“Despite drops in violent crime, Cook County keeps sending more inmates to prison—19,299 in 2003, up from 15,529 in 1997. Much of that 24 percent was attributable to a crackdown on parole violators. The largest proportion of newly sentenced prisoners, however, continues to be drug offenders. The shipments of new prisoners from Cook County are still 80 percent African American.”
This statistic shows that prisons aren’t always populated by “criminals” but by people convicted of a crime who later broke the terms of their parole. Most of those convicted of drug offenses, as depicted in the book, tended to either use drugs or deal small amounts. Most of those who were apprehended were African American, revealing a bias in those likely to be stopped, frisked, and apprehended for drug offenses.
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