★★★★★ (4.6 of 5)

• Full Title: Policing The Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, And Imprisonment
• Author: various
• Editor: Angela J. Davis
• Year: 2017 (mine was 2018 trade paperback)
• Pages: 321*
• Genre: Criminal Justice, nonfiction
• Publisher: Vintage Books
• ISBN 978-0-525-43661-4 (trade paperback)
• Author’s Wikipedia page

(* not including 16-page introduction by Angela J. Davis.)

 

Summary

A collection of 11 essays about the criminal justice system’s treatment of African Americans — especially black males — Policing The Black Man is powerful, succinct, and inclusive. The essays cover how a history of racial injustice led to today’s continued injustice, as well as the racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, sentencing, and recidivism. There are deep dives into the whys and hows of how it came to be this way, but also evidence-based advocacy for future solutions.

 

Commentary

Every essay here is meticulously sourced, with inline citations for most factual claims. Each essay comes with its own list of dozens — sometimes hundreds — of sources, as well as explanatory end notes.

The writers are academics*, but the language isn’t overly sesquipedalian. This book was meant to be accessible to laypersons, and I think it is, mostly. On the other hand, nothing is oversimplified or dumbed-down. The facts and concepts are laid out in precise language that doesn’t require a genius-level reader. (* Most of the authors are professors of law, representing Yale, Harvard, Wake Forest, Georgetown, and other universities.)

I was surprised at the missed opportunity to advocate for drug legalization — including commutations of existing drug-related sentences. Though it was noted that the failed “War On Drugs” is specifically responsible for the disproportionate incarceration of black men, and drugs in general were mentioned too, none of the essayists — among their multitude of practical suggestions for change — suggested legalization.

 

Individual Essays

The 11 essays contained in this book are as follows:

1. “A Presumption Of Guilt: The Legacy Of America’s History Of Racial Injustice”, by Bryan Stevenson (pg. 3‑30)

Stevenson’s essay starts at the beginning and shows how each aspect of systemic racism is/was linked to the next, and in some cases grew directly from the previous state — from colonization to slavery to lynching to Jim Crow to the state of criminal justice today. He includes some startling and heartbreaking information, like the following bit (which makes one wonder what is being underreported today):

“EJI has documented more than four thousand racial terror lynchings between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950 in just twelve southern states. This represents at least eight hundred more than had been previously reported.”

—page 16

2. “The Endurance Of Racial Disparity In The Criminal Justice System”, by Marc Mauer (pg. 31‑56)

Mauer looks at the shift in the criminal justice system in the past half-century, both the positives (increased hiring/inclusion of non-whites in the hierarchy of the system, for example) and the negatives (the explosion in mass incarceration of black men). Especially illuminating is his discussion of nominally “race-neutral” policies — including sentencing guidelines — that end up surprising no one by disproportionately punishing black men. At every level — from citizens reporting crimes to officers making arrests to prosecutor decisions on charging and plea-offering to juries and judges determining sentencing — these “race-neutral” policies result in worse outcomes for black men than for other demographics.

“Policy change needs to take place in all states and at the federal level. Most significantly, we need to engage in a reassessment of the scale and wisdom of extreme punishment that has been the hallmark of mass incarceration for decades... The extent to which we can do that successfully will tell us how much in fact black lives do matter.”

—pages 54-55 (emphasis in the original)

3. “Boys to Men: The Role Of Policing In The Socialization Of Black Boys”, by Kristin Henning (pg. 57‑94)

Beginning with the 1990s rhetoric about black juvenile “super-predators”, Henning looks at the socialization of black boys from a psychological perspective, and how they grow up relating differently to law enforcement than other demographics, due to frequent encounters with police, stories spread within the community, and the perception they are being treated differently. She shows how both police and black boys can worsen things because each perceives the other (whether realistically or not) to be a threat. The treatment was thorough, and she ended her essay with some good news: programs designed to ameliorate some of the causes, and a few success stories.

“The negative personal and vicarious experiences black boys have with the police not only undermine their perceptions of the police, but also decrease their willingness to cooperate with the law and increase the likelihood of their own arrest at the hands of police. The aggressive and abusive policing of young black males sends a message that black boys are to be feared and are unworthy of police protection. The collateral outcomes are troubling for everyone.”

—pages 86-87

4. “Racial Profiling: The Law, The Policy, And The Practice”, by Renée McDonald Hutchins (pg. 95‑134)

Using mostly Supreme Court decisions and scholar quotations, Hutchins shows how racial profiling has always been a feature (rather than a bug) of policing in the United States. She includes practical suggestions for improvement near the end. (This essay alone had more than 140 cited sources.)

5. “Making Implicit Bias Explicit: Black Men And The Police”, by Katheryn Russell-Brown (pg. 135‑160)

Russell-Brown lists and discusses a number of studies (and policy proposals) regarding implicit bias, especially as it relates to policing. She also enumerates a handful of downsides to focusing so much on implicit bias (it excludes overt racial bias and ignores individual responsibility).

6. “Policing: A Model For The Twenty-First Century”, by Tracey Meares and Tom Tyler (pg. 161‑177)

Meares and Tyler point out that violent crime has decreased steadily over two decades — and acknowledge that police have played a part in that — but note that public trust in police still hovers at 50-60% (20-30% for African-Americans). The rest of the essay examines strategies for increasing public trust in police, taking into account that better relations between police and community tend to further reduce crime. (Keeping in mind the context: many communities fear the police as much as they do crime.)

7. “The Prosecution Of Black Men”, by Angela J. Davis (pg. 178‑208)

The editor’s own contribution to this anthology, this essay looks at the importance of the role prosecutors play in the criminal justice system — they are the gatekeepers, determining whether a person suspected/arrested by police should be charged, which crime(s) to list as charges, whether to offer a plea bargain, and so on — and how they typically are the least-restrained, legally, of any other participants in the system. As a way to correct huge racial disparities in the way people are prosecuted, Davis suggests:

“The solution lies in the election of prosecutors who care about racial fairness and who are committed to making it a priority, regardless of their race or ethnicity. Racial justice cannot be achieved without prosecutors who are willing to significantly change their charging policies and implement programs to reduce the number of black men in the criminal justice system.”

—page 205

8. “The Grand Jury And Police: Violence Against Black Men”, by Roger A. Fairfax Jr. (pg. 209‑233)

This chapter was of interest to me because I’m unfamiliar with the grand jury system (which is only used in about half the states). My four years spent covering crime and courts for a daily newspaper were in a state that doesn’t require or utilize grand juries — or at least didn’t when I was there. So reading this filled in some background that is often ignored in the news when stories mention grand juries.

9. “Elected Prosecutors And Police Accountability”, by Ronald F. Wright (pg. 234‑254)

This essay looks at the influence prosecutors wield over police officers, and whether the fact that most prosecutors are elected has any bearing on whether they reflect the community’s wishes to hold police accountable.

10. “Do Black Lives Matter To The Courts?”, by Jin Hee Lee and Sherrilyn A. Ifill (pg. 255‑293)

The authors trace a pattern over our nation’s history of the highest courts denying equal (and sometimes even basic) rights to non-white Americans. The treatment is lengthy and thorough. A particular focus is the Supreme Court’s insistence that petitioners prove intent when it comes to racial discrimination — despite frequent admissions that the discrimination does occur.

11. “Poverty, Violence, And Black Incarceration”, by Jeremy Travis and Bruce Western (pg. 294‑321)

The last essay looks at the interlocking cause-effect factors of poverty, community violence, and imprisonment.

 

Points Off For...

I found very little in this book worth criticizing. If I am to nitpick (and I sometimes do), I will point out:

• There is some repitition — for example, almost every chapter mentions Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner. (The essays were composed separately; it was bound to happen.)
• Some of the proposed solutions aren’t very specific; the few specific proposals have multiple downsides (noted by the authors). This might not be a fault with the book, however; it might be a fault in our society.
• The final essay was the weakest, in terms of writing and organization. In contrast to the ten others I thought it was poorly chosen as the book’s ending. (As a reader, I think I would have preferred that essay somewhere in the middle, with an ending perhaps by Davis herself with a paragraph or two on the issues and then a summary of the proposed solutions.)

 

Conclusion

This book is crammed with information, including several suggested policy changes. Despite my extensive reading and data-collecting on this topic over the past few years, some of the information presented was new to me, and I assume most of it would be new to a majority of white Americans. Having all of this research in one volume, presented so clearly, is a gem.

I would recommend Policing The Black Man to anyone unfamiliar with how the criminal justice system is — and always has been — truly a system of injustice when it comes to black men.

 

 

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