Name: Julian Martos

Social Justice Group: War and Violence: How race affects conviction rates in NYC (B)

Date of Fieldwork: February 12, 2025

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Robert Gangi, founder of PROP

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:

While interviewing Robert Gangi, we asked if we could court-monitor his organization, PROP. This organization helps count race statistics in court and end bias in court systems. On February 12th, we went to 100 Centre Street, which houses the New York County Criminal Court. We arrived at 10:00, met many people from PROP, and settled into court.

During the cases, we recorded many facts like their race, gender, what they were being accused of, and their sentence. We saw many tragic cases throughout the day. One case was about a man being sentenced and was sent to Rikers Island. One surprising fact we saw inside the court was that 7/10 people having their case that day were African American, and one person was white.

At the end of the day, we met up with Robert Gangi for a closing statement, with him discussing what we saw and the statistics we got. With us learning many things about the court, we gained new insight into the justice system and how its flaws are biased and unfair for many people.