For this fieldwork, our group watched “13th,” a documentary regarding the historical context of the criminal justice system in the U.S. The documentary begins just after Emancipation in 1865 and goes through the years to discuss the modern-day criminal justice system. Many people may wonder, why is it so important to start right after slavery? The answer lies in the Black Codes. Following 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment proclaimed Emancipation for everyone except prisoners. It was basically used for whatever person wanted to use, so it was mass exploited. Since the South was filled with ex-Confederate sheriffs and judges, Black Americans would be incarcerated back into a system where they could be used as “slaves.” And nobody seemed to care because it was allowed by the constitution.

It’s also important to recognize the mass incarceration rates during the presidencies of Clinton, Reagan, and Nixon. During Nixon’s presidency, he introduced a rhetoric titled “A War on Drugs,” which intentionally targeted Black Americans and anti-war activists. You could serve time in prison for the simple “misdemeanor” of smoking marijuana. A quote from Nixon’s campaign team stated “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be against the war or to be black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and black with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.” During Reagan’s presidency, he enforced Nixon’s war on drugs even more. His actions led the public to believe propaganda portraying Black children as “Superpredators.” This resulted in blanket statements about black people that portrayed them as bad people. And because of that, it made it easier to accept that they should go to prison. During Clinton’s term, he was nothing short of ruthless towards criminals. He created Mandatory Minimums, the Three Strikes Your Out law, and the 85% law. These laws ensured people would be put away for life if they committed three crimes, people would have to serve 85% of their sentence, and more.

Note that many of those laws were not created by presidents. A somewhat-known nonprofit has corporations working with a select few republican senators to make laws that directly benefit the corporations focused on. Its name is ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council. Laws like Mandatory Minimums, SB1070, and Stand Your Ground Laws have all had serious repercussions, including the publicized tragedy of Trayvon Martin, but have also had major money cuts for places like the CCA, Walmart, and other companies. However, not only ALEC corporations benefit from the criminal justice system. Private corporations like Victoria’s Secret and JCPenny run on cheap prison workforces. The fires in California were given prisoners to do the firefighting. It is just crazy to think about how much we rely on prisons and how so many people are biased against because of race.

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Today, my CAP partners and I interviewed Robert Gangi, the director of the Police Reform Organization Project. The interview provided us with insight into the significant impact of the police on the justice system, particularly regarding their brutality. His historical perspective on police brutality and prison conditions helped us understand the conditions of justice for a black person living in New York. To start, Robert Gangi shared with us why he became involved in prison reform after the loss of his father. He told us ” I couldn’t stop it. And so I think that instilled me a desire to do good, a desire to help other people; you know, sort of broadly speaking, the nature of our work essentially is to stop police practices that hurt people.” As Gangi worked as a court monitor for the organization he recorded that “anywhere from 85 to 100% of the cases we see on a given day involved in New Yorkers of color. And we um can’t New Yorkers of color as any non-white person. So it could also include Asians with the recent people.” Proving that our system has surfaced around a biased police force.

In our interview, Gangi referenced the impact of the media on police officers, displaying them as “the heroes.” Because of this, we have created a society where people “don’t care about people being locked up. I’m not so sure that’s totally true, but people know that prisons are bad places. Corruption happens. brutality happens.” He mentioned that the problem with police brutality reform is that there is no clear solution to how we can end this corruption, saying “Researchers show that none of that works. Training doesn’t improve things, and more diversity doesn’t improve things, because when you become a cop, you have to get with the program.” Since the system doesn’t have a clear problem, nobody knows where to start. Resulting in cops choosing to follow the lead of biases.

A story he told us about these biases happens in Yankee Stadium. He had a group of kids watching the game when one kid caused a bit of a disturbance, and the police came. “One of the kids uh, who was in the group is his name is George, and he was the total sweetheart, not like Charlie andolf. So what says, be cool. And one cop Jean of course made to attack George or apparently being like, you know, flip with disrespectful. And another cop jumps into me. And I’m like 22 years old, right? So I never seen anything like this. I thought the second cop was going to grab the first cop who was actually obviously no, but he starts standing on George.” This story was shocking because it shows that cops can act in legalized brutality, and nobody cares.

Robert Gangi taught us about how the placement of police affects communities, how their quotas will make them make outlandish arrests, and so much more. Thank you Robert for the amazing experience. We hope to do court monitoring with you soon.

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