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By Joel Wendland-Liu
Racism in the U.S. criminal justice system undermines its legitimacy. It raises fears that justice is impossible, especially for people of color. The racist police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the attempts (usually with success) by police to cover for the lynchings of Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin, as well as so many other Black men, Black women, and Black trans and gender queer people have recently foregrounded this criminal injustice.
But a more insidious side of the system operates every day with almost no scrutiny. Inside the courts, prosecutors abuse their power by disproportionately targeting Black defendants. Juries apply different standards of guilt to Black defendants. Judges save their toughest sentences for Black people.
In Oakland County, Michigan, Family Court Judge Mary Ellen Brennan denied a request by the lawyers of a 15-year-old African-American defendant for release from a juvenile detention facility. The judge had sentenced the youth to probation after she was arrested for fighting with her mother in April. One condition of her probation was successful completion of her schoolwork. Grace was arrested and jailed for failing to complete her homework.
In denying her release, the judge told the defendant, “I think you are exactly where you are supposed to be.” The judge indicated that because she failed to complete the assigned homework, the teenager should be locked up.
The actions of this judge and her belief that an imprisoned Black teenager is where she is “supposed to be” reveals the insidious nature of what some scholars have called the “school-to-prison” pipeline that targets African-American youth for incarceration rather than higher education, professional aspirations, and normal inclusion in civil society and its institutions....
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