† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI.Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Of Charles Ramsey and Stanley Tookie Williams ~
Redemption and Transformation, Part 1
by nancy a heitzeg

“People forget that redemption is tailor-made for the wretched.”
~ Stanley Tookie Williams December 2, 2005

Many tales of criminal injustice emerged out of Cleveland last week. As the 10 year ordeal of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, and Berry’s 6-year-old daughter came to an end, the horrors were revealed. Kidnapping. Rape. Torture. Forced miscarriages. False imprisonment.

Questions emerged too – about potential laxness on the part of the Cleveland police in investigating further both the missing women and suspicious activity around Ariel Castro’s home. Questions about the role of race and class generally in driving missing persons police action and media coverage. Questions about “The Missing White Woman Syndrome”.

But before the week was over the spot-light turned away from both victims and perpetrator to focus on one Charles Ramsey, the too honest neighbor and eventual rescuer of Berry and the others. From the very first interview, it was clear that Ramsey made the media nervous. His life at the margins of both race and class. His raw honesty about race and some “white girls” — Dead Give-away.

He wasn’t our typical hero. So first, the laughter, then the quick turn to viciousness, as smokinggun and others dug the dirt. Just as they thought, Charles Ramsey was “the criminal-black-man” after all. The cognitive dissonance was now melting away away — Maybe he wasn’t a “hero” after all?? How, in our culture of simplistic either/or binaries, could he be?

In all that has been written since the news broke out of Cleveland, it is Liliana Segura of The Nation who reveals the central questions in Race, Redemption and Charles Ramsey. (The piece is excerpted throughout this essay, but please read the original in its’ entirety.) She finds hope in the support that Ramsey has continued to receive from  many – hope that, by embracing him, we may be more generous to others as well.

The story of Charles Ramsey is a story of redemption that strikes deep at the heart of rigid social constructions of  “criminals” and the cultural charades we endure to maintain them. It is a story of the complexity of the human condition – one that defies all monolithic labels. And, so, it is a window into the possibilities of transformative justice.

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Breakdown: Death and Disarray at America’s Racetracks

See also For Whom The Bell Tolls: Three Dead per Day

† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

“Power to the Imagination”
by nancy a heitzeg (h/t Kay Whitlock and Angela Y. Davis)

“This is what we need most in America — truly the entire world — today. Imagination. Religious scholar Walter Brueggemann has called it “Prophetic Imagination.” We need individuals who will not only occupy our streets, but also occupy our future. Brave soldiers of love who are crazy enough to dream of a world with no more war, no more violence, no more oppression based on the way people look, where they are from, or the way they were born.”

~ Charles Howard, Angela Davis: Power to the Imagination

What if, this time, we resisted?

What if we stopped and counted to twelve?

What if we abandoned the wild speculation, the urge to be on-line “crime- fighters “, the rush to judgement, the labeling/the libeling?

What if we rejected the idea of “Them” – the simplistic “othering”, the endless profiling, the needless search for pathology in religion, race/ethnicity, national origin, more?

What if, for once and now always,  we hold at bay the lust for blood, the virtual lynch mob, raw retribution as the only recourse?

What if we look past partisan politics, and demand, on principle, the presumption of innocence, the reading of Miranda, every other slim right we are afforded, every right we would demand if it were indeed Us?

What if we said No! to more “law and order”, No! to more police state surveillance, No! to the notion that more armed men with guns, more state-sponsored violence is the solution?

What if we said No! to fear? No! to more death?

And what if we said Yes! to Justice and Love?

The Film

THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE, a new film from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, tells the story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. Directed and produced by Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns, the film chronicles the Central Park Jogger case, for the first time from the perspective of the five teenagers whose lives were upended by this miscarriage of justice. PBS

The Central Park Five will air on PBS Tuesday, April 16, 2013. To find where and when the documentary is showing at a theater near you, visit the Facebook page.

NYC’s Ongoing Denial of the ‘Central Park Five’ Is a Disservice to Black, Latino Men

I’m outraged at New York City. As a young black man recounting this case from the Central Park Five’s perspective, trying to not be outraged wasn’t even an option. I had the details to this story as I did Emmett Till, The Scottsboro Boys, Trayvon Martin and countless other cases of young black men being victimized by false claims of victimizing white people (specifically white women) — staying indebted to a historical and institutionalized hatred and fear of the black man. But beforehand, I didn’t have the details on this level, and I was mind-blown from start to finish of this documentary. So much it’s been a process to articulate it and put it in these words.

NYC owes the Central Park Five an apology (and their money — a $250 million civil suit filed in 2003), which really in itself won’t make up for the many years lost among the five men. But NYC refuses to give it — will not even acknowledge any wrongdoing in the case — some claiming that the actual serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, was just the sixth missing person involved in the rape. NYC also asked for a subpoena of the documentary’s footage — claiming the filmmakers aren’t journalists and the documentary is one-sided. But the subpoena was denied being that the filmmakers are protected under freedom of speech. According to the documentary’s well-known filmmaker, Ken Burns, asked for the city of New York’s voice in the documentary, but prosecutors and police refused to give it.

With Police in Schools, More Children in Court, New York Times

Since the early 1990s, thousands of districts, often with federal subsidies, have paid local police agencies to provide armed “school resource officers” for high schools, middle schools and sometimes even elementary schools. Hundreds of additional districts, including those in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, have created police forces of their own, employing thousands of sworn officers.

Last week, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, a task force of the National Rifle Association recommended placing police officers or other armed guards in every school. The White House has proposed an increase in police officers based in schools….

Yet the most striking impact of school police officers so far, critics say, has been a surge in arrests or misdemeanor charges for essentially nonviolent behavior — including scuffles, truancy and cursing at teachers — that sends children into the criminal courts.

“There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety,” said Denise C. Gottfredson, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who is an expert in school violence. “And it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.”

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.

See also: In Texas, Police Criminalize 300,000 Students Per Year, Alternet

A Real Fix: The Gun Free Way to School Safety, Advancement Project (pdf)

Action Alert: YES TO COUNSELORS, NO TO COPS

† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

 The Death Penalty Crumbles ~ Maryland and Beyond
by Emma Weisfeld-Adams for Equal Justice USA (EJUSA)

On Friday the State House in Maryland voted to pass legislation to repeal the death penalty with a vote of 82-56.

The State Senate already passed the legislation and the governor has promised to sign.

Maryland will become the sixth state in six years to end the death penalty.

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† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Prison Reform, Decarceration, or Smoke and Mirrors?
by Kay Whitlock and nancy a heitzeg

We are bombarded daily with a blizzard of often competing numbers and stories regarding the state of criminal injustice. Are prison populations declining?  Have we really “decreased incarceration” and expanded “diversion”? Have racial disparities in criminal justice decreased? Are they no longer relevant? Have police practices reduced incarceration rates? Are “community” correctional alternatives working? Have we entered a new  era of “prison reform”?

Is the push for “reform” attributable to progressive people power?  Or is it due to the emergence, several years ago, of Right on Crime the self-described “one-stop source for conservative ideas on criminal justice” – a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation ? (The TPPF is a research institute in Austin, TX “committed to limited government, free markets, private property rights, individual liberty and personal responsibility.”) Or has it emerged from some combination of both?

Often these stories shed more heat than light.

Or to use another metaphor, it is often a matter of Smoke and Mirrors.

Throughout this year, Criminal InJustice has offered critical questions about the reality of both policy claims and the legitimacy of so-called reforms. Please see Con Artists, Profit and Community Corrections and Confidence Men & “Prison Reform”.

What follows is a series of critical questions designed to help us all further navigate what may be, in some measure, a shell game. These topics and more will continue to be addressed in depth here at CI. But for now, a road map and  a flashlight are offered below.

If these reforms really are substantive, and implemented in ways that demonstrate integrity – and if they are actually intended to help dismantle a policing/prosecution/detention emphasis in the criminal legal system – then politicians and policy advocates will be able to fully and transparently answer the questions we pose here and that will arise along the way. 

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Retired lab chimps see the sky for the first time

Steel yourselves, animal lovers. A few weeks ago, we told you that the National Institute of Health recommended that a majority of government-owned lab chimps be retired in the near future.

For 111 of these chimps, the largest group ever to be retired, this dream is now a reality. Over the next 12 to 15 months, lab chimps from across the country will be set free and will live out their days at Chimp Haven, a sanctuary in Keithville, Louisiana…

Support Chimp Haven

h/t Kay Whitlock