Policing the Black Man

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A comprehensive, readable analysis of the key issues of the Black Lives Matter movement, this thought-provoking and compelling anthology features essays by some of the nation’s most influential and respected criminal justice experts and legal scholars.

“Somewhere among the anger, mourning and malice that Policing the Black Man documents lies the pursuit of justice. This powerful book demands our fierce attention.” —Toni Morrison

Policing the Black Man explores and critiques the many ways the criminal justice system impacts the lives of African American boys and men at every stage of the criminal process, from arrest through sentencing.  Essays range from an explication of the historical roots of racism in the criminal justice system to an examination of modern-day police killings of unarmed black men. The contributors discuss and explain racial profiling, the power and discretion of police and prosecutors, the role of implicit bias, the racial impact of police and prosecutorial decisions, the disproportionate imprisonment of black men, the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, and the Supreme Court’s failure to provide meaningful remedies for the injustices in the criminal justice system. Policing the Black Man is an enlightening must-read for anyone interested in the critical issues of race and justice in America. 

Acknowledgments 
 
Introduction 
Angela J. Davis 
 
A Presumption of Guilt: The Legacy of America’s History of Racial Injustice
Bryan Stevenson 
 
The Endurance of Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System 
Marc Mauer 
 
Boys to Men: The Role of Policing in the Socialization of Black Boys 
Kristin Henning 
 
Racial Profiling: The Law, the Policy, and the Practice 
Renée McDonald Hutchins 
 
Making Implicit Bias Explicit: Black Men and the Police 
Katheryn Russell- Brown 
 
Policing: A Model for the Twenty-first Century 
Tracey Meares and Tom Tyler 
 
The Prosecution of Black Men 
Angela J. Davis
 
The Grand Jury and Police Violence Against Black Men 
Roger A. Fairfax, Jr.
 
Elected Prosecutors and Police Accountability 
Ronald F. Wright
 
Do Black Lives Matter to the Courts? 
Jin Hee Lee and Sherrilyn A. Ifill
 
Poverty, Violence, and Black Incarceration 
Jeremy Travis and Bruce Western“Somewhere among the anger, mourning and malice that Policing the Black Man documents lies the pursuit of justice. This powerful book demands our fierce attention.” —Toni Morrison

“Like Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness or Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Policing the Black Man insightfully shows us why the encounter between black men and even black boys with the criminal justice system is, and long has been historically, fraught, reflecting larger social and economic relations between white and black Americans.   The essays collected here by Angela Davis effectively demonstrate how the  painful history of racial injustice in America informs a black male’s experience of virtually every aspect of our system of justice, from arrest, through prosecution and sentencing, to incarceration.  This book is essential reading for all of us who love the concept of justice in America, and seek for its practical applications to live up to its theoretical ideals.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“Policing the Black Man is a social-political mitzvah. With statistics in one hand and true beating heart in the other these writers deconstruct the monolith of racism and the conscious and unconscious deadly intent of the powers that be.” —Walter Mosley

“Rigorous and chilling. This collection from leading academics and lawyers is profoundly unsettling but also fiercely illuminating. For all those working to see truth, reconciliation, and justice prevail in America, this collection is an essential and timely provocation.” — Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD- 8)

 “This essential anthology explains the deep American history of the alarming and unconscionable racial disparities in policing, prosecution, and mass incarceration. From the Black Codes to capital punishment, specific policies and propaganda have licensed serially violent overreactions to the mere sight and shape of black boys and men.  Yet this volume contains hope in its elucidation of the structural bases of such dangerous bias.  In decoding how such a tragedy came to be, the essays in this collection just might lead to the kind of understanding so necessary for the health and safety of all citizens, for trust in the institutions of law enforcement, and for the rehabilitation of justice itself.”  —Patricia Williams, MacArthur Fellow and John L. Dohr Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

“Angela J. Davis powerfully shows the American police and justice system are heavily biased against non-white Americans. Policing the Black Man is an indictment of American justice system and police. It is one of the best books on racism in America. This should put every American to shame.” —The Washington Book Review

“Lucid perspectives on how and why the United States criminal justice system often victimizes black males…. An absorbing anthology, scholarly yet approachable.” —Kirkus ReviewsANGELA J. DAVIS is a professor of law at the American University and a former director of the D.C. Public Defender Service. She is the author of Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor and the coeditor of several books on criminal law and procedure. She has also written many articles and contributed chapters to many books on prosecutorial power and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.Introduction
ANGELA J. DAVIS
 
Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Fred­die Gray, Sam DuBose, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Terence Crutcher are just some of the names on a long list of unarmed black boys and men who were killed by police officers in recent years. Although black men have been the victims of violence at the hands of the state since the time of slavery, tech­nology and social media now permit us to literally bear witness to many of these killings, repeatedly. Millions of people have watched the video of a police officer choking Eric Garner to death as he struggled for air. Similarly, millions have watched the video of a police officer shooting Walter Scott in the back as he ran for his life. Who can ever forget the grainy footage of Tamir Rice—the twelve-year-old boy who was shot by a police officer while he played alone with a toy gun in a park near his home? Two videos—one from a police helicopter and another from a police dashboard camera—show Terence Crutcher walk­ing away from police officers with his hands raised high in the air just before he was shot and killed. These images have evoked feelings of fear, sadness, and outrage and serve as a reminder that the lives of black men and boys continue to be devalued and destroyed with impunity at the hands of the state. To date, not one of the police officers who killed these men and boys has been convicted of a single crime.
 
From the arrival of the first slaves in Jamestown in 1619 to the lynchings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present day—black boys and men have been unlawfully killed by those who were sworn to uphold the law and by vigilantes who took the law into their own hands. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened its doors on September 24, 2016, includes exhibits that tell the story of many of these killings. Yet these killings are not just a part of African American history. They have continued well into the twenty-first century—almost four hundred years after the beginning of slavery—and persist with remarkable fre­quency and brutality during a time when America elected its first African American president.
 
Many of these race-based killings have inspired and reinvig­orated movements for change. The brutal killing of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963, and the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 all serve as markers on the civil rights movement timeline, as did so many other killings of black men by white racists. Each tragic killing sparked nationwide protests and renewed activism in the struggle for civil rights and racial justice in the United States.
 
The killing of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 was a pivotal marker of racial violence against black men in the twenty-first century. Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a white man who called the police when he saw Martin walking in his neighborhood. Zimmerman, a member of a neighborhood crime watch group, reported to the police that Martin looked “suspicious” and that he looked like he was “up to no good or on drugs or something.” Ignoring the dispatcher’s warning that he should not follow Martin, Zimmerman ultimately shot and killed him. Martin was unarmed and was on his way back to his father’s house after buying snacks at a local convenience store. Initially Zimmerman was not even charged with a crime, but after nationwide protests, he was charged with Martin’s murder. A jury ultimately acquitted him.
 
The killing of Trayvon Martin, the initial failure of the pros­ecutor to charge Zimmerman with a crime, and Zimmerman’s ultimate acquittal captured the attention of the nation. Presi­dent Obama even weighed in, stating, “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.” Martin’s killing also inspired the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” The phrase trended on Twitter and all forms of social media and was displayed on posters carried in protests after Martin’s killing and after every killing of a black man or woman by a police officer from that day forward. Black Lives Matter ultimately became a social justice movement with chapters throughout the United States and Canada.
 
Many unarmed black men and boys have been killed since Trayvon Martin’s tragic death five years ago. Many of the kill­ings occurred after police officers arguably engaged in racial profiling—stopping and harassing these men for no explainable reason other than the color of their skin. In all of the cases where black men were shot and killed, the officers claimed that they felt threatened, even though the men were unarmed and often running away or retreating. In almost all of the cases, the police officers were never arrested or charged with a crime.
 
The tragic killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and others served as the catalyst for this anthology. But these killings also inspired the contributing authors to think about all of the ways that black men are “policed”—in the broad sense of the word—heavily and harshly at every step of the criminal process. In fact, black men are policed and treated worse than their similarly situated white counterparts at every step of the criminal justice system, from arrest through sentencing. These unwarranted disparities exist whether black men are charged with crimes or are victims of crimes. Police officers stop, search, and arrest black men far more frequently than white men engaged in the same behavior. Prosecutors charge black men more frequently and with more serious crimes than white men who engage in the same behavior. And there are disproportionate numbers of black men in the nation’s prisons and jails. Criminal defendants, regardless of their race, are punished less harshly when their vic­tims are black men. This anthology explores and explains the “policing” of black men—from slavery to the present day and at every stage of the criminal process and beyond.
 
Why Black Men?
Black men are not the only people of color to be treated worse than their similarly situated white counterparts at every step of the criminal process. Black women, Latino/a men and women, Native Americans, and other people of color also experience vio­lence at the hands of the state and discriminatory treatment in the criminal justice system, as do people who are gay, lesbian, and/or transgender. This book’s focus on black men in no way trivializes the experiences of all people who face these harms.
 
While acknowledging that other groups have been and con­tinue to be oppressed and discriminated against, this book focuses on black men. In many ways, the experience of black men in the criminal justice system is unique. The most noticeable difference is that they are impacted more adversely than any other demo­graphic in the United States—at every stage of the process.
 
Black Boys Are Disproportionately Arrested and Detained
Black boys are more likely to be referred to the juvenile jus­tice system than any other children. In 2011, black boys rep­resented the greatest percentage of children placed in juvenile detention—903 black boys per 100,000 were sent to detention as compared to 125 black girls. A Rhode Island study found that black boys were 9.3 times more likely to spend time in juvenile detention than white boys.
 
Over half the students arrested at school in the United States and referred to the juvenile justice system are black or His­panic. While black students represent only 16 percent of stu­dent enrollment, they represent 27 percent of students referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of students subjected to in-school arrests. Black male students alone make up 18 percent of all referrals and arrests.
 
Black Men Are Disproportionately Arrested
African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be arrested than whites and 49 percent of black men can expect to be arrested at least once by age twenty-three compared to 44 percent of His­panic men and 38 percent of white men. Police officers are permitted to stop and frisk individuals if they have “reasonable suspicion” that crime is afoot and that the person is armed and dangerous. However, numerous studies have shown that the practice of racial profiling has resulted in black men being tar­geted and disproportionately stopped, frisked, and arrested.
 
For example, the New York Civil Liberties Union analyzed the New York Police Department’s 2011 stop-and-frisk database and found that 41.6 percent of all stops were of black and Latino men between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, even though they make up only 4.7 percent of the population of New York. The same study found that no crime had been committed in 90 percent of the stops. Black men were disproportionately stopped. The number of stops of black men exceeded the city’s entire population of black men by 9,720.
 
Black Men Are More Likely to Be Killed or Injured During a Police Encounter
While more whites are killed by law enforcement than people of color, African Americans are killed at a disproportionate rate. In fact, black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. Between 2010 and 2012, black boys ages fif­teen through nineteen were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million compared to 1.47 per million for white boys of the same age group. In addition, a significant number of black men killed by police were unarmed. Data collected from January 1, 2015, to May 31, 2015, revealed that African Americans killed by the police were twice as likely to be unarmed as whites.17 An over­whelming 95 percent of these victims were men.
 
Not all violent encounters with the police result in death, but black men fare worse in nonfatal encounters as well. A study conducted by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statis­tics (BJS) examined police use of nonfatal force between 2002 and 2011. The study found that African Americans were more likely to experience nonfatal force at the hands of police officers than either Hispanics or whites.
 
Black Men Are Disproportionately Imprisoned and Receive Longer Sentences
African Americans make up approximately 35 percent of the prison population in the United States, and by the end of 2015, black men constituted 34 percent of the American prison popula­tion. In 2015, 5,165 in 100,000 black men ages twenty-five to twenty-nine were imprisoned compared to 2,165 Hispanic men and 921 white men of the same ages. Remarkably, the number of black men in prison or jail, on probation, or on parole by the end of 2009 roughly equaled the number enslaved in 1850. One in three black men born in 2001 can expect to be incarcer­ated in his lifetime.
 
Black men serve more time for their crimes than others simi­larly situated. Data collected by the U.S. Sentencing Commis­sion between December 2007 and 2011 revealed that black men in federal prisons received sentences 19.5 percent longer than white men sentenced for the same crime. Blacks are also dis­proportionately sentenced to death. As of 2014, the national death row population is approximately 42 percent black, while the overall black population is only 13.6 percent.

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For all of these reasons, this anthology focuses on the plight of black men and boys. The extraordinarily disproportionate mis­treatment of black boys and men at every step of the criminal process is explored in depth. As the essays make clear, the issues and problems are complex, as are the solutions. The authors are scholars, lawyers, and activists who have studied and, in some instances, personally experienced the phenomena about which they write. In these informative, well-researched, and sometimes poignant essays, the authors examine and explain the policing of the black man.US

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