Running Head: Amerikkka’s Criminal Justice System 1

Amerikkka’s Criminal Justice System: It Ain’t Broke, It’s Working As Intended

Eric DeAndre Townsend

English Department, South Suburban College

English 102-430: Composition and Research-Honors Section

Dr. Rob Bailey

December 10, 2020

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Racism: Amerikkka’s Oldest Import

Amerikkka and racism are a conjoined pair, and the evidence is firmly implanted in her

founding. Actually—being historically accurate—racism in Amerikkka is older than the country

itself. The fruit borne of the pair has sown seeds of white supremacy and systemic oppression

throughout this country’s history until they have all become an infusion that has sought to

subjugate Black folk; pursuant to the law of the land. To that end, every single Amerikkkan

institution has been constructed to systematically disenfranchise Black folk, but the crown jewel

has been this country’s criminal justice system. From plantation overseers and slave catchers, to

modern-day police officers and prosecuting attorneys, Amerikkka’s racist criminal justice system

ain’t broke, it’s working as intended.

Racial Disparities in the System

The research concerning racial disparities in Amerikka’s criminal justice system is immense, and

it has been documented extensively by universities and organizations alike. These groups have

studied crime data based on race across the country, which has led to startling, disproportionate

statistics that frame the supposed “color-blind” and “class-blind” system of crime fighting and

prevention exactly for what it truly is—an extension of slavery. One such organization that has

sought to explain the disproportionate statistics is The Sentencing Project. Of all their invaluable

research, they’ve concluded:

African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once

arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more
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likely to experience lengthier prison sentences. African-American adults are 5.9

times as likely to be incarcerated than Whites, with Hispanics being 3.1 times as

likely. As of 2001, one of every three Black boys born in that year could expect to

go to prison in his lifetime, as could one of every six Latinos—compared to one

of every seventeen White boys. Racial and ethnic disparities among women are

less substantial than among men but remain prevalent. (Uggen and Rovner, 2020)

On their face, these statistics can be construed to appear as if Black and Brown folk are prone to

criminality, but according to Laura Bronner of FiveThirtyEight.com, “The data seems to

overwhelmingly point to a criminal justice system riven by racial bias. But, remarkably, it could

be even more overwhelming than some studies make it seem. That’s because of a statistical quirk

called “collider bias,” a kind of selection bias that means that the crime data that shows racial

bias is, itself, biased by racist practices”(Bronner, 2020).

No such thing as Black-on-Black crime.​ In addition to “collider bias” within already

disproportionate statistics, illogical fallacies have made their arrival in the conversation about

crime and race throughout the criminal justice system. For instance, the hasty generalization that

Black people will protest when a white cop kills a Black person, but won’t do the same when it’s

“Black on Black” crime, is often seen as a perfect logical argument to Black criminality. First, it

begs the question: Has the person cared enough about Black life to spend time in the Black

community to witness such protest, or lack thereof? Second, the term “Black on Black” crime

has to be defined. And lastly, it proposes the idea whites don’t commit crime against each

other—and whatever crime they do commit, isn’t juxtaposed against itself.

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Joshua Adams, writer for Medium.com, quashes with finality the intellectually lazy idea

that couples the state of being Black with susceptibility to criminality:

Yes, some Black people do enact intracommunity violence. But people tend to

commit crime in proximity to where they live, regardless of race. Perpetrators

commit most crimes against those of the same race. This is aside from the

well-studied historical, institutional, cultural, and socio-psychological factors that

make someone more likely to commit crime: urbanization, unemployment and the

clustering of poverty, and lack of adequate health care and educational

opportunities. Specifically for Black people, remnants of slavery and Jim Crow,

residential segregation, and mass incarceration contribute as well. (Adams, 2020)

As previously stated, the guide to understanding racism in Amerikka’s is in her founding. The

racial disparities and disproportionate statistics unequivocally proves that there was an intention

to use Black bodies for profit, there must be some form of implementation.

The First Official Slave and the Virginia Model​. ​In August of 1619, fourteen months

before the Pilgrims anchored the Mayflower at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, about twenty to thirty

Africans that were savagely stolen from their Homeland were forced from the bottom of the

English slave ship, “The White Lion”, onto the shores of Point Comfort, Virginia. As put by Luci

Cochran, executive director of the Hampton History Museum, “If for no other reason, it is

important we have a conversation about what took place at Point Comfort in 1619 because it

forever changed the course of the country. The legacy of this event affects us all and

understanding this complex history and legacy helps us to come together as

Americans”(Cochran).
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John Punch, the twelfth-great grandfather of the 44th president of the United States

Barack Obama(Ancestry), was the first official slave in the United States by way of over

sentencing based on melanated skin. In July of 1640, Punch, along with a Dutchman only

known as Victor and James Gregory The Scotchman—all of whom were indentured servants of

wealthy Virginia planter and landowner Hugh Gwyn—decided to escape servitude by running to

Maryland. They were caught, returned to Virginia, and handed down sentences by the Virginia

Governor’s Council, the highest court in the colony. They were all given an equally fair sentence

of thirty lashes, but that’s where equality ceased. The two, less-melanated European servants

were sentenced to “first serve out their times with their master according to their indenture, and

one whole year apiece after the time of their service is expired”, while “a Negro called John

Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere”

(Higginbotham, 1978). One score and eleven months from the landing of what Secretary of

Virginia John Rolfe called “twenty Negers”, the highest court in the Virginia colony established

a precedent of punishing Black bodies exceedingly worse than white ones.

Black Bodies as Profit. ​ Recognizing an atrocious, but profitable opportunity, white Southerners

began to maximize their white privilege. The Virginian colony solidified its stance in racial

oppression by enacting racist legislation aimed to further hegemonize Black folk. According to

Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, “a Virginia law passed in

1662 stated that the status of the mother determined if a black child would be enslaved.

Increasingly harsh and restrictive laws were passed over the next 40 years, culminating in the

Virginia Slave Codes of 1705”(Ferris). The Black bodies that provided free slave labor proved to

be the sole source of production and income for white Southerners, and the foundation of the

Southern economy—essentially building the country for free. Those same white people
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understood that their livelihood depended on chattel slavery and the Amerikkkan racial caste

system to thrive.

The Virginian colony became the bedrock model for the rest of the colonies—and

eventually a newly-formed Amerikkka—to build upon and protect racial oppression as a

profitable racial caste system. Commensurate with the 1662 Virginia law, “the Virginia Slave

Codes of 1705 codified the status of slaves, further limited their freedom, and defined some

rights of slave owners. It included provisions stating that non-Christians brought to Virginia

would be slaves, even if they converted to Christianity. It also allowed slave owners to punish

slaves without fear of legal repercussions and specified the rewards for the recapture of runaway

slaves”(Ferris). These “rewards” prompted the creation of slave patrols, and “one of the earliest

and most prolific forms of early policing in the South”(Hansen, 2019). According to historian

Gary Potter, slave patrols served three main functions: “(1) to chase down, apprehend, and return

to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts;

and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice,

outside the law”(Potter, 2013).

White Southerner males took it upon themselves the duty of asserting their dominance of

lawful white supremacy over the Black folk they sought to control—all while they fought for

independence from Great Britain. From the early 1700s to the election of President Abraham

Lincoln in 1860, the Union known as the United States of America was headed toward Civil

War. Not to be mistaken, the Civil War was over slavery, nothing more. For those that say the

American Civil War wasn’t about slavery—rather states’ rights—the rights of a state to allow

slavery is never mentioned. Fast forward to the ratification of the 13th amendment to the United

States Constitution on December 5, 1865, White Southerners lost those Black bodies that
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provided them financial and economic stability. Factually speaking, the 1860 U.S. Census

counted 4,441,830 Black folk living in the United States; 3,954,760 were enslaved and 488,070

were free (Gauthier, 1860). Besides being built on a foundation of racism, Amerikkka was

economically structured as a capitalistic society, and the system of chattel slavery was

supposedly outlawed by the 13th amendment. A new system of profitable disenfranchisement

was needed, and the system was laid out in the very thing that outlawed slavery: the 13th

amendment.

13th Amendment: Springboard for Mass Incarceration

It seems every month there’s a new Netflix documentary detailing the same story; white cops

over policing communities they don’t live in and terrorizing people that don’t look like them.

There’s always the same usual suspects, supposedly on the right side of the law: one “good” cop

trained with psychological tactics to elicit false confessions, one or two “bad” cops that would

rather get physical for the same result, an overzealous prosecutor with a penchant of skirting the

same law they’re trying to enforce, and a judge that usually leaves the job characteristics of

being fair and impartial at home. Is this a coincidence?

13th &​ “The New Jim Crow”

Critically-acclaimed filmmaker Ava Duvernay wrote, produced, and directed the 2016

documentary 13th, which “explores the intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the

United States”(Dargis, 2016). Duvernay expertly provides a case-in-chief that the primary

function of this country’s criminal justice system is to sustain slavery through 13th amendment,

and by doing so, over policing and arrest Black folk for trivial crimes that leads to forced labor

and “convict leasing”. Famed civil rights activist Angela Davis said in the film, “in so ways, the
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so-called war on drugs was a war on communities of color, a war on Black communities, and a

war on Latino communities”(13th, 2016). For context, the 13th amendment to the United States

Constitution reads:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime

whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United

States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction​. (13th, 2016)

The connection to racial disparities in Amerikkka’s criminal justice system and mass

incarceration lie in one phrase of the 13th amendment: “except as a punishment for crime

whereof the party shall have been duly convicted(13th, 2016)...”. This should be sufficient

enough proof if there were any doubts of the intention of the criminal justice system—which

coincidentally became uniformly organized directly after the end of the American Civil War in

1865. Furthermore, the 9th United States Congress enacted The Act Prohibiting Importation of

Slaves in 1807, meaning for the fifty-eight years in between both events, the millions of Black

folk already here were the perfect specimens to experience the novel Amerikkkan criminal

justice system.

Michelle Alexander, author of “​The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcerations in the Age of

Colorblindness''​, brilliantly illustrates Amerikkka’s thriving racial caste system, the importance

of free slave labor to its society, and how President Bill Clinton’s “War on Drugs” systematically

disenfranchised incarcerated not only Black populations, but other minorities populations. As a

civil rights attorney, research done by Alexander concurs with the research done by The

Sentencing Project and confirms the statistics that one in three Black men, at some point in their

lives, will be incarcerated, should current racial disparities continue. She introduces eye-opening
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information when she writes, “white people are more likely to commit drug crimes...but the

primary targets of the penal system’s control can be defined largely by race”(Alexander, 2019,

p.10-12). Alexander further contends that, “mass incarceration...is a stunningly comprehensive

and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly

similar to Jim Crow”(Alexander, 2019).

Jim Crow and Black Codes as a Way of Life. ​To achieve the goal of reentering Black bodies

into the legalized institution of slavery within the Amerikkkan criminal justice system, those that

benefited from the oppression relied on Black Codes and Jim Crow to continue their social and

racial control. Black Codes were a set of laws that attempted to regulate the behavior of Black

freemen and freedmen throughout the post-Civil War South, and the sole purpose of the Black

Codes were to stifle Black political participation. Less than a week after President Lincoln was

assassinated, Vice President and White Southerner Andrew Johnson assumed the office of the

presidency. With a “good ol boy” in the White House, state legislatures across the Antebellum

South began to reintroduce the concept of “self-rule”—another disguise for states’ rights. Some

of the Black Codes prohibited Black folk from shaking hands, eating, or even riding in the front

seat with a white person. If these racist rules, or any of the other trivial, arbitrary offenses were

broken, white folks sought to put free Black bodies back into the most profitable position for

white society; slavery and involuntary servitude pursuant to the law of the land.

Similarly, “Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily,

but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow

was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African
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Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens”(Ferris). Jim Crow instilled a

belief in white society that they were superior to Black folk in every way possible. Amendments

13 through 15 gave Black folk “equal protection under the law”, but again, white Southerners

found ways to subvert the law. Just like the Black Codes, Jim Crow was an institution where its

sole purpose was to put Black bodies back into the Amerikkkan criminal justice system for

profit. As said by Michelle Alexander, “so many aspects of the old Jim Crow are suddenly legal

again once you’ve been branded a felon. And so it seems that in America we haven’t so much

ended racial caste, but simply redesigned it”(Alexander, 2019).

Hope For America’s Criminal Justice System.​ ​There have been attempts by so-called

“progressive prosecutors”—of all races— in America to “fix the system”. For example, Cook

County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has worked to exonerate thousands of wrongfully convicted

or overly-convicted individuals in her jurisdiction, since her election in 2016. According to Matt

Daniels of The Marshall Project, “she turned away more than 5,000 cases that would have been

pursued by previous State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, mostly by declining to prosecute low-level

shoplifting and drug offenses and by diverting more cases to alternative treatment programs”

(Daniels, 2019). The Marshall Project further “estimate that Cook County prosecutors have

dismissed an additional 2,300 drug cases that, under Alvarez, would have otherwise gone to

trial—or ended in a plea” (Daniels, 2019). This is important because Cook County is home to the

City of Chicago, where Chicago Police detective Jon Burge tortured 200 innocent men to confess

to crimes they didn’t commit. “Overall, the city has paid alleged victims of Burge detectives

more than $57 million”(Schroedter, 2020).

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An initiative advocated for in 2016 by Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants

commissioned the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School with dissecting racial

disparities in the Massachusetts criminal justice system. The results were the same as outcomes

from the research of The Sentencing Project, Ava Duvernay, and Michelle Alexander—“Black

and Latinx people are overrepresented in Massachusetts’ criminal justice system and that they

receive longer sentences than their white counterparts when convicted” (Mineo, 2020).

Conclusion. ​Perspectively speaking, there have been some changes in terms of Amerikkka’s

criminal justice system. Research has proved the intention of this country’s penal system was to

mass incarcerate Black bodies—by way of the 13th amendment—that provide economic stability

through forced, free labor. The disproportionate statistics and racial disparities were not an

accident, rather a necessity to facilitate a Jim Crow-style racial caste system to further oppress

and disenfranchise Black folk. Thus, the system hasn’t been broken, it’s been working fully as

intended. But the goal now is to break Amerikka’s criminal justice system and intend it to work

for everyone—equally.

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Archives. ​https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/13th-amendment

Adams, J. (2020, August 19). ‘Black on Black Crime’ Is Racist and Doesn’t Make Sense |

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