Racism and the American justice system; Racism and law enforcement

Updated Jul. 1, 2025.

The following is a subset of Systemic racism and entrenched social bias, which is Part 2 of On microaggressions and racial issues, particularly in the lifestyle: A resource for white people.

Racism and the justice system

• Unlike the rest of this list, this article is an exploration of what can be done to fix the system: Illinois Has Put an End to the Injustice of Cash Bail, by Bryce Covert, The Nation, Dec. 2, 2024. ("Amid a national backlash against criminal justice reform, Illinois has achieved something extraordinary. It’s working better than anyone expected.")

• Recommended in a comment: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson, Spiegel & Grau, NY, 2014. ("[F]ocusing on injustices in the United States judicial system, [Just Mercy] alternates chapters between documenting Stevenson's efforts to overturn the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian and his work on other cases, including children who receive life sentences, and other poor or marginalized clients.")
  In 2019, Warner Bros. Pictures released a film version of Just Mercy, starring James Foxx. In addition to the linked trailer, my YouTube search for "Just Mercy documentary" netted a cluster of contemporary interviews and features related to the movie.
  HBO's 2019 documentary, "True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality", is available on YouTube.

• Federal Judge Says It’s Time To End The ‘Mistake’ Of Qualified Immunity While Handling A Bogus Murder Charge, by Kat C. (The case in question is that of Desmond Green, a Mississippi man who was unjustly charged and jailed for two years. The linked articles include a fairly detailed history of qualified immunity. Usually sanitized as "Section 1983," qualified immunity dates back to the “Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.”)

• Black men and women are over-represented in solitary confinement, when compared to total prison populations, a graph and linked resources, posted by Kat C..

• The Economy of Incarceration: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a video uploaded to The Laura Flanders Show, a YouTube channel, May 26, 2015. (A re-imagining of America's prison system, featuring Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a founding member of the anti-prison group Critical Resistance and the author of "Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.")

• Poverty is not a crime: the life-altering injustice of the American bail system, by Kat C., Dec. 21, 2022. (Includes a selection of articles about the impact of bail on people who can't afford to pay, plus a list of bail funds.)

• We talked to 100 people about their experiences in solitary confinement – this is what we learned, by Angela Hattery and Earl Smith, The Conversation, Oct. 14, 2022. (Although primarily focused on the effect of solitary confinement on prisoners and guards, this article highlights the disproportionate number of Black and POC prisoners who do their time in solitary.)

• Rap on Trial: Conversation with Erik Nielson and Andrea L. Dennis, by vestopr, Apr. 17, 2020. (vestopr is a page of the Vesto website. Vesto "provides publicity representation and services for debut and established authors."). ("[I]n a new spin, we’re beginning to see prosecutors who allege that, even though a defendant did not personally commit a criminal act (e.g., homicide, assault, drug distribution), the defendant should be convicted of conspiracy because he wrote lyrics that described, encouraged, or facilitated a gang’s criminal acts.")
  RELATED: California governor Gavin Newsom signs bill limiting use of rap lyrics as evidence in court, by Natalie Neysa Alund, USA Today, Oct. 3, 2022.

• Black man who used 'stand your ground' defense in fatal shooting gets 10 years in prison, by Marquise Francis, Yahoo! News, Sept. 19, 2022. ("Studies have found a significant racial disparity in whether homicides are deemed to be justified, based on the race of the shooter and that of the person shot. A 2020 study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said​​ 'white-on-black homicides have justifiable findings 33 percentage points more often than black-on-white homicides,' with 'stand your ground' laws exacerbating that disparity.")

• A Pregnant Black Activist Is in Prison for Talking Back to Police, and Her Body Is Suffering by Kylie Cheung, Jezebel, Sept. 6, 2022. (This is one woman's story, encompassing racism in law enforcement, the courts, and the prison system.)

• 13th, ©2016 Netflix, uploaded Apr. 17, 2020, to the Netflix channel on YouTube. (This 140-minute, award-winning exploration of incarceration in America discusses the complex political and social history of mass incarceration, corporate involvement in the prison system, police violence toward Black people, and the extent of the racial imbalance in our justice system. It is enlightening and anger-inducing — and at times, horrifying.)*

• 'The biggest problem you've never heard of: Heirs property and Black property loss', by Kat C. Sept. 6, 2021. (A selection of videos and articles that address heirs property, land theft, community and family displacement, and the loss of intergenerational wealth. )

• Racial disparities in men's imprisonment, a graph.

• Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm, by Kashmir Hill, The New York Times, Jun. 24, 2020. (NYT has a paywall. You can also read Neal Parkikh’s AI version here.)
  RELATED: Microsoft Replaced Its Editors With Robots. A Week Later, They've Been Accused Of Racism, by James Felton, IFLScience!, Jun. 9, 2020. (Take a look at the first comment under this article: "The 'racist soap dispenser' has nothing to do with AI. It's just a sensor that works off of reflected lasers/light/IR and had a threshold that meant it didn't detect darker skin which absorbed more." I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like AI isn't the only technology with a racist problem.)

• Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States, Samuel R. Gross (senior editor), et al., National Registry of Exonerations, Irvine,CA, Mar. 7, 2017.

• The Myth of the Black-on-Black Crime Epidemic, blog for Demo.org, by Michael Jackson, Jul. 29, 2013.

• Prison sentences for Black people vs. white people: a graphic uploaded by Kat C.

• John Oliver takes a look at why people of color are routinely excluded from becoming jurors, who their absence impacts, and what we can do to create a fairer system.

• Transformative Criminal Justice Reform: Where Do We Go from Here?, Brennan Center for Justice, uploaded to YouTube on Sept. 25, 2020. Offers insights into how poverty and racial inequality lead to higher rates of incarceration among Black people and people of color, America's excessively punitive sentencing, the racial disparity in recovering from incarceration, and other issues related to the prison system.

• "From that one arrest, I was in financial debt.". A former prisoner fights for US criminal justice reform, a BBC article and video, Sept. 10, 2020.

• The racism of the US justice system in 10 charts, a YouTube video by Vox, Aug. 19, 2014.

Racism and law enforcement

• “Sound of the Police,” a 2023 documentary available on Hulu. (A historical overview beginning with the creation of police departments whose purpose was to control enslaved and freed Black people in America. This documentary, which includes troubling footage, continues the story of racism in police departments through to the present. As for the troubling footage? White people should watch it anyway. It's what we all need to see.)
  Documentary traces history of policing the Black community – from slavery through present day, by Stanley Nelson, Valerie Scoon, and Allie Weintraub, ABC News, Aug. 10, 2023.
  "Sound of the Police" filmmaker tells his son, "No good can come from a police encounter”, by Gary M. Kramer, Salon, Aug. 11, 2023.

• Crime + Punishment • A Hulu Original Documentary, uploaded Jul. 17, 2020 to YouTube's Hulu channel. (This two-hour documentary "chronicles the real struggles of a group of whistleblower cops in NYC as they fight back against the illegal arrest quotas they’re pressured to abide by." Woven through the narrative is the story of a young Black man, wrongfully arrested and held at Rikers Island.)

• Study: people see black men as larger and more threatening than similarly sized white men, by German Lopez, Vox, Mar. 17, 2017. (A "series of studies published by the American Psychological Association show that stereotypes of black men’s bodies as larger and more threatening appear to lead people to justifying more use of force against black men. That unfortunately may offer some insight into the disparities seen in police shootings.")

  • RELATED: Black Men Seen as Larger, More Threatening Than White Men of Similar Size: Study, by Breanna Edwards, The Root, Mar. 14, 2017.

  • RELATED: People See Black Men as Larger, More Threatening Than Same-Sized White Men, American Psychological Association press release, 2017. (The press release links to the study: Racial Bias in Judgments of Physical Size and Formidability: From Size to Threat, by John Wilson, Kurt Hugenberg, and Nicholas O. Rule, American Psychological Association, Mar. 13, 2017.)

• Why white people keep calling the cops on black Americans, by By Vesla Mae Weaver, VOX, May 29, 2018. ("White people call cops to remove black people because it often works.")

• Living While Black and the criminalization of blackness, by P.R. Lockhart, Vox, Aug. 1, 2018. ("The story of Living While Black isn’t just about black people. It’s also about white people, their anxieties, and what that anxiety means for black people simply trying to navigate daily life.")

• Children's Theatre Company debuts play on race and policing, PBS NewsHour, Apr. 8, 2022. (A news feature about A Children’s Theatre Company production of the play Something Happened In Our Town, based on a children's book by the same name.)

  • RELATED: Something Happened in Our Town, by Marianne Celano, PhD, ABPP; Marietta Collins, PhD; and Ann Hazzard, PhD, ABPP; Magination Press, Washington, D.C., 2018. (In this children's book, two young people and their families try to make sense of the death of a Black man at the hands of a police officer.)

• Let's get to the root of racial injustice | Megan Ming Francis | TEDxRainier, Mar. 21, 2016.

• Technology Can’t Predict Crime, It Can Only Weaponize Proximity to Policing, by Matthew Guariglia, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sept. 3, 2020.

• Stop using ‘black-on-black’ crime to deflect away from police brutality, by Troy L. Smith, Cleveland.com, Jun. 14, 2020.

• End Bias Wiki users are tracking cases of people killed by police. As of Jan. 17, 2025, it appears that this site is no longer active. However, the archived page shows 4322 cases as of Jul. 18, 2024. For information about EBWiki, go here.

• Black officer talks about fear of getting pulled over, gives advice on how to survive a traffic stop, posted by the Melanin Project, Jul. 17, 2020. (This is an off-duty Black officer's story of what happened when he was pulled over by white police.)

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