Courtroom 302

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain extensive discussion of mass incarceration, systemic racism, and substance use disorders. They also touch on topics of sexual assault, domestic and child abuse, and hate crimes. This guide obscures the n-word when reproduced in quotes.

“Those marched into the basement are cloaked in the presumption of innocence—in theory. The prevailing wisdom down here, however, is: if they’re so innocent, why’d they arrive in handcuffs?”

This quotation elucidates both the tendency to prejudge people accused of crimes before understanding the circumstances of their lives—a prejudice frequently explored in the narrative—and the bias that causes people to regard them as incorrigible underworld figures. The language in the quotation reflects the latter sentiment. The fact that the defendants are “marched” in makes them appear uniform. Even their presumed innocence is a “cloak”—a word that implies disguise and therefore subterfuge. Bogira poses the rhetorical question, which reflects the views of the deputy officers, to invite readers to confront possible prejudices.

“‘They act like slave masters,’ one of tonight’s prisoners, Terrance Evans, says later of the deputies. But at least they don’t play favorites, Evans says. ‘You could be black or white, crippled or mental—they still treat you like a dog.’”

Evans’s assessment of the deputies is paradoxical. He compares them to enslavers, which suggests the justice system is a new means to entrap Black people in unpaid labor, but he also embraces the idea of impartial justice by saying that the deputies are equally contemptuous of all convicted of crimes. They view such people as subhuman, which is a different form of prejudice from racism or biases against those with mental illnesses.

“Most of tonight’s allegedly violent offenders—the nine men here for domestic battery—are sitting in the misdemeanor lockup, it being a graver offense in Illinois to possess a minute amount of cocaine or heroin than to beat a wife, girlfriend, or a sister.”

Bogira illustrates the severity of the War Against Drugs, initiated in 1970 during the Nixon Administration. The demonization of controlled substances—and of the people who possess them—led to a tendency to excessively prosecute both people who use drugs and those who deal small amounts.