The are few things more complicated in America -- or more vital to repair -- than the criminal justice system, New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb said at the Springfield Public Forum Wednesday evening.
There are few things more complicated in America -- or more vital to repair -- than the criminal justice system, New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb said at the Springfield Public Forum Wednesday evening.
Speaking to an audience at Springfield's Symphony Hall that included Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, state Sen. Eric Lesser and Springfield Police Commissioner John Barbieri, Cobb charted the racially fraught history of America's jails and courts, arguing that centuries of injustice has led to a system of policing ridden with mistrust between authorities and black Americans.
"We don't like to talk very much about what's wrong. We don't like to talk much about our shortcomings, our areas for improvement," Cobb said. "Our future generations are going to ask us about how we managed to create one of the most profound contradictions in American society: We have the oldest constitutional democracy in the world. We also have the largest prison population in the world."
Cobb, a staff writer for the New Yorker, frequently reports and comments on racial dynamics and the relationship between police and minority communities in the United States. In 2014, Cobb reported from the ground in Ferguson, Missouri after the police shooting of Michael Brown; last year, he wrote a detailed examination of the development of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Before joining the New Yorker, Cobb was a history professor at the University of Connecticut and is currently a faculty member at the Columbia Journalism School. His work has won national recognition, including the 2015 Sidney Hillman Award for Opinion and Analysis writing and a Writers Guild of America East award for his work on the Frontline documentary "Policing the Police."
Cobb's talk, "The Half-Life of Freedom: Race and Justice in America," is the second in the Springfield Public Forum's fall speaker series. It will be part of a week-long dialogue on race, diversity and inclusion in Springfield and is being co-presented by the Healing Racism Institute of Pioneer Valley. On Nov. 15 former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele will discuss America's new political landscape.
At issue is a massive gap in perception between the ideals of the criminal justice system -- providing recompense for victims and fair punishment and rehabilitation for offenders -- and the way it is experienced by many minorities, Cobb said.
He compared the prison system to credit ratings after the housing bubble popped in 2008, when people who had otherwise played by the rules found themselves deep in debt, facing foreclosure and deemed untrustworthy by the banks.
"For many African Americans, this is how we have long seen the criminal justice system," Cobb said. "That having a criminal record may or may not say anything about you personally, but reflects where you live, what kind of policing you have been exposed to."
As examples, he cited the American justice system's roots in enforcing fugitive slave laws and the use of prisons in the post-Emancipation South to provide labor to cotton plantations suddenly lacking a slave workforce.
And in more contemporary terms, he said the racial gap in criminal records often springs from disparate treatment by law enforcement. A white suburban teenager carrying marijuana or cocaine in his pocket is unlikely to be arrested; a black man living in a neighborhood where people are regularly stopped and frisked will likely end up with a conviction for the same conduct.
Cobb also noted the difficulties faced by police, citing an experience he had while doing a ridealong with officers in Newark, N.J. for his Frontline documentary. Officers received a call about a fleeing suspect in a yellow jacket and blue jeans; they saw someone matching that description reaching into a car for an object the officers could not see.
The officers did not draw their weapons, and it ended up being a woman who had nothing to do with the crime. But Cobb said he recognized how the situation could have spiraled toward violence.
"Even in departments that are really troubled, it remains to be a very difficult job," he said. "It remains a very complicated undertaking to ask people to interact with the public again and again and again and get it right."
Cobb closed with noting the challenges of a system where so many incarcerated people -- from shoplifters and marijuana dealers to repeat violent felons -- are expected to reintegrate into a society that takes their record as a reason to deny them employment.
"We need people to understand that we are not the sum total of the worst thing we have done," a recently released convict told Cobb in an interview.
"That stuck with me," he told the audience in Springfield.