40 pages • 1-hour read
Crook County
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Themes
Racial Colorblindness in the Courts
The theme of racial colorblindness in the courts, particularly in the Cook County Courts, runs as a throughline in Gonzalez Van Cleve’s book. Also called race neutrality, racial colorblindness is a racial ideology that holds that the best way to end racism is to treat all individuals equally, without regard to race or ethnicity. Proponents of racial colorblindness believe that skin color is immaterial to a person’s character, ability, and worthiness. Moreover, they hold that skin color is irrelevant in a merit-based society. Proponents of racial colorblindness claim not to ‘see’ skin color and believe that ignoring race is the best way to avoid discrimination.
Gonzalez Van Cleve points to the problems of racial colorblindness at the Cook County Courts. Most defendants in Cook County are Black or Latinx, while most defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and sheriffs are white. Court professionals treat non-white visitors to the court, including defendants, victims, and family members, differently than white visitors. Gonzalez Van Cleve provides many examples of unequal treatment, including guards stopping Black drivers wanting to access the parking garage but not stopping white drivers; sheriffs verbally abusing Black people for crossing physical or symbolic boundaries inside the courtroom; and prosecutors and judges mocking, berating, and harshly penalizing Black defendants. Even defense attorneys, ostensibly there to lobby for their clients, treat Black and white defendants unequally. Garden-variety defendants, the vast majority of whom are Black, are ignored, silenced, and pressured to accept plea bargains. By contrast, unique defendants receive more zealous representation. With race coded out of these interactions, and because of the racial divisions in the courthouse, the practices, Gonzalez Van Cleve argues, are “tantamount to whites abusing blacks with impunity” (69).
Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that court professionals recognize the blatant inequities of the court but that their racial colorblindness allows them to avoid taking blame for it: “Colorblindness is operative in the deferral of blame. This allows [court professionals] to discuss bias but does not require them to identify the perpetrator” (100). Many court professionals blame the system rather than individuals for racist court practices. Instead of mistreating people because of their race, court professionals mistreat them because of their immorality. The concept of the mope is key in this regard. Court professionals see mopes as lazy, incompetent, and unmotivated people who deserve punishment and humiliation. Mopes make up most of the system, taking time and resources away from the monsters. For court professionals, especially prosecutors who cast themselves as moral warriors, this justifies the mistreatment of defendants. For defense attorneys, this justifies ignoring clients and not properly explaining their rights to them. Gonzalez Van Cleve refers to due process in the racialized courts as a “ceremonial charade” and a “ceremony without substance” that allows court professional to “achieve a lowest common denominator of due process” (73).
The Role of Court Professionals in Racialized Justice
The role of court professionals in creating and maintaining racialized justice is a central theme of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court. Gonzalez Van Cleve sheds light on a two-tiered system of justice, with poor people of color on the bottom and middle-class, largely white people on the top. Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that sheriffs, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, most of whom are white, are complicit in court culture. However, she specifies that racialized justice is not the result of “bad apples spoiling the bunch” (80), but of an entrenched culture “owned and reproduced” by all court professionals (131), a point reinforced by a seasoned defense attorney:
I think you’re talking about the collective . . . the collective conscience of the system . . . the collective culture . . . I mean I keep coming back to that word. It really is a culture. Because, you know, if it’s not accepted in one courtroom, everybody, back then when things were so crazy, would change their perspective and do what they’re supposed to do . . . If they don’t tolerate deputies speaking to people poorly, it’s not going to happen. If they don’t tolerate people making fun of defendants then, that won’t happen. And, so that creates things (80).
Gonzalez Van Cleve provides a detailed account of how various court professionals participated in racialized justice. For example, sheriffs use intimidation and the threat of violence to prevent visitors from crossing physical and symbolic boundaries inside and outside the courthouse. This abuse extends to all visitors, including non-defendants. Judges sentence white people to probation and Black people to prison for committing similar crimes, a practice explicitly described by a public defender as follows: “A judge can’t give out good deals to everyone; if you’re white, you do better” (101). Similarly, prosecutors use slurs, mock Black defendants, and lobby for tough sentences for Black defendants, including the death penalty. Defense attorneys participate in racialized justice by silencing their clients, failing to explain important court processes, and urging them to accept deals to relieve their caseloads. Defense attorneys often use their knowledge of the system to reflect court culture back at prosecutors and judges to help their clients. This tactic can, however, involve silencing or humiliating a client, or sacrificing one client to benefit another. As Gonzalez Van Cleve notes, even well-intentioned defense attorneys participate in court culture, either willingly or as “co-opted players” who facilitate the ceremonial charade that “mocked due process and degraded entire racial categories of people” (94).
The Intersection of Race and Class in the Criminal Justice System
Gonzalez Van Cleve focuses on the role of race in Cook County’s two-tiered system of justice. She argues that the issue of class is, however, inextricable linked to the practice of justice in Chicago’s courts. According to Gonzalez Van Cleve, most visitors to the Cook County courthouse are poor people of color, including defendants, crime victims, and family members of both groups. By contrast, most court professionals are middle class and white. Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that the intersection of race and class is apparent outside the courthouse. She describes the two entrances to the building, one for court professionals and the other for visitors. The former, used by court personnel, moves swiftly, while the latter stretches far outside the building like “a Depression-era breadline […] almost entirely comprised of people of color” (16). The intersection of race and class is also evident in the modes of transportation people use to get to the courthouse. Court professionals arrive by car and park in the building’s parking garage. By contrast, most visitors arrive by public transportation. The visitors who drive to court tend to park on the street, which required feeding the meter. Black drivers who choose the parking garage are regularly stopped by security personnel, unlike white drivers, who are waved through by the guards.
The intersection of race and class is also apparent inside the courtroom. Gonzalez Van Cleve remarks that defense attorneys treat their middle-class clients better than their poor clients, regardless of race. For example, one attorney treated her Black, middle-class client “with considerable care” (176), reassuring him that his suffering mattered and expressing hope that she could help him. This attorney also spent time reassuring her client’s family, telling them that he was “a nice boy” with “a good heart” and that she “sure would like to win it for him” (176). As Gonzalez Van Cleve notes, special treatment comes at the expense of other clients, an “assembly line of mopes who regularly pressed against the lockup glass” waiting to get their attorney’s attention (176). Indeed, mopes in the Cook County Courts are not treated in a “professional, middle-class manner” (176), but are instead silenced, berated, and bullied into accepting plea deals to keep the overburdened criminal justice system moving.
Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that defense attorneys use race and class markers to determine which clients are worthy of zealous defense. She compares this process to the triage system used in hospitals. Class markers include clothing, accessories, and other signifiers, such as dialects and degrees. Middle-class, or unique, defendants not only stand out among poor defendants, or mopes, but also benefit from this classification by receiving special treatment. Defense attorneys spend more time with unique clients, treat them professionally, and lobby for them zealously. Prosecutors and judges also participate in these class distinctions by charging wealthy, white defendants with lesser crimes and sentencing them to probation rather than prison. Although class can mitigate race in the Cook County Courts, Gonzalez Van Cleve states that Black people generally receive worse treatment than white people, regardless of their social standing.
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