Dawn Kirk

“Juveniles, for their part, can be transferred to adult court, where they can be sent to adult prison. Angela J. Davis, in her authoritative study Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor, observes that “the most remarkable feature of these important, sometimes life-and-death decisions is that they are totally discretionary and virtually unreviewable.”59 Most prosecutors’ offices lack any manual or guidebook advising prosecutors how to make discretionary decisions.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“It’s a lot easier to go out to the ’hood, so to speak, and pick somebody than to put your resources in an undercover [operation in a] community where there are potentially politically powerful people.”83”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Numerous studies have shown that prosecutors interpret and respond to identical criminal activity differently based on the race of the person charged with the crime.61”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“The study’s authors concluded, based on their review and analysis of the empirical evidence, that the Seattle Police Department’s decisions to focus so heavily on crack, to the near exclusion of other drugs, and to concentrate its efforts on outdoor drug markets in downtown areas rather than drug markets located indoors or in predominantly white communities, reflect “a racialized conception of the drug problem.”87 As the authors put it: “[The Seattle Police Department’s] focus on black and Latino individuals and on the drug most strongly associated with ‘blackness’ suggest that law enforcement policies and practices are predicated on the assumption that the drug problem is, in fact, a black and Latino one, and that crack, the drug most strongly associated with urban blacks, is ‘the worst.’”88”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness