Crook County

“In an era of mass incarceration, defined by intense segregation and racial inequality, our criminal courts are transformed from central sites of due process into central sites of racialized punishment.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve’s book highlights how court professionals, including sheriffs, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges, abuse visitors to the Cook County courthouse. Gonzalez Van Cleve ascribes this abuse to racial divisions within the court, namely, the division between the mostly Black and Latinx visitors and the mostly white professionals.

“The criminal courthouse is situated in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood with concentrations of violence, gangs, and drugs.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve emphasizes the role of boundaries in creating and maintaining racialized justice in the Cook County Courts. These boundaries exist even outside the courtroom. The Cook County courthouse is located away from Chicago’s affluent downtown, in a poor, largely Latinx neighborhood, a division that mirrors that of court professionals and defendants.

“Vacant lots, railroad tracks, and abandoned industry define what appears to be a post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s difficult to comprehend that you’re only six miles from the center of the city.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve’s jarring comparison of the area of the courthouse to an end of the world landscape captures the boundaries that exist between everyday life in Chicago and the racialized spaces of the court. These boundaries, both physical and symbolic, are apparent inside and outside the courthouse.

“The most common language used by the anonymous court watchers to describe the court was that it was a social space defined by an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dynamic.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dynamic is central to the practice of racialized justice. Race is the most significant barrier between court professionals (‘us’) and defendants, victims, and their families (‘them’) at the Cook County courthouse. Whiteness bestows privileges on court professionals that are denied to visitors, who are instead abused, harassed, and humiliated regardless of why they are at court.

“Most days, you just hurry up to wait in the courtroom with no sense or warning of when your case will be heard.”

This quote is about the weaponization of time at the Cook County courthouse. Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that white professionals control time and that people of color are subject to this control, making time a key part of the racialized experience at court.

“There was a tonal dissonance of hearing Black English spoken in what was a white, professional domain.”

This quote describes an elderly Black woman pleading for leniency for accidentally killing her abusive husband. It captures the racial divisiveness of the Cook County Courts, highlighting the linguistic expression of this division.

“When you ask the professionals about race and the criminal justice system, they claim they do not see race; they see only a case.”

This passage is about racial colorblindness, a recurring theme in Gonzalez Van Cleve’s book. Court professionals use the language of race neutrality to mask racist practices, justifying the unequal and at times abusive treatment of people of color by highlighting their immorality.

“Whiteness gave defendants the benefit of the doubt.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that whiteness bestowed privilege in the Cook County courthouse. This privilege includes receiving more attention from defense attorneys and being treated respectfully. This quote describes how judges practice racialized justice by giving white defendants the benefit of the doubt and sentencing them to probation instead of prison.

“Fundamental due process protections are regarded as mere formalities, at best a type of ceremony without substance. This allowed professionals to achieve a lowest common denominator of due process.”

According to Gonzalez Van Cleve, court professionals do not ensure that defendants understood their rights, even when pleading guilty to serious crimes. The cursory explanations defendants receive and the way they are silenced when they ask questions prompt Gonzalez Van Cleve to call due process a mere formality and a ceremonial charade.

“When my bosses laughed at a public defender who could not control his or her client, I’d roll my eyes to fit in.”

This quote is about street cred, the emotional armor that allows attorneys to practice law in a racially divisive environment. By rolling her eyes at the public defender, Gonzalez Van Cleve showed her supervisor that she had learned and understood the unofficial rules of the court, which required stoicism, proving that she was on the side of professionals, not defendants.

“In an era of colorblind racism, it is difficult to disentangle racial views even when one asks what seems like a yes or no question.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve’s book is based on 10 years of ethnographic fieldwork. Interviews with court professionals were central to this research. These interviews included yes or no questions about the impact of race on fairness at the court. However, many court professionals shied away from giving straight answers because of their commitment to race neutrality, which hindered open discussions of race.

“If anyone is to blame, then everyone is to blame.”

This quote describes the consequences of racial colorblindness. Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that court professionals can not overtly condemn racist behavior without tacitly implicating all court professionals, including members of their own group. Many thus blame the police, lawmakers, or the system for the racial inequities of the court.

“I realized that there was no way to do a study of these courts without getting my hands dirty or feeling dirty after the fact.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve holds that racism in the Cook County Courts is not the product of a few bad apples, but of an entrenched culture created and reproduced by all court actors. Studying the courts in person made her complicit in the culture, regardless of her personal beliefs.

“Mug shots, crime scene pictures, and even post-conviction jail intake photos are strange and bitter fruits.”

Chapter 4 opens with a description of three photographs adorning the walls of a prosecutor’s office: a woman reenacting the murder of her baby, a man proclaiming his innocence of murder, and a detail of a dead man’s hand. In this quote, Gonzalez Van Cleve compares such photos to bitter fruits because they represent prosecutorial victories while also depicting violent subjects.

“Racism reigned despite an era of colorblind niceties.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve argues that colorblindness is racism without the epithets. Unlike police, who often use racialized language, prosecutors clothe their racism in coded language, using terms such as mope, ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ and other insider terms to refer to people of color.

“Two defendants, same charges, a white-black difference in outcome.”

This quote describes the impact of racism in sentencing practices. Two defendants, one white, the other Black, were charged with the same crime. The judge gave the two-time white offender a reduced sentence. By contrast, the judge berated the Black offender and gave him a harsher sentence.

“Structural codependencies between prosecutors and police exerted a strong influence.”

Police officers are star witnesses for the prosecution. Prosecutors depend on police to win cases, which is essential for career advancement. At the Cook County Courts, prosecutors look the other way when officers perjure themselves or coerce confessions from defendants. As Gonzalez Van Cleve notes, their code of silence makes them complicit in police brutality and misconduct.

“They would rush to the bulletproof barrier, yell questions at the glass, beg to send messages to their public defender, or ask for help on excruciating matters.”

This quote describes how defendants behave when they enter the courtroom lockup. It not only captures their desperation, but also speaks to the lack of attention they receive from their attorneys, who fail to explain court processes in a meaningful way.

“Fighting too hard could have great consequences.”

Lobbying too hard for a client by filing too many motions and insisting on a trial cost defense attorneys street cred. Court professionals label these attorneys mope lovers and punish them alongside their clients. Punishments range from ridicule to being ‘accidentally’ left in a locked cell with defendants for extended periods of time.

“The sorting between the deserving and undeserving defendants becomes the nexus of representation, where the haves become the ‘have mores’ and the ‘have-nots’ become the horse-traded casualties of the courts.”

This passage describes the triaging of defendants. Defense attorneys use a variety of metrics to measure the worthiness of their clients, including race and class markers. Middle-class or unique defendants warrant slowing the system and receive better representation than poor, garden-variety defendants. According to Gonzalez Van Cleve, class supersedes race in the evaluation process.

“No one is investigating your case. No, your word will not be believed over the word of the police that roughed you up. And, the witness that can verify your story, we won’t call them either because it won’t matter to the prosecutor.”

This quote describes how justice operates at the Cook County Courts. Defense attorneys do not prioritize truth and justice, but instead do what is most expedient. Consequently, few defendants receive a true defense.

“With defendants seen as mopes, their attempt to engage in a case was read either as ignorance or as a hustle for prestige.”

Some defendants in the Cook County system try to participate in their own defense by going to the prison library to educate themselves or by soliciting information from other inmates. Defense attorneys typically dismiss these efforts and question their clients’ motives. They never see these actions as attempts at self-preservation, largely because they view the clients with contempt.

“As I wrote this book, I looked at the stacks of field notes and court- watching forms. Collectively, in their binders, there were nearly forty pounds of narrative data.”

Gonzalez Van Cleve provides a detailed account of her research methods, both in the main body of her book and in the Method’s Appendix. This quote refers to the weight of all the data she collected to convey the breadth of her research.