A Familiar Face

Each week, I prepare for court by reading through the docket and filling out forms with the background information of the defendants. Dockets list defendants’ names and birth year, as well as the charges they face and the number of times they have had to appear in court. As I fill in the forms, I often see the same names again and again. It becomes second nature to associate these names with the faces of the individuals whose cases are being heard. But there was one person whose face I was able to memorize instantly—and I was even able to recognize him outside the court as well. 

This individual, a black-appearing cis-gender man in handcuffs, had turned himself in under the charge of assault in the third degree. Though this charge is the lowest tier of assault in the state of New York, it still involves an intent to cause physical injury. After entering a plea of not guilty, his hearing ended within five minutes with the judge's decision to release him on his own recognizance and a new court date scheduled for two weeks from today. His handcuffs were unlocked and he walked out of the courtroom with an air of confidence. 

I expected to see him next at court in two weeks, so it was a surprise that I caught sight of him the following week when I was driving around Poughkeepsie. As he disappeared into a store, I found myself partially excited and somewhat confused. 

It was only because I had attended court on a certain day that I had any information about his personal history. On the one hand, I remember a feeling of relief when he was able to walk back out into the world after that day in court, and I felt similarly content that he was able to move freely around the area of Poughkeepsie. This preliminary state of affairs—innocent until proven guilty—gave me some amount of confidence in the system, that there was mutual trust between defendants and the court. 

However, knowing this small part of his history also presented some amount of wariness. Though this man had no idea who I am, I know his name, birth year, criminal charges, and some other tidbits of personal information based on his docket and observing his arraignment in court. As a result, I know that he has an order of protection issued against him and there may have been people he has injured. Even in my attempts to see the person behind the label, I caught myself feeling a sense of trepidation when seeing him in public. 

This stigma is explored extensively in Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow. As she explains, "the system of mass incarceration is based on the prison label, not prison time" (p. 17). It is this label that has come to be so ingrained in our society as we continue to use the criminal justice system as a tool to perpetuate racial injustice. 

Having experienced this phenomenon—the demonization of individuals with criminal labels, despite their lack of conviction—I recognize the importance of continuing my study of the racial disparities in the criminal-legal system. I believe the resonance of Alexander's words can teach us how to move past the labels and understand the system for what it is: a target placed on the backs of people of color and other marginalized groups. As we continue to come together to educate ourselves on these issues, we can grow to understand our own misjudgments and stigmas that contribute to the overwhelming discriminative perception of the criminal label.