A former prosecutor fights the law and lets it win.
By Bobby Constantino
The Atlantic - Dec 17 2013
Ten years ago, when I started my career as an assistant district
attorney in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, I viewed the American
criminal justice system as a vital institution that protected society
from dangerous people. I once prosecuted a man for brutally attacking
his wife with a flashlight, and another for sexually assaulting a
waitress at a nightclub. I believed in the system for good reason.
But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of
my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with
impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest
records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting
through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking
weed – shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything
more than raised eyebrows and scoldings – I often wondered if there was a
side of the justice system that we never saw in the suburbs. Last year,
I got myself arrested in New York City and found out.
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