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Title details for Chokehold by Paul Butler - Available

Chokehold

Policing Black Men

by Paul Butler
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available
Finalist for the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency's Media for a Just Society Awards
Nominated for the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction)
A 2017 Washington Post Notable Book
A Kirkus Best Book of 2017
"Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men."
—The Washington Post
"The most readable and provocative account of the consequences of the war on drugs since Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow . . . ."
—The New York Times Book Review
"Powerful . . . deeply informed from a legal standpoint and yet in some ways still highly personal"
—The Times Literary Supplement (London)
With the eloquence of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the persuasive research of Michelle Alexander, a former federal prosecutor explains how the system really works, and how to disrupt it
Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread—all with the support of judges and politicians.

In his no-holds-barred style, Butler, whose scholarship has been featured on 60 Minutes, uses new data to demonstrate that white men commit the majority of violent crime in the United States. For example, a white woman is ten times more likely to be raped by a white male acquaintance than be the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a black man. Butler also frankly discusses the problem of black on black violence and how to keep communities safer—without relying as much on police.

Chokehold powerfully demonstrates why current efforts to reform law enforcement will not create lasting change. Butler's controversial recommendations about how to crash the system, and when it's better for a black man to plead guilty—even if he's innocent—are sure to be game-changers in the national debate about policing, criminal justice, and race relations.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 18, 2018

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781620974988
      • File size: 2914 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781620974988
      • File size: 2914 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      "If this chapter reads like a nightmare, it is because that's exactly what the criminal system is for an African American man"--a searing look at the interactions of law enforcement and black men by a former prosecutor.When it comes to the law, it seems, black men inhabit a different country than white men. Granted, as Butler (Law/Georgetown Univ.; Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, 2009) writes, acknowledging "ugly facts," black men commit disproportionately more violent crimes, especially homicide, than Latino or white men, but they are also disproportionately likely to be victims of just those crimes. In any event, whites are far likelier to be victimized by other whites than by anyone else, even as black men, and especially young ones, are subject to what Butler calls the Chokehold: an entire system of justice that presumes their guilt and that is entirely geared to the suppression of an entire category of citizens. This system often works insidiously. As Butler writes, for instance, the Supreme Court has ruled that people with intellectual disabilities are not subject to the death penalty, because they may not be aware that they are committing crimes. However, prosecutors circumvent this by adding points to the IQ scores of minority criminals, playing on the nostrum that IQ measures traditionally discriminate against minority members and thereby raising the score of black men "enough for them to be executed." The author writes from experience, having been charged with a crime that he did not commit and that he was able to refute only by knowledge of the system. In a depressing inventory, he offers pointers for reducing black men's chances of being caught up in it, ranging from not wearing a hoodie ("when I put on a hoodie everybody turns into a neighborhood watch person") to avoiding red flags: "three or more black men in a car at any time," "black men raising their voices," and the like. Smart, filled rightfully with righteous indignation, and demanding broad discussion and the widest audience.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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