Reflection on a series of podcasts I listened to about the justice system
By: Hannah Reed
Over the course of this semester I have been listening to the third season of a podcast series called Serial. This series was a total of nine episodes all touching on different cases and stories within the Cleveland Justice Center.
I really appreciated how honest the podcasts were and how professional and just all around good humans the people reporting on the podcast were. For example while covering different cases (mostly of Black men) they interviewed all the right people. They were inside the courtrooms, interviewing the people facing charges, attempting to intervfiew police, spoke with judges, lawyers, juvenile detention centers, the list goes on and on.
They took their job seriously and did the stories justice. In fact, I feel they did the people justice by sharing the so unheard side of their story. Instead of letting everyone's story be told by the courts or by the media, they decided to let the people facing time share their own stories and about how the police, justice system, and the streets are all connected.
I saw my own experiences reflected in this series. One story in particular really hit home for me because my boyfriend and I had been in a similar scenario. The person's name is Jesse. He grew up in and lived in the same town for all his life and had many run-ins with the police. He knew them, and they knew him. Jesse had a lot of BS happen to him on the account of the police but the thing that was most striking was how the police treated Jesse like he was less than a human being.
One story in particular that Jesse told was about an officer that was involved in one of the unfortunate situations with Jesse. At first he almost corned Jesse in public to get him to talk with him alone in private. My boyfriend and I had a similar experience with an officer that he was trying to make a complaint against. Long story short this same cop ended up harassing Jesse and would follow and antagonize him. The officer would drive past Jesse's house, the places he knew Jesse would hang out at. The most horrid part was that there was nothing Jesse could do but take it.
My favorite part of the series was in the last episode when the main narrator (Sarah) talked about the suggestion box in the justice center in Cleveland. She talked about all of the different suggestions she had placed in the box including police and judges harassing people, forcing them into pleas, losing track of inmates, insufficient payment, etc. Yet, she said if she had to choose just one overarching suggestion, it would be this: "admit that something has gone wrong". She encouraged the justice center to take a good look at themselves and understand that they do not know everything and they have a lot of work to be done in their system.
I can relate to Sarah's overall suggestion because it can be applied to our entire justice system and society. They were both built to make people of color inferior and continue to demonstrate this very fact everyday. The justice system has been stacked against people of color since it was formed, and it will not change until the people in charge understand that something has gone completely wrong in our society and decide it needs to be changed.