That the criminal Justice System is dividing the country into two americas, he was interviewed by author elizabeth. Its so wonderful to have you here. Its an important contribution to america and the world, i think, right now. Im wondering what brought you to this topic is right maybe talk about your trajectories and be a meritocracy to this very compelling and compassionate work on american criminal justice and Law Enforcement. Guest in some ways of both books are books about the same thing which are what i would call democratic pathologies, if you think about the body of politics as a body that has different processes and functions and they can go wrong in different ways but both books are diagnoses about infections, infirmarys in the body of politics. Ways in which im a real believer in my one quarter of a secular state is democracies, small the democracy and democracy is the most radical profound, idea in the history of human civilization and its so radical and found that we have a hard time maintaining it, thinking. Implications, constantly being grounded to return to our conceptions of freedom and so, colony is about how are we outsourced it to the leaders. This book is always our democracy has gone bad by essentially based on section of our population under conditions that are not really free in the fundamental way we want to be free. We want they really in a way. In the terms of the specifics of this book, im a kid who grew up in the bronx which is my core identity on some level. Im a white kid grew up in the bronx in the 1980s which i would never trade in for a million years in terms of what it meant for me, in terms of that i think about race, politics but it was really fraud in the city was dangerous and i thought about crime in pleasing, criminal justice all through my life and in all sorts of different ways. What i encountered as i was doing reporting on ferguson and baltimore was beginning to see the sort of desperate able to see the situation weve built from different angles. The appeal of giuliani and the rhetoric, what it has brought for communities of colors and it felt like it was useful. Host it seems like ferguson is an anchor in many ways of the book. Im wondering how your experience reporting there illuminated what youre talking about growing up in the bronx in the 80s . Guest the thing about ferguson that blew my mind was if you grew up in a city, group in the bronx, you have this conception of cities as distinct to think that cities there are these racial frictions and you have bad neighborhoods and good neighborhoods, all kinds of loaded ways in which police please communities differently and all kind of loaded ways in which the borders of different neighborhoods sit atop each other, overlap and create this sandpaper friction and all of that to me was tied very deeply to either the bronx, new york or cities. When i moved to chicago and i lived in dc and all the things pertaining place. The thing that blew my mind about ferguson it just the municipality of 3000 people. Its anywhere, usa. Its between the Northern Edge of st. Louis and the suburbs. You just drive through. It looks like anywhere. Its just strip malls and parking lots and houses and the idea that what i experience there was the level of expectation and the level of racial oppression and friction, the level of the basic policing, the intensity of the filiation all that was in a place that was anonymous and it blew my mind. It wasnt that i was like, i didnt think people felt this way about please, i had reported it in new york but it was that experience, in this place that National Media had no idea existed that made me think, how many other fergusons are there we have this amazing doj about the ferguson but we only have it because Michael Brown was shot and killed in the wake of that there were protests. The doj came in and they undertook a comprehensive investigation of the department and they looked at emails and other stuff. But they just shine a flashlight at one place almost at random comments and whispered if they took the flashlight and went to some other place in Milwaukee County what they find the same thing but i think they probably would. Host you say that ferguson was hidden in plain sight, can you give a specific example of something that really moves you while you are reporting there and that angered you or that i would need to write the book with explain whats going on and make it not hidden anymore. Guest had his experience where he went down there and i would be talking to people all day. What i found is that i could literally do this on air. On air in live tv program i could take my microphone to an africanamerican resident of ferguson is a, tell me about your expensive cop and story after story after story. You can tell when people are telling the truth about dramatic things and when they are not. This is people just telling me stories were shocking. The state senator who tells the story of high school a fire truck was forget us repair Something Like that and a fireman invited her to sit in the fire truck which is an iconic part of being a kid and a Police Officer pointed a gun on her. A state senator and then it was someone else, this is a class about a friend and wants to, youth member of the and eight double cp and his mother got pulled over and thrown against the back of a car. Other peoples experiences in mashed in criminal records and then engaged in the drug trade, talking about harassment and cops using the and word. It was boom, boom, boom, microphone, talk to people, story after story after story and one of the things that is so important about that department of justice document in some ways is that it is a thirdparty, you know, confirmation, of the truth of what those people were saying. Not that it was needed but in a sort of official funds. These artificial agents investigating the claims saying this isnt some mass illusion, they arent crazy. I joke about this at one point in a book event sometimes and ive done in, i feel like i have a unique position writing about these issues because i dont experience the law in the way of people of color do. Im a reporter and in some ways reporting is always this weird, youre always reporting outside of your experience but this is a particularly loaded one. Part of the thing, part of the project of the book is to be like this is not made up. Thats a ridiculous thing to say and why should it be the case that people need to be vouched for in that way but i do thin think i saw some Interesting Data where we are seeing changes in Public Opinion of among white americans about the reality of truth of this. Its working whether the coverage, videos, protests, activism, Public Opinion is moving on this stuff and i do think if you are if you live your life completely shielded from this experience it seems insane, it really does. If you dont have a firstperson experience of it youre just like, really . Do they really do that to a cop pulled a gun on you in a fire truck, why would they do that. Host thats why the book is so important and critical right now. I do think youre reaching a full new set of audiences with the book. So, what you described in the residences of ferguson about every one of them having some kind of story to tell about their negative experience with the Justice System and it speaks to the frame of your book. Ferguson is essentially a county. Setting it up as a colony nation drying from bracket radicals, anti colonial activist and even Richard Nixon. I was shocked that you said nixon himself said they didnt want to be a nation. Can you lay out what that analytical framework. Guest its fascinating that dick nixon said that. It speaks to the intensity of his time. Black nationalist view of colonization was so prevalent that it would fight its way in this osmotic way into the mouth of Richard Nixon this is an idea in some ways that see the end the boys, carried through the garvey framework in its own kind of way, particularly in the 1960s the moment of the third word solidarity which is the term people use then and we dont use now but you have this movement of independence and nationalism against colonial oppression in which people of color have been colonized by white folks and they are working to get selfdetermination. Theres this amazing crosspollination have and that kind of work happening all over the particular african continent. Thats all kind of in the air at the time, when it comes out of nixons mouth and thats, malcolm x would especially call oakland, in one speech was colonized territory. The black panthers has been astray. Black power, black nationalist comes out of the book. I think in 68 or 67, right all of these ideas have been developed and scholarly debate about whether that framework works. Whether the colonial framework of expectation is exposed to where the population is exploited in the way slaves were exploited, in the way the mind workers of bolivia are exploited which is to say theyre not a surplus population, there needed to produce surplus value. Theres a question about whether africanamericans and midcentury are that are the a surplus population or are they actually being used and exploited in this classical colonial fashion that the deep academic debate. Part of the project here is to take the notion a little bit out of the marxist context and put it closer to home to our own colonial experience. To me, colony means the subjective experience of state authority as external. The experience of the state, in particular the state violent parts of the state, which is the pleasing function, the experience of that as external authority. The connection between that experience and the function of the external authority to the colonial forefathers who experienced the crown as external authority and literally thought a revolution about that. Host can you talk about what i found so interesting is the way you tie in our colonial past that makes this argument. Can you rank some of the earlier struggles in the revolution. That what works. See today . That came through beautifully in the book. Guest we think of revolution as being taxation and representation. Its true. Taxation is the point of conflict but taxes at the time are not collective through automatic payroll deductions and a filing with the irs. They are almost entirely collected as customs duties. The enforcement of the custom duties is done by custom agents who are in the most literal sense, Law Enforcement, cops. They go around, i didnt know their badges or not but they were cops. They apprehend people, bring criminal trials against them in court, they take goods that are smuggled, what you have at the time of the crown is as incredible black market. Its a gray market. Its really interesting. Its one of the things were a huge amount of goods is moving in and out of the colonies, being smuggled outside of the reach of the customs laws and theres this look the other way. Everyone involved understand the lifeblood of the colonies and the smuggling is so central that even extremely high status figures like john hancock was a smuggler are engaged in this. The smuggling is the lifeblood. The one product the colonies produced better than everyone else is wrong. That rom is coming from sugarcane that is coming from colonies that are outside the british reach are all being smuggled in. Yet this distilleries making all this money. The crown decides to crackdown. They basically decide that we cant look the other way because we need that revenue. We want to crackdown and get those taxes. When they crackdown what they mean is searches of everyone, every time, you have these sort of official documents that allow these widespread searches and people freak out like theres an official freak out in the cards, benjamin began writing about it and john adams writing about it, mopping out for someone gets apprehended and a mob will grab the customs agent, beat him plenty in the middle of straight or tar and feather him and march into the streets of newport or boston and they will steal back madeira wine which was from portugal and smuggled in that is confiscated by smugglers, where they cant get prosecution because no jury will contact customs, theyre bringing case after case after case and winning only 10 of them. This is the norm of the community that theyre okay with it. So, the key insight to me and i didnt have to give a shout out to peter, his great book smuggler nation which is a great work on this. The key is to understanding how much Law Enforcement and smuggling is the point it was the point of friction that wasnt the thing. Theres this john where he says, when he goes to this famous trial where a lawyer is essentially defending the smugglers against unwarranted search and speech there was the sense of revolution born. Everyone went away saying this is our great cause. In the declaration of independence Thomas Jefferson writes in his bill of complaints about the crown that the crown has sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out our substance. Which is just insane at the police. Almost literally, swarms of officers, go talk to people in ferguson, go talk to people in new york city in neighborhoods that are pleased under the worst. Swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance one as you call it in the book, the parallels are so clear. The police there are operating as armed tax collectors can you talk about the ways the extractions and fees are working in ferguson just to emphasize those parallels. Guest ferguson is the neatest parallel because going back to this question about expectation for suppression because fundamentally the Police Department is attractive. And the documents that are produced by the various wording of areas and was the doj review was you emails between the manager and the sheriff in which they talk about policing as a revenue function. Host this came out in the doj report. Guest we need to get your new enforcement zone up to the public revenue pipeline but you need to go out and write more traffic tickets so we can get that revenue to make our budget. Host this is a zerosum game. They are jacking up enforcement of a traffic so they can extract revenues to pay for municipal costs that will save them the political pain and the wallet pain of raising taxes. The report is very clear and the statements of the authorities themselves in their email, they talk about it openly is fundamentally the departments goal is to produce revenue for the municipality and not just traffic in person. They have this insane system where its almost a payday lender. You get a hundred dollar ticket, you get a court date from them. The courts only opened six hours a week and it always has more people showing up to court that can actually be processed. You stand in line and then you dont get in and then you get a citation for being absent in court that then cost you money and then you have to come back again. Then you dont have enough money to pay for it see you have of it and they charge a fee for a late payment. People can start off with a simple parking ticket, theres a story of a woman that starts off with a simple parking ticket ends up owing like 600 and being arrested and put in jail three times because she has outstanding warrants on her. Thats the thing that is so dangerous and this happened across america, right track all infractions plus a missed court date equals a warrant. Then the next that person has interacts with the cops and the plate is run, zero theres a warrant. Next thing you know, your india. You could end up in jail that started as the most minor initial offense. Host right, im laughing because its so absurd. And angering. You detail these processes and whats going on in new york city or what went on with broken windows and zerotolerance in the way the criminal Justice System has been used to essentially manage citizens. Im wondering if you can talk about how citizens in the colo colony, as you described, are pleased differently than citizens and the rest. Guest theres this famous atlantic article written by james in 1982 that was called public of broken windows. I would say its got to be one of the most influential Magazine Articles ever published. Its amazing. Its just a Magazine Article not a scholarly piece that was peerreviewed but the two people who did our academics but it was a public it starts off from an interesting in some ways really good place. The initial experiment that they are writing about is a new work experiment in which they basically are trying to get cops out of their cars and to walk the beach. Theres a lot of reason to think thats good. The experiment is if fox underwent cops focus on order maintenance, not just law, will they reduce crime. Whats incredible about that article is that the experiment they site finds no reduction in crime but what they do find is that a pc will affect which is that people report feeling safer. They then take this finding to make an argument to completely reorient policing towards an older model of policing. They were very explicit about. We want to go back to the good old days before the war in court and procedural is him, before miranda, and even joke about all sorts of things cops would do to maintain order back in the days to rough up the young ruffians that when it passed legal muster. We want to go back to this old order maintenance model of policing which, to be told, was a very long period of time model of policing. In the face of whats been the war in court revolution and we want to focus on order maintenance and what it means is to use the title of the book, if there is one of broken window in a neighborhood what it communicates to the community is that no one is policing, no ones watching, one broken window will lead to more. Theres a group of teenagers drinking out of an open bottle and the next thing you know you get muggings, robberies, murders. There is a slippery slope in which if you think the order of the community as a woven garment and if you start pulling at the loose threads to these small infractions before you know it the whole thing has unwound. Thats the argument. Is enormously influential. Even though the fundamental empirical case has never quite been settled in any definitive way. Theres all sorts of studies on order maintenance and crime and find some effects and find no effects. This idea of policing of focusing on order gets adopted particularly in new york city and gets adopted right before crimes start to fall in new york city extremely dramatically and it produces i dont think its unreasonable or insanely produces a causal story for ever