Ep. 12 – Transnational Policing, Torture, and Accountability: A Conversation with Dr. Laurence Ralph

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to race and democracy. A podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship. Welcome to race and democracy. We’re very excited to have this week. Dr Lawrence Ralph Ah, professor of anthropology at Princeton University and the co director of the Center for Transnational Policing. Really one of the foremost experts on race policing, democracy, urban violence in Chicago, the United States and globally. So we’re really thrilled to have him here. Welcome, Dr Ralph.

[0:00:48 Laurence] Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

[0:00:50 Peniel] I really want a conversation today about your research. Your work. I’m a big fan of your first book, which is this extraordinary book called Renegade Dreams. Living Through Injury and Gangland Chicago And you’re trained as an anthropologist. But when I read this, I mean, I think it reads both. His history reads, is anthropology. It reads a sociology. It raises contemporary journalism and affairs. And, um, I think this book, which looked at black gang members living on the west side of Chicago after being injured after being shot and looking at this term injury capacious Lee really, really important as part of this broader literature on mass incarceration and sort of transforming and reforming the criminal justice system. So I want to talk a little bit about renegade dreams. But I also want to talk about you and the research that you’re doing and sort of the implications of that research not just for public policy, but also for how do we look into disparity? Ah, wise about the criminal justice system policing race on Where do we go from here in terms of 2019?

[0:01:59 Laurence] Yeah, man, I think that’s an important foreign question. And I think the inter disciplinary approach that I try to take is really honed in answering particular questions that try to go against the carcela logic. So I’m glad you mentioned mass incarceration. We think about the course or a logic. It has a way of, um, de contextualizing, the historic sizing people. And so people are the person who committed this crime at this particular moment, and then they’re subject to the long arm of the law. They’re subject to mass incarceration because they violated this law, right, whether it be fines, whether it be marijuana, whether it be murder, all right, But we don’t think about how these particular laws come into place how they come into being the history of the history of policing. And I think when we think about that, we go against the taking out of context the D contextual ization. And I think it is a kind of historic ization. We begin to his store size. We began to think about Okay, what put these people in this particular place in a position in which they’re vulnerable And when I say vulnerability, I mean that they’re disproportionately subject to something like mass incarceration or they’re disproportionately subject Teoh b shot and have to live with, ah, paralyzing injury for the rest of their lives. Why do they all live the same way? And so when we think about that question, why is it in particular black people from particular neighborhoods who are suffering from particular effects then that there’s question history? And I think anthropology and sociology come in when we think about how do they make meaning of their lives within this context, within the history they find themselves

[0:04:01 Peniel] and what gets me very excited about your work in your research? I think you really fill in the blanks of some of this literature when I think about Michelle Alexander is the new Jim Crow, and she talks about how it’s easy to love the innocent, innocent black people where you look at people who are guilty, people who have actually committed the crimes that they might have been charged with, but also our victims at the same time of both a times gangland violence but police violence and have been dehumanized. And you asked us to look at people who might be in quotes guilty of some criminal offense. But what is the humanity behind that person? And I think about your work. I think about Danielle Allen’s book because I think about James Foreman’s Pulitzer Prize winning Locking Up our own. And I think in so many ways your book, um, and your work really provides and fills in gaps in this literature of mass incarceration.

[0:04:57 Laurence] Yeah, I mean, I think that that would be the bridge between I think, my first book and ah, the book project that I’m Ratchet wrapped wrapping up now called the Torture Letters, and was were really thinking about this process of criminalization and the process of criminalization is not on Lee convicting someone of a crime But it’s also what comes along with that. The dehumanisation that comes along with that The human is dehumanization of the person who’s in subject to, um, horrific conditions. Ah, of being locked up. We think of Kalief Browder or something like that, UM, conditions that make mental illness a rail possibility but also has an effect on the way that we see the criminal on the way we see that person and the the way that we mobilize around them or not. And I think, you know, black lives matter. It’s been pouring for helping us kind of rethink Ah, the politics of innocents and where we have to have the perfect victim in order to make claims of justice. But really, we day in and day out live with these processes by which people are labeled criminal criminal. And because of that label, they are afforded less rights, less respect and less empathy. And we have to deal with that. Um,

[0:06:32 Peniel] I want you to talk about the torture letters because this is, you know, I think about Bryan Stevenson and just mercy. I think about you know your work in the torture letters in terms of Chicago and terror and mental and physical health of black bodies. What is the torture letters about? And why is it so important that we find out about the city of Chicago basically running a torture centre out of its police department for decades?

[0:07:03 Laurence] Yeah, well, the torture letters is, Ah, it’s in part of social history, about torture in the city and how much torture has had a role in the city. It begins with the case of Andrew Wilson, who was convicted of murdering a police officer in 1982 and he was tortured while in police custody. Wilson was the first person to file a civil suit against the city of Chicago, claiming that his constitutional rights have been violated and a lot of people dismissed Wilson’s claims at first and dismissed him as a person because he was accused of this horrific crime of killing police officers. And so the jury in his first civil su even found that, you know, on the one hand is right might have been violated, but they weren’t gonna hold the police officers accountable because, you know, they were just acting out of race and understandable, justifiable rage for this horrific act. But if we think about the other people who had also been tortured, that we didn’t know about, um that came out was the result of the evidence amassed in the Wilson case. We see that this was a expansive problem already in the 19 eighties that have been going back 10 years prior to the point now that we know at least 125 people were tortured during that 20 year period while in police custody, and that’s a conservative estimation. So I move out from those initial cases to look at how torture is impacting the city now, how people are still victimized, using the same methods, using the same tactics and how it’s not just John Birds, the police officer who was connected with these 125 cases and connected with Andrew Wilson’s torture. But since then, there have been also other police officers tied with other histories, a torture that extend to Guantanamo Bay. So I felt, I extend and I follow the tentacles of these tortures operations and see how it’s impacting the city. But see how as well if we don’t look at it, how it becomes a transnational concern. How really Consider becomes a concern for how we think about democracy. How

[0:09:26 Peniel] can this be happening in this day and age? Terms of you know, 2019? But you said that this started in the early 19 seventies, all the way up into the 19 nineties. Um, first civil suit was filed by this this Andrew Wilson. How can this happen? And how can we end it?

[0:09:46 Laurence] I think it happens in very concrete ways. You know, it happens because, um, people have careers in law enforcement in which they move up the ranks and which they want to protect The police officers that they’re serving with, and so torture at a particular pleat precinct can become an open secret and then happens at another level because the district attorney’s could know about it and not recognize claims of torture. When somebody comes to them and says I’ve been tortured in police custody, they can disbelieve that person because of who they are. And later that district attorney can become the mayor. That district attorney can become a judge. And so the secrecy happens at another level, and as time goes on, people still have interest in maintaining that secret. Not only that, they become more powerful, so they are more effectively able to contain that secret, which allows it to happen. So what we’re really talking about is no mechanism for accountability. And that’s how torture proliferates. There’s no internal mechanism for accountability, either at the state level or at the wider municipal government level, and because of that to the public, it doesn’t exist. It only exists through the stories of the torture survivors, and the people care about them. And so I think that’s part of the reason why as, ah populists, as a country, we have to care about the victimized, you know, whether they’re supposedly guilty or not. We have to care about what they say they’ve been through, and we have toe, um, try to hold people accountable for that. Despite despite that,

[0:11:38 Peniel] how did the torture of the victims in Chicago impact families in a wider network of communities in Chicago?

[0:11:48 Laurence] Well, it’s been home mark in that regard, and in this part of the reason that that drew me to the book, actually, I started kind of bit by bit collecting information on the torture cases in the early two thousands, and in 2006 I started. And over that time I grew very discouraged because in 2010 Jon Burge, the police officer associated with this torture, was tried and convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, and he went to jail for about three years. But this was a torturer who went to jail for three years. And the reason why he couldn’t be try for torture was because the statute of limitations passed. And so after he tortured Andrew Wilson, the governor at that time put into legislation a statute of limitations. Right. So the travesty was that he had been tried too late. The torture had come to light too late. Not that somebody was victimized because of the torture. And so, you know, counterintuitively, the fact that birds could only be tried for perjury and lying disheartened me about the, um, potential for real justice and real change. So, you know, I kind of got disillusioned with the project. But then in 2015 they’re survivors of torture. Wanted reparations from the city reparations judgment. What was interesting about that

[0:13:29 Peniel] time, Which was that judgment?

[0:13:30 Laurence] Well, it was holistic. So on the one hand it was 5.5 million for the sorts of survivors. 57 torture survivors. But on the other hand, it was way more expensive than that because it included, UM, job programs included Ah, higher education for torture. Survivors and their families included counselling for the torture survivors and their family and included the building off a Chicago Tortures Justice center or anybody who has been victim of police. Violence can go and receive counseling and a lot of torture. Survivors work there now in an included Um ah ah, judgment that the history of the Chicago torture cases will be taught in the middle school and high school level in Chicago. So

[0:14:19 Peniel] that’s really important, because in a way, this judgements almost like a truth and reconciliation. When I think about South Africa and sort of never forgetting and trying to institutionalise at least the history of racial apartheid in South Africa, something we’ve never done in the United States. When you think about both the history of racial slavery and Jim Crow and contemporary racism, we’ve never sort of tried to repair that breach. Whatever we’re gonna call it.

[0:14:42 Laurence] Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, as educators, as professors, you know that that called educate the public is really ah, something that’s inspiring. And so I was I was really inspired by that. And I was inspired by, ah, the possibility that it could reach a new generation and the need I was inspired by the need for torture survivors toe want there. What happened to them To be known to the new generation because is really sacrificial saying that, you know, even though it’s happened to me, this this could happen to you, to your vulnerable. And therefore you need to know about about this history.

[0:15:23 Peniel] And I want to talk about the vulnerability because you do this and renegade dreams, and I’m sure you do in the torture letters to Why? What about the black bodies? Because we think about Tosti Coats and this whole literature and it coaches taking from queer theory. And, you know, you know, black literary theory and black critical and cultural race theory. Talking about bodies and black bodies being raped, marginalized, killed, murdered in black bodies. Even after the civil rights era, after the black power era after Martin Luther King Jr Malcolm X. When they’re supposed to be citizenship inequality. We see you know so many are caught up in the logic, as you call it, the car surreal state. So many are caught up in terms of impoverished neighborhoods, segregated ghettos, poorly equipped schools, unemployed, having mental health problems. Why are black bodies so vulnerable when I when I hear you talk about 125 torture victims in Chicago? And then when I I remember reading, I’m reading Renegade Dreams and seeing these the’s black bodies that are broken but resilient is what I take from that book. Why are black bodies so vulnerable to the large logic of the Carcel? Stay in all this marginalization and all this really like your second book is saying torture.

[0:16:38 Laurence] Yeah. I mean, I think we had to think about what, um, debilitating. The black body has allowed in terms off American notions of security and safety. And our governance is premised in a way of defending ah, certain people against a supposed threat. You know, we could think about that not just in terms of black people, black bodies, but also we could think about that in terms of the border now. And the rhetoric that goes on about the border, the very racialized rhetoric about the impending threat that s so called open border. Uh uh, elicits. Ah, but I think it has a particular history. We talk about black people on the black body. And so, you know, I thought long and hard about how toe talk about torture, you know, because on the one hand, it can go into, almost like a pornography of violence. Certain scholars have called it And what you’re just rehashing thes these ideas of pain. Um, in instances of horrific pain, Uh, but I I also wanted to honor kind of what the torture survivors have been through and part of what even made the tortures farmers legible to each other. Our particular marks that happened on their bodies because of particular instruments we that were used on them by police officers. And so without that, without the pictures of that, um, a lot of these torture survivors wouldn’t be able to make claims. Ah, and some sort of our survivors still can’t make claims because their bodies aren’t marked in a particular way. And so I wanted toe think about what had to be said about the body, but how it also relates to humanity and how people aren’t reducible to the marks on their body. But, um, indicative of wider, ah form of humanity that the torture cases also show us also tells us through the way in which, um, through all these years, you know, on the one hand has been an open secret. On the other hand, there’s always been activist communities saying that people have been tortured, listen up and it’s happened and people have been more or less willing to listen up at particular times in history. And so, um, at the time of Bush is a war on terror where we have Abu Grave when we have more attention to torture. We have a heightened awareness of what’s happening in Chicago at the time of Guantanamo Bay. We have a heightened awareness of what’s happening in Chicago, and so I think this is also important of connecting us to a wider community of injustice, in which the U. S. And the U. S. Law enforcement is also implicated and these other things that are happening globally. So there’s ways in which we have to talk about certain things in order to kind of see the dot see the connections.

[0:19:56 Peniel] And I want to talk about those global connections and the work that you’ve been doing both in New Orleans, in the Geneva, just just all over about policing and violence. And really, you know, when I read and think about Angela Davis and this idea abolishing prisons, people often time don’t talk about Well, what are we to do with the police? Um, and policing. And what what purpose does police do? The police serve, especially in poor black communities. And so I wanted to talk to you about I know you’re doing work in New Orleans, and New Orleans is one of the city’s has had a consent degree with the with the Justice Department. What’s the role of policing here? You know, let’s go outside of not just Chicago but the function of the police. And why are police viewed in so many poor black communities, is potentially the enemy? You know, we’re going back way to the Black Panther days of the 19 sixties, but way think about Baltimore a few years ago when we think about Ferguson, Missouri, and police in military vests and with tanks. What? What is the role of the police in these black communities, and can it be transformed to be positive and progressive? Can we have a police force that’s interested in racial justice?

[0:21:15 Laurence] Yeah. I mean, one could hope. You know, I think that I think that when we think about the cool, what you’re really getting us to is a question of reform versus abolition, All right. And there’s a wide spectrum in between reform and abolition, and I think that it’s important to look comparatively within the U. S. But also globally in order for us to think about this right? And so you know, I have pride, a project on policing in Chicago where there’s a strong activist community where abolition is actively talked about and in relationship to how we should think about policing and New Orleans. Abolition is not something that people talk about. All right, um,

[0:22:09 Peniel] by abolition, let’s tell our listeners we mean

[0:22:12 Laurence] we mean a kind of dismantling police, along with the prisons, to saying that we don’t need the police to govern our streets. And so and New Orleans people can’t imagine ah world in which they don’t have the police, right? And and so how as a scholar, How do we think about that? Like on the one hand, we could just say that Well, they just don’t know. They haven’t come in tow wearing this yet. You know, we should advocate for abolition. Bled As an anthropologist, I really take seriously where people are and what they’re saying in terms of their interventions. I think they’re saying a lot of nuanced things that lead us to different ways that we can think about policing to that are, are commensurate with what people in Chicago are saying. And so I think part of what everybody is saying is that the police is police as an institution are doing way too much, right? They’re given finds in Ferguson. They’re also acting as the National Guard, like as a militarized presence in Ferguson. Um, they implicated in and mass incarceration everywhere, But they’re not equipped to address things like mental health crises. And they’re in. People do have real needs and they need to call on a body to help them through certain things.

[0:23:49 Peniel] So are you saying we need less police? We need We need social workers. We need mental health counselors that are active in communities in times of crisis, but also just normative Lee.

[0:24:01 Laurence] Yes, I’m saying we need other institutions that are able to fill that void that the police are filling with criminalizing tactics

[0:24:11 Peniel] and violence

[0:24:12 Laurence] and violence. Right? And so, um, all communities can benefit from that. And I think even police recognize that they’re not equipped to do certain things. So I think of creating mawr humanizing spaces and tales that we think about what the police are, what they do, what there’s trained to do, what they’re qualified to do. Ah, and in relationship to what communities need. Right. And we can’t say that the answer for communities is to lock everybody up. Right? Uh, we said that once, and it’s not working, and I think on a large scale, um, there’s agreement that that project hasn’t worked. And so we need to think about what will work and recognize that the police is not equipped to help us get to that next stage and get to the next level of what will work.

[0:25:10 Peniel] And so when you think about the implications for your work, where do we go from here in the context of, you know, consent decrees in the concept. In the context of Post Ferguson Post Michael Brown, we have black lives matter as a movement. There was just federal legislation signed by the president, United States, that did reduce some levels of incarceration, at least at the federal level. That’s supposed to be some kind of model, and people are talking about even more comprehensive mass incarceration reform. Where do we go from here? And what’s the role? How would you ideally envision sort of policing racial justice violence in the 21st century as you’re doing your research both in Chicago, New Orleans and just globally?

[0:26:00 Laurence] Yes, I’m doing my research. I have to think about what’s constant within these processes that are taking place. And so what I see is, ah, common theme of criminalization that leads us to not care about the people who are being affected and to, uh, allow anything to happen to them. Make it permissible for anything to happen to him because we don’t care, right? And so I think that in a fractured society in our society is becoming more fractured. Um, there’s a way in which that isolation those fractures but can become weaponized at particular moments. And historically, it’s been against people of color. But you can always find another group to criminalise and therefore implement policies that go against their interests, right. Invest, then compromise democracy, uh, or compromise how we govern. And so I think, particularly as a cultural anthropologist, I think we have to think about that process of criminalization in relationship to how we govern in relationship to the law. And we have Teoh disentangling did did dismantle the process by which we make certain groups criminal through the law. And then we use that label, too, then justify harsh governing that disproportionately impacts those groups, right? And I think we can’t just see that as a detriment to those groups who are affected. We have to see that as a detriment to society as a whole, and as and as ah ah ah wiggling away of human resource is that can help improve our society.

[0:27:53 Peniel] My final question is, how can we convince white Americans, white politicians, along with people of color, who I think a lot of people of color have gotten the message that this kind of torturing of black bodies, uh, has a negative effect on the wider both system of American democracy. But these ideas of citizenship, equality, freedom that we tout as Americans but also globally. They are also very, very destabilizing for the health of the of the world. How how can we Because you’re using your doing all of the studies you’re getting the data you’re having the experience is writing the book. How can we convince people that this is the right side of history?

[0:28:36 Laurence] Yeah, I think we have to break some familiar narratives. I think we have to break the narrative that this was an injustice that people overcame. And now we as a country are better because they overcame in. I think that we have to look at the way that, um, systems that we rely on in this country are intended to criminalize people and are intended to produce these results. And it will happen. It will always happen. There will always be people who are tortured that we don’t know about if the system continues to work as it is. So we can’t see this as some heroic overcoming for those people who finally get ah modicum of the justice their deserved. But we have to see it as a fundamental issue with how we govern in society and think about why it is allowed to happen and what’s preventing it from happening again, right? If the system hasn’t changed that nothing is preventing it from happening again. Nothing is preventing torture from happening in another city, right? So we can vilify either the supposed criminal or even the torture. All right, As somebody who is just exceptionally horrible, we have to look at the system that allowed that person the torture without sanction. Till this day in Chicago. We have reparations for torture survivors, and we could say, Wow, this is the first time that people have gone reparations. Ah, but on the other hand, there still never been a police officer who has been convicted of torture. So we have the admission that torture has existed and has happened. But we don’t have tortures. We have torture without tortures. How can that be right? It can be because we are afraid to look at the system and really do the work. Aw, fundamentally changing how we govern in society and that’s what it will take.

[0:30:48 Peniel] Wow. Thank you. That’s a great final summation. Dr. Lawrence Ralph, professor of anthropology at Princeton University and the co director of the Center for Transnational Policing. Uh, we’ve had a great conversation on race, democracy, policing and police violence. And I can’t wait to have you back on race and democracy when your new book, The Torture Letters yeah, comes out in the fall

[0:31:15 Laurence] looking forward to it.

[0:31:16 Peniel] Thank you. Thanks.

Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-e-n-i-e-l  J-o-s-e-p-h and our Web site, CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you.