Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve

Americans are slowly waking up to the dire effects of racial profiling, police brutality, and mass incarceration, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods and communities of color. Crook County bursts open the courthouse doors to reveal a world of punishment determined by race, not offense....

It’s easy to get lost in Chicago’s Cook County Jail, the size of 72 football fields. For many released into the harsh elements beyond the walls, it can be impossible to find their way home. This haunting narrative reveals the intentionally disorienting tactics of the system....

From award-winning sociologist Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve comes the first account of mass wrongful conviction in America, indicting a system purposefully designed to ensnare Black youth in order to close cases Wrongful convictions have long been dismissed as rare exceptions to an otherwise...