An explosive account of how America’s shadow system of justice is purposefully designed to ensnare and criminalize innocent Black children—from an award-winning sociologist

Wrongful convictions have long been viewed as rare exceptions to an otherwise well-oiled criminal justice machine. But after years spent investigating the largest criminal courthouse in the country, Chicago's Cook County, Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve began to suspect otherwise. When she discovered hundreds of cases indicting innocent Black youth of crimes they didn’t commit, she realized that wrongful convictions were more than a set of anomalies. Arresting and incarcerating these kids was the point—the crime would be tailored to fit.

In a suspenseful narrative account based on hundreds of interviews, media analysis, archival research, and hidden documents, Gonzalez Van Cleve presents a groundbreaking “howdunnit,” illustrating how this shadow system operates. The police, informed by assumptions of Black guilt, find a “criminal,” and create a narrative to pin him to the case they aim to close. They routinely coerce confessions, bury evidence, and persuade witnesses to lie.

Lee Hester, a disabled fourteen-year-old boy, is branded a “super predator” and convicted for killing his teacher; Romarr Gipson is called a “threat to public safety” at seven years old and charged with a murder that is physically impossible for him to commit. In the cases of the Central Park Five, Roscetti Four, and the Dixmoor Five, groups of boys are characterized as “wolf packs” to make their behavior seem sinister.

These “crime fictions,” predicated on enduring racist myths, often defy logic and even DNA evidence. Nevertheless, they are actively produced, institutionalized by police, enshrined in our legal records by the courts, and propped up by media coverage. While injustice perpetuated by police has been more widely reported on in the past twenty years, nothing comes close to Gonzalez Van Cleve’s bombshell: A systematic account of the secret, far-reaching bureaucracy built to sustain this shadow system of justice.

By placing the lost boys at the center of their own story, what emerges is a historical lineage of wrongful convictions, and a powerful indictment of the culture that so willingly places faith in the police’s promise to keep us safe.