Woocast's Politics & Polls

Racism affects our criminal justice system — from policing methods to prison-system structures to punishments issued for different crimes. More than 50 years after the publication of the Kerner Report — which investigated the 1967 race riots — many of the same problems of institutionalized racism persist today. Carl Suddler joins Julian Zelizer in this episode to discuss the racialized nature of the criminal justice system, which is the topic of his new book, “Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York.” The book examines history of policies and strategies that led to the criminalization of black youth, including stop-and-frisk policing and no-knock warrants, and media coverage of black youth and crime. Suddler is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Emory University. Prior to joining to Emory faculty this year, Suddler was an assistant professor of African American history at Florida Atlantic University and a postdoctoral fellow at the James Weldon Johnson In