RACE, RIGHTS, RESPECT
Founded in 2000, the University of Chicago’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project was profoundly shaped by the decade that came before it.
The 1990s were “the era of the young black male ‘super predator,’” recalls University of Chicago law professor Randolph Stone, who from 1991 to 2001 led the school’s Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. “And because of that imagery, “a lot of policies and laws started changing.”
It became easier to send children to adult criminal court; stop-and-frisk and gang-loitering ordinances took hold nationwide. “You saw the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon, where school behavior was being criminalized,” says Stone, who also founded and directs the law school’s Criminal and Juvenile Justice Project Clinic. “And in Chicago particularly, you had a very racially tinged system.”
Under Stone’s leadership, Craig Futterman launched the police accountability project. http://ow.ly/UtD63043bMy