Cole Montgomery

CRIM -410

Professor Engstrom

October 27, 2020

Tragic Choices.  (Separated: Children at the Border Documentary).

The PBS documentary  separated: Children at the Border, was extremely significant especially in today’s day and age, with the current state of our country.  Throughout the United States of America’s history immigration has been important.  Many of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents immigrated to this country for a better opportunity of life.  Essentially, the United States is a nation built by immigrants, and these people are a huge part of the country’s heart and soul.   We currently live in a world where our county is very divided for numerous reasons.  The issue of deportation remains a huge talking point for debate, and this documentary was very efficient in providing the information needed to understand the topic of illegal immigration.

This documentary in particular caught my eye, because I am currently reading “Detained and Deported by Margaret Regan”, for my book review for Criminology class.  Since I already have knowledge on the topic of illegal immigration in the United States, I was thoroughly interested in what this documentary had to offer.  The documentary explains in detail many instances of Hispanic illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border between the U.S. and Mexico.  In particular, many of these immigrants were attempting to cross the border because their family’s lives were in danger, and they were threatened with death by gang members.  Many people have no choice but to cross the border by jumping onto moving trains, or by paying coyotes or smugglers to help sneak them into the United States in trailers, or tractors.  The documentary explained that during the Obama Administration, there were far more illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border than ever before, because of the issue of violence and lack of safety throughout their countries.  President Obama was left with a tough decision, and that was to separate children from their families who were crossing the border, or to put these families into detention facilities.  Ultimately these families were put into detention facilities, and It wasn’t until the Trump Administration when children were separated from their families at the border.  This caused outrage among both Republicans and Democrats as explained in the documentary.  The idea of separating children from their parents at the U.S. Mexico border was to keep illegal immigrants from attempting to come into the county illegally in the future.  In other words, it was a fear tactic.  After President Trump decided to not separate families at the U.S. Mexico border anymore, the damage was already done.  Many people were asking questions like, “What about the children who were already separated from their parents?”  or, “What will you do to reunite these families”?  I believe that something needs to be done in order to reverse the separation that has already occurred.

The documentary describes the horrid conditions in detention centers which house illegal immigrants until their asylum cases are reviewed.  For example, fifteen-year-old Jocelyn explained how she was brought to an “Ice Box” In Texas while she was separated from her mother who was brought to Arizona.  Jocelyn stated that it was “very cold.”  (Separated: Children at the Border).  She was traumatized by this experience, and I could see how her mental health was strongly affected by this event.  Her mother described her as angry all the time as a result of this.  Detained and Deported, by Margaret Regan,  also describes the horrid and gruesome experiences that illegal immigrants have when housed in detention centers.  For example, according to the author Regan, “The Estrella detention food was both skimpy and bad, and Mariana was hungry all the time”.  (Detained and Deported Page 58).  According to the documentary, children as young as one year old, are thrown in cages separated from their parents, while their parents are in other cells.  I learned that the guards were often harsh and rude to the detainees as well.  One guard even told a detainee that they will never be legal.  This is truly disgusting and could be the result of Implicit Bias.  For example, In Professor Engstrom’s Criminology class, I took Implicit Bias tests myself.  (Project Implicit).  Implicit Biases are basically unconscious racial stereotypes.  In the case of this documentary, I truly believe that this applies to the guards of these detention centers and evidence of this could be their negative and aggressive behavior towards the illegal immigrants.

As you can see, this documentary covers a very important issue in our society today.  Many people argue that the only way to keep so many illegal immigrants from rushing into our country is to threaten them with family separation, while other people believe that there are other alternative and that this is far too harsh.  Hopefully, in the future there is a compromise and we find something that can be supported by all Americans.  In conclusion, Separated Children at the Border was a fantastic documentary, and it is very significant that you watch it.

References:

Take a Test. (2011). Harvard.Edu; Project Implicit. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

Separated: Children at the Border. (2018). FRONTLINE. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/separated-children-at-the-border/

Detained and Deported by Margaret Regan.

Cole Montgomery

CRIM -410

Professor Engstrom

December 1, 2020

We Need Police Reform (Policing the Police Documentary).

The PBS documentary, Policing the Police, was a thoroughly informative video that shows the importance and need for police reform all across the United States of America.  Race and crime are very significant.  If you commit a crime and you are African American, you will either be more subject to excessive force, or you may receive a longer sentence than a white person would for that same crime.  As we know, the U.S. has gone through tense racial unjust with the recent killings of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, and other unarmed African Americans at the hands of Police officers.  The documentary is narrated by Jelani Cobb, who is an avid activist for Police Reform in America.  The documentary focuses specifically on Newark New Jersey, a city where police reform had been enacted in on May of 2016 through the “Consent Decree.”  Newark has a long history of police brutality, and use of excessive force, fueled by implicit bias.  “On July 12, 1967, residents of Newark took to the streets to protest the abuse of a Black cabdriver, John W. Smith. That night, Newark police officers had beat him into paralysis and dragged him into the police station, simply because he drove his cab around their double-parked police car.”  (New Jersey Institute for Social Justice).  This incident, as well as plenty more around the country, sparked tense relations between the police and the public in Newark New Jersey.

While watching the documentary, I was extremely surprised of the way that the Police of the Newark PD performed their duties.  The Drug unit that Jelani Cobb was riding with, were frequently stopping and frisking African Americans, were racial profiling, and were using excessive force without being in physical danger.  As a result of multiple investigations, eventually a few officers of the department were fired and along came the Consent Decree, under mayor Ras J. Baraka.  “The Consent Decree requires the Independent Monitor to conduct an annual survey to assess Newark community members’ experiences with and perceptions of the NPD and public safety.”  (New Jersey Institute for Social Justice).  As of 2016, The Newark Police Department has been required to wear body cameras, has received extensive training on use of excessive force, and has been monitored plenty of times which has caused many more police reports regarding physical encounters to be documented.  Newark’s George Floyd protests throughout the summer of 2020, remained mostly peaceful as opposed to other cities around the country due to the police reform that had already been enacted in the city.  Other cities need to follow the example that Newark New Jersey has set regarding police reform.  I believe that it is crucial that the United States continues to reform our nations law enforcement system and our police officers.  Throughout professor Engstrom’s criminology class, we have learned plenty about Policing in the community and about the injustices that minorities face at the hands of the Police during their lives every day.  During one of our class discussions, we discussed the story of Clarence Aaron, as told in the class assigned book titled Policing the Black Man.  Like me, Clarence  was a college student at the time of his arrest.  He had no criminal record, and introduced a classmate whose brother was a cocaine drug dealer to a cocaine seller which he knew from his high school.  He happened to be present for the sale of the cocaine and he also received payment from the dealer.  According to Policing the Black Man, “After police arrested the drug group, the others testified against Aaron, describing him as a major dealer, which led to him being sentenced to three terms of life imprisonment in federal prison.”  (Mauer, 2018, p. 31).  This relates to the documentary because it is an example of the unjust that African Americans face caused by the Police.  Clarence’s sentence was extremely uncalled for, and he served far more time than white people who had committed the same crime.  This is just another example of how being African American will cause you to be treated unfairly by the Police, due to implicit bias.  Another example of something that I learned in class which I thought directly relates to Policing the Police, is the whole idea of “stop and frisk” in regard to racial profiling.  I learned this semester that racial profiling can be defined as “Any policing that subjects individuals to greater scrutiny based in whole or in part on race”.  (Hutchins 2018).  According to the Racial Profiling PowerPoint, “This includes incidents in which an individual was stopped based only on race, those in which an individual was stopped based on race plus other factors, and those incidents that result in entangling innocent people of one race into a wide net of suspicion.”  (Hutchins, 2018).  This is present in Newark New Jersey throughout this documentary, as Jelani Cobb observes drug unit officers racial profiling during a ride along.

The Frontline documentary, Policing the Police, was thoroughly informative and interesting especially in today’s climate of tense racial unjust.  I believe that Jelani Cobb did a magnificent job in putting together this documentary along with his colleagues at PBS.  It is crucial that police departments all over the United States are reformed.  We need to do so because excessive force is used far too much by police on African Americans.  I hope that when every police department is densely reformed in the future, our society will have a more positive view on our nations police officers.  In conclusion, Policing the police was an extremely interesting documentary and I recommend it to everyone.

References:

Building A New Relationship Between the Community and Police. (n.d.). New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. https://www.njisj.org/reimagining_policing

Hutchins, M. (2018). The endurance of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp. 31-56). Vintage Books.

Mauer, Marc (2018). The endurance of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp. 31).

Policing the Police 2020. (n.d.). FRONTLINE. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/policing-the-police-2020/

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Cole Montgomery

CRIM -410

Professor Engstrom

October 2, 2020

A Teenage Nightmare (Stickup Kid Documentary).

The documentary, Stickup kid is extremely significant and sad.  The Documentary was produced by Caitlin McNally of PBS Frontline, and was released on December 17, 2020.  The heartbreaking story depicts the life of a juvenile male, Alonza Thomas, who served thirteen years in prison for armed robbery of a Fast Trip gas station.  The story behind this robbery is very interesting.  Just days before this incident Alonza had ran away from his mother and his home.  He met someone who offered to house him for a few days.  This unidentified person fed Alonza and took care of him as well.  As Alonza was ready to return back home just a few days after running away, the man who housed him threatened him at gunpoint.  Alonza explains how this man forced him to rob the gas station, and told him that if he did this he would receive some of the robbery money from him. Feeling helpless, Alonza decided to rob the store.  He ultimately failed and was taken down by the store clerks and was pinned down until the police came.  Just two weeks earlier, California passed a law making it easier to prosecute juveniles as adults.  Alonza’s case was the first case to be tried under this law, and ultimately he was sentenced to thirteen years in Adult Prison, Supermax Prison is Tehachapi California.

While viewing this article, I couldn’t help but feel completely sorry for Alonza.  Throughout our CRIM -410 course we have talked about how social status correlates with criminalization.  This applies to Alonza, because he was extremely poor.  His mother was working two jobs and was hardly home.  Earlier in the semester, I learned from The PBS race timeline for Whites, that “today the average white family has eight times more the wealth of the average nonwhite family.”  Having low socioeconomic status, and coming from a poor African American family definitely helped contribute to Alonza being in the situation that he was in.  While doing research this topic on the internet, I found that researchers have concluded that “the higher rates of crime found amongst young people from socio-economically disadvantaged families reflect a life course process in which adverse family, individual, school, and peer factors combine to increase individual susceptibility to crime.”  (Ferguson et al. 2004).  In Alonza’s case he was terrified and pressured into committing this crime by a criminal who attempted to take advantage of the young and developmentally delayed Alonza Thomas.

I believe that Alonza should not have been sent to Adult Prison for this crime.  He was charged with three counts of robbery in the second degree, one count for each person in the store at the time, the owner and two clerks, and one count of assault with a firearm.  The prosecutor in this case, Ed Jagels seemed far too harsh, and in my opinion, he may have had implicit bias towards Alonza.  Just recently in class, we took implicit bias tests, and did one of our class prep assignments on this.  Many people have unconscious implicit biases towards other races different from their own.  I feel that prosecutors should take into account all of the different situations surrounding each crime.  I believe that Alonza was used as an example being that he was the first juvenile locked up in adult prison under proposition twenty-one in California, and that he was pressured into committing this crime as noted earlier.

Alonza was not a threat to society and should have been tried as a juvenile.  In class we learned about decarceration.  This can be defined as “The reinvestment of the savings from fewer people incarcerated, into education, jobs, affordable housing, community strengthening, and everything/anything else that plugs the pipeline to prison.  Decarceation ends poverty instead of criminalizing the poor.”  (Edelman, 2017, p.158).  Given that Alonza was pressured and threatened into committing this crime, him and his poor family definitely could have greatly benefitted from this.

What I concluded from this documentary, was the fact that Alonza did not belong in Adult Prison.  California has since changed its rules regarding sentencing juveniles to Adult Prison, and over the past nine years twenty-four states have [assed laws to limit the placement of juveniles in adult jails and prisons.  Prison is supposed to rehabilitate people while also punishing people for the crimes that they have committed.  This does not apply to Alonza.  He was scared for life for the unimaginable thirteen years that he served in Adult Prison.  As a result of being sent to prison, Alonza developed chronic depression and anxiety, and is currently on multiple medications to get him through the day.  He is far from rehabilitated in my opinion, and if he was sent to juvenile prison I believe he would have been far better off both mentally and physically.

Overall, this was a dense documentary filled with plenty of information about the process.  I found it very tragic and terrible that this young man’s teenage and early adult years were filled with fear, depression, and frustration.  I really do hope that Alonza enjoys the rest of his life without fear and pain.  In conclusion, Stickup Kid was very significant and was truly eye-opening to me, and I would definitely recommend this documentary to anyone.

References

Fergusson, D., Swain-Campbell, N., & Horwood, J. (2004). How does childhood economic disadvantage lead to crime? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(5), 956–966

Edelman, P. B. (2019). Not a crime to be poor: The criminalization of poverty in America. The New Press.

Stickup Kid. (n.d.). FRONTLINE. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/stickup-kid/

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