Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain extensive discussion of mass incarceration, systemic racism, and substance use disorders. They also touch on topics of sexual assault, domestic and child abuse, and hate crimes. This guide obscures the n-word when reproduced in quotes.

De facto segregation is distinct from the Jim Crow segregation of the early 20th-century American South in that it does not have an explicit basis in law. Instead, a network of largely extralegal policies including restrictive housing covenants and the practice of “redlining,” in which banks and other mortgage lenders refused to authorize mortgage loans in predominantly Black neighborhoods, leads to a system in which Black residents are forced to live apart from the rest of the city, often in conditions of economic precarity created by the same segregationist policies. For example, the scarcity of mortgage loans leaves Black families unable to build generational wealth by investing in property. As businesses pull out of Black communities, jobs become scarce. The resulting concentration of economically struggling families leads to underfunded schools. 

All the African American people convicted of crimes in Courtroom 302 were products of Chicago’s West and South Sides—sections of the city that have been affected by de facto segregation, resulting in a lack of job opportunities not in the drug trade. Some of those later released from prison, such as Larry Bates and Leroy Orange, found themselves entrapped once again in the city’s drug networks as a result of being unable to afford housing in other neighborhoods.

Institutional racism is the name given to forms of racism rooted in social and institutional structures rather than in personal animus. In the context of Courtroom 302, examples of institutional racism include harsher criminal penalties for crack cocaine (more prevalent among the Black community) than powder cocaine (a more expensive version of the same drug, more common among wealthier, white people who use drugs). Policing that targets Black communities with aggressive tactics such as “stop and frisk” is another example of institutional racism. Overall, institutional racism is key to Courtroom 302’s depiction of The Injustices of the US Justice System.

The term prison-industrial complex derives from former president Dwight Eisenhower’s coinage of the term “military-industrial complex” to refer to the sometimes too symbiotic relationship between the US military and private industry. Eisenhower suggested that industrialists had a vested economic interest in promoting war. Similarly, The Prison-Industrial Complex suggests that economic interests fuel excessive incarceration. State and local governments often contract with private companies to run prisons, and prisons are often located in rural areas where they form a cornerstone of the local economy. These economic incentives potentially lead to more people being incarcerated for longer than they otherwise would be.