My project:

• For my capstone project, I wanted to study why minorities, and particularly African Americans, are commonly viewed as individuals who are not capable of becoming successful. The minority youth becoming slaves to the criminal justice system has been a theme in our country’s history for decades and for the past year, I have been thoroughly researching and observing how the US Criminal Justice System works and how young minority kids and teenagers are seen and perceived by the people in our government. Throughout this process, I have learned more about the criminal justice system and how the system greatly affects young minorities.

• My experiences and observations of this damaging fact stimulated the concept of the following research query, “why our country’s underprivileged minority youth is so often negatively affected by the criminal justice system, and why this issue has become such an ongoing theme in American history.” The main focus of my research was to thoroughly study and gain insight into our country's criminal justice system. My capstone allowed me to understand the inequalities so many people in this country face, and how I could use my voice to bring awareness to my community on these injustices. By creating the final product of a website I was able to showcase my findings, interviews, and collected data into a place that was accessible and able to capture the members in our community who work tirelessly to provide mentorship and aid to young minorities involved in the system.

• To find out how young minorities' lives change due to getting involved in the system as a child, I asked myself the question of why these children are so vulnerable and why they are so frequently seen as threats. To answer these questions, I have conducted interviews with local lawyers in New Jersey who specialize in criminal justice and labor and employment. These professionals told me about their own experiences about how minorities are perceived in the courtroom, in the workplace, and by government officials. They have described cases where they have had people who were put in the system at a young age and how that experience affected the rest of their lives. The professionals that I spoke with discussed the common themes of recurring conditions in minority communities such as lack of education, the environments in which they lived, and the lack of adult supervision, and how too often these citizens face prosecution. While speaking with these professionals I learned about some of the challenges they faced in their profession as well. The labor and employment lawyer that I was able to interview named Ms. Deiadra Webster Cobb is a black woman and was able to tell me how in the courtroom often her gender and race are used against her. She spoke about how older white men who are judges are often prejudiced against women and minorities and how she has seen unfair convictions played out with this mindset.

Wrongfully Convicted Young Minorities

The Kalief Browder Case

• After researching information about the criminal justice system I learned of the tragic case of Kalief Browder. Kalief Browder was a wrongfully arrested black man who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. He was arrested in the spring of 2010, at age sixteen, for a robbery he had not committed.

Jenifer Garnerman-What led to Kalief's arrest (story from the New Yorker following his case) :

• "In the early hours of Saturday, May 15, 2010, ten days before his seventeenth birthday, Kalief Browder and a friend were returning home from a party in the Belmont section of the Bronx. They walked along Arthur Avenue, the main street of Little Italy, past bakeries and cafés with their metal shutters pulled down for the night. As they passed East 186th Street, Browder saw a police car driving toward them. More squad cars arrived, and soon Browder and his friend found themselves squinting in the glare of a police spotlight. An officer said that a man had just reported that they had robbed him. “I didn’t rob anybody,” Browder replied. “You can check my pockets. The officers searched him and his friend but found nothing. As Browder recalls, one of the officers walked back to his car, where the alleged victim was, and returned with a new story: the man said that they had robbed him not that night but two weeks earlier. The police handcuffed the teens and pressed them into the back of a squad car. “What am I being charged for?” Browder asked. “I didn’t do anything!” He remembers an officer telling them, “We’re just going to take you to the precinct. Most likely you can go home.” Browder whispered to his friend, “Are you sure you didn’t do anything?” His friend insisted that he hadn’t. At the Forty-eighth Precinct, the pair were fingerprinted and locked in a holding cell. A few hours later, when an officer opened the door, Browder jumped up: “I can leave now?” Instead, the teens were taken to Central Booking at the Bronx County Criminal Court."

Kalief's time in jail:

• He then spent more than one thousand days on Rikers Island (New York City's main jail complex) waiting for a trial that never happened. During that time, he spent about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted suicide several times. In November of 2013, six months after he left Rikers, Browder attempted suicide again. This time, he tried to hang himself at home, from a banister, and he was taken to the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital.

Result of the false conviction:

• After Kalief spent about two years in solitary confinement being starved, brutally beat, psychologically tortured he was eventually found not guilty and was sent home. His case became popular throughout the country becuase of his willingness to tell his story and stop the current ways of our criminal justice system. He even went back to college and maintained a 3.5-grade average. But after jail, Kalief's mental health was ner the same. He stated that “Prior to going to jail, I never had any mental illnesses,” Browder once told HLN. “I never tried to hurt myself, I never tried to kill myself, I never had any thoughts like that. I had stressful times prior to going to jail, but not like during jail. That was the worst experience that I ever went through in my whole life.” Becuase of his time in jail, on June 6, 2015, at 12:15 p.m., he hung himself from an air conditioning unit outside his bedroom window at his mother's home.

Bios of others wrongfully convicted:

• Rodney Roberts

• Rodney was charged with first-degree aggravated sexual assault and second-degree kidnapping. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison served 18. He was eventually found innocent after his release.

• Troy Davis

• Troy was found guilty for the killing of an off-duty police officer in 1989 was executed by lethal injection on September 22^nd in the state of Georgia in the United States of America. He had been on death row for 22 years and was definitely not the same man he had been when he was 20 years old at the time of his conviction. Over his decades in jail, he repeatedly fought for his innocence. On Sept. 21, 2011, the State of Georgia found he was innocent.

• The Central Park 5

• Where 5 teenagers were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman and after they had spent thirteen years in prison, several years later a serial rapist confessed to the crime.

Capstone Questions

How would you describe the impact of your project and the results?

• My project and results show the need for reparations in our current government system. The facts show how the incarceration of young minorities is a trend in our county and how our prison systems and government officials are mentally and physically damaging these victims. My research also shows how many people in the world are fighting to stop this trend and help our minority youth not become involved in the system and provide them with resources and fair representation in life and in courtrooms.

• Why is this important to you? Do you see a broader generalization of your results to the larger community/world?

• My project is important to me because it helps brings awareness and knowledge into our country's unfair persecution system. The year 2020 has proven to be a year where the everyday challenges and lack of resources and equality in the justice system are no longer being suppressed. I do see a broader generalization of my results today becuase of the protest and new awarness of today's injustices are now being discovered to a larger population who have not realized or recognized that these injustices are still common today . In society today more and more people are realizing how young minorities are seen as threats and how this prejudice can lead to wrongful convictions, police brutality, and death.

• While your project may be complete, what are you still wondering about or what are your next steps if you plan to continue working with this topic?

• The next steps I plan to take with this project are to find different volunteer opportunities this summer that provides aid for underprivileged youth. I plan to still be active in my research and in my community on bringing awareness to the effects of the criminal justice system on young minorities. In the future, I plan to find future internships where I could work in criminal justice and work in law.

• What was the project experience like for you?

• Participating in this project opened my eyes to the many everyday injustices that are faced in an unknown America. During this process, I learned about many damaging and life-altering cases that resulted from wrongful imprisonment and also has shown me new ways on how to research and conduct interviews. I also learned how many members in our community work every day to improve the system and what careers I could do in the future to also improve these injustices.

• How did your project change/progress from its inception to the end result?

• My project's original end result was to spend a week volunteering at Big Brother Big Sister and interview their mentors on what they do for their community's underprivileged youth. With Covid 19 this organization has not been able to use new volunteers or fully open their program causing me to shift my final product into a virtual alternative which was the creation of my website.

• Linked below is a loom presentation and walk through the website showing the information I gathered from interviews and research and ultimately bring awarness to our community leaders who fight every day to improve minority youth and the justice system.

• https://www.loom.com/share/1211f72a61bf4155ade97df407e782ee

• How do you plan to use the process of information you learned from this Capstone in future endeavors?

• In the future, I plan to carry all the information I learned about criminal justice and our government system into my future career as a lawyer. This research process has ultimately helped me learn how to reach out to members in my community who work in a field that I am passionate about discovering ways that I can help my community and our minority youth

• What advice would you give to a student who is considering or a junior who is currently doing a Capstone project?

• To a junior who is considering persuing or is already doing a capstone project, I would tell them to enjoy their research and find information and resources that they are passionate about or want to pursue a career in. I would tell them to step out of their comfort zone and interview people and try to explore new environments that could help them with their final product and overall project experience.

• What obstacles did you face throughout your project? How did you address those challenges?

• Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been unable to volunteer at organizations like Big Brother Big Sister programs that help youth from challenging backgrounds or neighborhoods. In the future, I plan to volunteer and work with programs like the Big Brother Big Sister program that provide mentorship and opportunities for minority youth. To address the challenge of me personally not being able to go in and volunteer I chose to create an informational website where I could publish my research and interviews to create awareness on the criminal justice system and the Big Brother Big Sister organization.