Features » April 27, 2006 » Web Only

Reporting on Americas Most Unwanted (cont’d)

“The system is a landfill,” says Bogira, 51, the author of Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse (Random House, Paperback 2006). Based in Chicago, Bogira centered his work on the busiest and largest felony courthouse in the U.S.: Roughly 9,000 inmates are held at any given time, many of them indigent and unable to post bail as they await hearings.

In Courtroom 302, Judge Dan Locallo presides over dozens of cases per day, and it is here that the keenly perceptive Bogira sets up a ground-level observation post, monitoring the people who make the court system tick: attorneys, guards, deputies, juries, and other court personnel. Bogira soon found that most employees were more than willing to share their experiences, taking their cue from Judge Locallo’s own willingness to open his courtroom to the intrepid reporter.

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish as a reporter when you just listen to someone,” says Bogira. “There are two, related things about our job that I love most: being a busybody because you have an excuse to ask people questions; and the feeling that you’re honoring the other person, and that’s a good feeling. Take the court clerks and jail guards, for instance. Usually nobody ever comes and talks to them. It’s clear we’re not really interested. When they see that someone is really interested, they feel like they’re being recognized, even honored, for the work they do.”

Down in the dungeons of the facility, Bogira witnesses and relates the book’s rawest, most gut-wrenching experiences, where guards wage a daily low-level war against detainees, many of whom are suffering from HIV, chronic drug addiction, and/or serious mental illnesses. Bogira recounts many of those experiences in chilling detail, including the sights and sounds of detainees withdrawing from crack or heroin; the barked commands, derogatory and racist comments, and even the violent tempers of guards who quickly lose patience with their charges.

“It’s where people who have become the refuse of our society are processed, buried,” he says frankly.

Bogira’s approach toward the courthouse and the jail system differ from that of many other criminal justice-focused journalists in that he does not focus on the miscarriages of justice so much as the “predictable outcomes of urban poverty.”

“We journalists tend to focus too much on aberrations,” Bogira explains. “We love the story of innocent people who are convicted and we love it if we can help free them. But to me as a journalist, it’s a dead end, in a way. You can’t get at what’s causing crime by writing about the truly innocent.”

Different trenches, similar goals

There are other notable similarities between Abramsky’s and Bogira’s projects. In tackling book-length immersion journalism, both writers go to great lengths to learn what it takes to gain the trust of their subjects. Both are willing to admit to failures in the process of their reporting: the days where leads go nowhere, the moments where long waits or drives yield nothing. Some days, neither could hold the interest of a subject or realized that their subjects were more interested in personal gain—the (misperception) that they might get paid for their story, for instance—than in contributing to a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.

The biggest difference between these works of non-fiction lies in the physical environments the writers encounter. Bogira’s Courtroom 302, by intent and necessity, keeps him largely confined within walls, long underground corridors, jail cells, and stiff courtroom benches. For his part, Abramsky plumbs the physical context of the American landscape that continues to both capture and churn the literary imagination.

Whether driving down the wide expanse of American highways, or sorting through hundreds of courtroom case files, both Abramsky and Bogira are infinitely more comfortable seeing themselves as “immersion” and “muckraking” journalists than being labelled “advocacy” journalists. This term, Abramsky cautions, generates the “risk that you’ll be seen as a propagandist.”

“I make it very clear in [Conned] that these disenfranchisement laws have no place in modern day society,” he explains, “but my prime goal is to tell the [stories of these ex-offenders] as compellingly as possible … and bringing [voice] to people whose very lives have been defined by other people telling them they’re not important.”

Instead of lecturing to readers, or trying to impress them with shocking stories of travesty or triumph, Bogira encourages journalists who write about criminal justice to invest more day-to-day time in the lives of the people who really have committed the crimes of which they’ve been accused. To do so, he says, reporters should try immersing themselves to the degree that they begin to understand why people “do what they do.”

“This justice system is not at all interested in what the causes of crime are,” adds Bogira. “But we should be.”

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• Reader Comments

  Urban anthropology anyone? 

  The approach used in this article sounds quite similiar to the qualitative methodes we use in anthropology.  So few people know about (socio) cultural anthropology and the usefulness and value of our techniques. 

  I hale these authors for utilizing the approach that they have, as it emphasizes an empethy with the subjects studied.  HOwever, I must wonder to what extent these jounalists further marginalized their informants, with their “academic” look, and possibly mannerisms.  This possible marginalization would only further perpetuate that the interview subject was incapable of taking action alone and is need of a white academic to speak for them.

  Additionally, the mention of informants expecting to get paid make me wonder if there was any informed consent when approaching the interviewees.  If the person does not have a clear idea of what the results of their participation in an interview will involve or how what they say will be used, they are not making an informed decision.  I find this unethical.

  Posted by eka99 on May 1, 2006 at 2:26 PM

  The ethics of our profession are clear on this: informed consent for someone’s words to be published isn’t an afterthought, it is an absolute must. Both Abramsky and Bogira are very rigorous in this regard, and will often repeat the question that I, too, will ask repeatedly, esp. when dealing with people not usually quoted in the press: “Are you aware and comfortable that you will be quoted?” “Is this on the record,” and so forth. Both authors discussed this with me at length, and it is par for the course for anyone disciplined in and committed to this profession.

  For more on some of the ethical guidelines of the profession—and yes, it is one distinct from urban anthropology, although there are some worthwhile comparisons to be drawn—see, for instance, the SPJ’s site. Poynter is another great resource. You’ll see the kinds of things we’re arguing about, debating, and how the field is evolving and growing. There are many, many other sites: too numerous to list here.

  As journalists engaged in this kind of work—esp. as immersion journalists with the passion of bringing the voices of the unheard to the fore—we do not (and could not possibly) think that our subjects are “incapable.” What *is* true is that America’s poor and disenfranchised often do not have the avenues or experience working with the press to be able to communicate, in turn, with the greater public. The wealthy, the privileged, the lobbyists, well-funded organizations and agencies, etc., have long since figured out how to maximize and even abuse those tools ... so much so, that American mainstream news is completely *dominated* by their perspectives.

  As both Abramsky and Bogira point out—and as many of their contemporaries will echo—it is therefore incumbent on those of us committed to real journalism to seek out the voices that deserve to be heard. Katherine Boo’s work in The New Yorker involving diverse groups of low-income mothers, for instance, is exemplary and fits right into this tradition of immersion reportage that seeks to bring unheard voices to the fore. Modern-day muckrakers and investigative reporters like Eric Schlosser, Jennifer Gonnerman, and many of my fellow editors here at ITT are committed to the same, and I have no doubt in my mind that American journalism is the better for it.

  What *is* also true is that our field needs to grow and nurture journalists of color; Native journalists,; women in investigative reporting (hard news: the perception I’ve often encountered and run up against is that women can’t handle it or are too emotional for the work, which is another interesting discussion);  and journalists who actually themselves come from working-class and low-income backgrounds. This is what we see the *least* of in this profession today: where journalists, themselves, have been exposed to the very issues that they are writing about—not in the abstract or in the theoretical, but in the day-to-day. This is something I work, personally, to encourage by going out to schools, to juvie, to inner-city youth, and encouraging young adults to consider pursuing journalism for all the aforementioned reasons.

  And it’s this kind of genuine diversity that will keep the profession as dynamic as it needs to be: free, independent, of and *for* the people, and unbeholden to any pressure group. It’s this kind of journalism that this magazine supports and fosters. That’s something I’m proud to be affiliated with, and believe in wholeheartedly.

  Posted by Silja J.A. Talvi on May 1, 2006 at 8:07 PM

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