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.

On January 20, 1998, deputies unload incarcerated individuals from police wagons and take them into the Cook County Criminal Courthouse, "the biggest and busiest felony courthouse in the nation” (3). It is a federal holiday—the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday—but this hasn’t quelled the steady stream of detainees. On average 1,500 people enter the courthouse each week for a bond hearing; that amounts to around 78,000 men and women each year.

The courthouse is located “in a Mexican neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side” (3). Its “cinder-block walls and metal benches” are decorated with graffiti (3). 15 men exit the wagons: 12 of the men are Black and three are white. The prisoners have been arrested for “the usual reasons”—selling crack, attempting to buy heroin from an undercover cop, and shoplifting liquor (3). When they enter the district station, they are ordered to remove their belts and shoelaces and to empty their pockets. They are then told to place their hands behind their backs and to keep them there—a rule branded “the First Commandment” (10).