Prosecutor analyzes hip-hop and criminal justice

Paul Butler was a federal prosecutor in Washington in the early ’90s, when most of the jurors… Paul Butler was a federal prosecutor in Washington in the early ’90s, when most of the jurors in the system were black.

“I was hired to be a black prosecutor, and I was a damned good one,” the George Washington University professor said Thursday in the Law School’s Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture.

By representing the United States in the courtroom, Butler said that his main purpose was eliminating the appearance that the cases he was trying were based on racial injustice.

“What I did, just by showing up, was say ‘Calm down, it’s all right, it’s OK,'” he said.

After a while, Butler began to question his involvement with the prosecutor’s office.

“I didn’t go to law school to put black people in prison,” Butler said.

It was at this point in his career that Butler decided to reexamine his role in the criminal justice system.

He considered the idea of a Martin Luther King-type lawyer. But he also thought of the culture of hip-hop.

“When I listened to hip-hop music, I found a better way to think about the criminal justice system than in the prosecutor’s office,” Butler said.

There’s a constant in hip-hop culture, a criticism of the criminal justice system. The culture says that the system is dysfunctional.

“Whenever we listen to the radio, dance at clubs or sport the latest fashion, we are opening ourselves to a critique of the state,” Butler said.

Hip-hop as a whole is criticized for its support of criminals, but really the culture is just about “respecting young black men,” Butler said.

He added that one in three young black men have been arrested.

Hip-hop not only critiques the criminal justice system, but also suggests ways in which it can be improved. According to Butler, the hip-hop view of the system is that prison is simply a bad thing that happens to some people.

For example, Martha Stewart was not stigmatized because she went to prison. She is still the same successful businesswoman that she was before going to prison.

Butler believes that one big difference between the criminal justice system that is currently in place and the hip-hop system would be that the usage and selling of drugs would not be as highly prosecuted.

“This is not because they are victimless crimes,” Butler said. “This is because they don’t trust the government to enforce it fairly.”

According to statistics that Butler cited from the Department of Justice, only 12 percent of drug users are black, but 75 percent of the people who are prosecuted on drug-related charges are black.

At the end of the lecture, Butler put a challenge to everyone in the audience.

“Did you go to school because you thought something was wrong with the criminal justice system? I ask you now to remember that one thing in the name of Martin Luther King.”