Law Professor Michelle Alexander:
Lately, I’ve been telling people that I’m a criminal. This shocks most people, since I don’t “look like” one. I’m a fairly clean-cut, light-skinned black woman with fancy degrees from Vanderbilt University and Stanford Law School. I’m a law professor and I once clerked for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice – not the sort of thing you’d expect a criminal to do.
What’d you get convicted of? people ask. Nothing, I say. Well, then why do you say you’re a criminal? Because I am a criminal, I say, just like you.
Read the whole thing. (H/T Sentencing Law and Policy). Judge Alex Kozinski and Misha Tseytlin make a similar point in an essay in my book entitled, “You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal.”