Crack Pipes and Policing: A Case Study of Institutional Racism and Remedial Action in Cleveland

This article uses a case study of selective drug law enforcement in Cleveland, Ohio, to explore the contours of institutional racism in criminal justice policy and practice. Using the multilevel theoretical framework developed by Ian Haney López (2000) that highlights the processes underlying how institutional racism is manifested, I analyze how and why racially discriminatory arrest and charging practices were able to persist in this case as well as how they were eventually reformed. In doing so, I explore the role of institutional empathy (and its withholding) in institutional racism and illustrate how the exploitation of empathy can be used strategically to effect policy change.